David Peralta Alegre, principal second violin of the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, has a burgeoning sideline as a social media consultant.

In a blogpost today, he extols two orchestra for having invested more in social media management than the rest.

One has achieved:

  • 700,992 likes on its Facebook page
  • 93,122 subscribers on YouTube
  • 77,841 followers on Twitter
  • 2,361 lists on Twitter

berlin philharmonie beethoven 9

The other has:

    • 111,349 likes on its Facebook page
    • 45,871 followers on Twitter
    • 1,230 lists on Twitter
    • + 2,900 followers on Instagram   

You will have to click on David’s page here to discover who they are. However, impressive as these statistics may appear, we don’t think from our observations that these two orchestras are necessarily the most effective operators on social media. No-one has yet made orchestras a talking point on reddit. What we’re seeing here are the stats of passive fandom. How to make them active is the unanswered question.

Mandy Rice-Davies, whose early notoriety was the fulcrum of a recent ALW flop, has died of cancer, aged 70.  A sometime nightclub singer, she is remembered chiefly for the courtroom catch-phrase, ‘He would, wouldn’t he?’

mandy rice davies

Nancy Drye, a player in the University of Pennsylvania Orchestra, had her viola stolen from her home in Powelton earlier this month. She treasured the instrument, which she thinks dates from Paris around the time of the French Revolution.

Its remains were found Wednesday night on a vacant lot in west Philadelphia.

‘It feels like a death in the family,’ says Nancy.

smashed viola

 

He will be amused at sharing the award with George Harrison, the Bee Gees, country duo the Louvin Brothers, hard bop saxophonist Wayne Shorter and Texas Tejano musician Flaceo Jiménez.

The award was announced last night.

Boulez, 89, is thought to be too frail to fly to Los Angeles for the awards ceremony.

(So we’ll never get that shot of PB with a BeeGee).

boulez

Riccardo Muti wrote to him last night: ‘Dear Maestro, dear Pierre: The news that you are the recipient of the 2015 Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award makes me and the entire Chicago Symphony Orchestra family extremely happy and proud. You are a giant in the musical world, and we are all so grateful for your great contribution to music. Congratulations with great admiration, affection and friendship.’

Paul Renzi, principal flute of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra for 60 years, 1944-2004, passed away on Wednesday night.

Paul was hired at 18 by Pierre Monteux and caught the ear in his first season with the tricky solos in the brand-new Shostakovich Sixth. He knew all about orchestral life from his father, who played oboe under Toscanini in the NBC Symphony and came west when the orch was disbanded.

Paul came 11th in our list of longest-serving orchestral players, the highest ranking flute player.

paul renzi 1

We’re getting further details of who’s in, who’s out, at the shrinking culture section of the New York Times.

In all, around 15 staff have gone. They include both the pop editor (Fletcher Roberts) and the classical editor (Myra Forsberg); four or five people on the copy desk; the culture reporters Felicia Lee and Larry Rohter; and several photographers on mostly culture assignments.

The distinction between who jumped and who was pushed is being blurred as a seasonal courtesy, but the culture section is (we hear) shrouded in gloom, despondency and thinly suppressed rage.

new york times

News of Allan Kozinn’s departure from the New York Times has gone viral in the music and media communities, with tributes flowing in from many quarters for one of the last honest and knowledgeable writers on the Manhattan main drag.

 

alan kozinn 2014

Pulitzer winner Tim Page writes from California:

Allan Kozinn could write about anything — with grace, intelligence, perspective and a sly and subtle wit. He had EARS, as they say, and he employed them for more than three decades at The New York Times. I had hoped that things were getting better on Eighth Avenue…. True, the NYT still has some fine critics, but only one of them is now on staff. A bad day for anybody who cares about music.

More pertinent still is this comment from a leading PR who, like  most others, finds it impossible to get a review of interesting concerts – as distinct from show-off stuff – into the paper. This person tells Slipped Disc:

Since Steve Smith left for Boston, it has been a nearly impossible task to get reviewed unless you are über-famous. Most of the classical music department really doesn’t want to give a somewhat lesser-known artist a chance. They want free tickets to the best concerts in town. In a way, they really aren’t reviewing, but attending a great performance and mostly praising what they attend. Occasionally, in an opera or orchestral review, you’ll get a quibble. But, mostly, critics write about – and attend – performances they actually want to hear because they already are familiar with the artists. Where does that leave hundreds of extremely talented and worthy performers: Nowhere, I’m afraid.

There’s no place left in the Times for good music. Its reputation as a newspaper of record died today.

The National Endowment for the Arts has awarded $80,000 towards the production costs of an opera on the 1968 My Lai massacre in Vietnam, when more than 300 civilians were slaughtered by US forces.

The opera was commissioned by the Kronos quartet from composer Jonathan Berger and librettist Harriet Chessman. It is scheduled for pemiere in 2015 at Stanford University, where Berger is a music professor. He says: ‘I think it will be a reasonably abstract performance… We’re not going to have war scenes set out on the stage…No blood and gore.’

my lai1

Hard to imagine the Russians subsidising an opera on their Chechnya and Ukraine exploits.

William Stokking, a Piatogorsky student, joined the Philadelphia Orch in 1960 but then strayed to Boston and Cleveland for lack of promotion. He returned in 1973 as principal cello and held the seat until his retirement in 2005.

William died on Sunday, aged 80.

Here’s an account of his life-changing accidents.

 

william stokking

The decision to end ballet performances at La Monnaie as part of a range of financial cuts has drawn a stinging response from the choreographer, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, whose company was in residence at La Monnaie for 25 years.

She writes:

« L’annonce de la direction de la Monnaie de supprimer toute sa programmation danse me frappe d’incrédulité. La danse fait historiquement partie de la mission de la Monnaie. Après l’époque glorieuse du duo Béjart/Huisman, le budget de la danse a été systématiquement réduit. La Monnaie, d’abord sous la direction de Gerard Mortier puis sous celle de Bernard Foccroulle, n’a cessé de diminuer ses investissements dans la danse. À présent, Peter De Caluwe supprime tout. Cette évolution oppose un contraste criant au statut de capitale internationale de la danse de Bruxelles.
Depuis trente ans déjà, Rosas donne ses spectacles de danse dans de métropoles comme Paris, Londres, Berlin, Amsterdam, New York, et, en Belgique, à Anvers, Gand et Bruxelles. La décision de Peter De Caluwe implique que Rosas n’aura désormais plus de « maison » pour l’accueillir à Bruxelles. Cherchce-t-on à me faire passer le message que je dois chercher un autre lieu/une autre ville ? »

Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker,
Bruxelles, 17 décembre 2014

keersmaker

 

 

The Monnaie’s announcement that it will end dance programming strikes me with incredulity. Dance is historically part of La Monnaie’s mission. After the glorious era of Béjart / Huisman, budgets were systematically cut. First under Gerard Mortier then under Bernard Foccroulle, La Monnai has steadily shrunk its investment in dance. Now Peter De Caluwe has removed dance altogether. This development contradicts Brussels’s claim to be a capital of dance.

For thirty years now, my company Rosas has given dance performances in Paris, London, Berlin, Amsterdam, New York and, in Belgium, in Antwerp, Ghent and Brussels. Peter De Caluwe’s decision means that Rosas can no longer consider Brussels its home. I shall look for another place, another city.

Most people in media are aware that the Grey Lady is having a haircut. That means lots of journos being relieved of their jobs, some walking of their own volition, others being escorted to the door.

Among the latter, I learn today, is the veteran music critic and reporter, Allan Kozinn.

 

kozinn

 

Let me declare an interest: Allan is a good colleague and personal friend. I commissioned him to write the best-ever short biography of the Beatles. We see eye to eye on some things, differ on many others.

Allan was for many years the most perceptive music critic on the arts desk, overlooked for promotion in various internal back-stabbings (working at the New York Times requires a heavy suit of moral body-armour).

In the last such round, Allan was taken off the critical beat and shunted off to the news desk to work on arts news stories.

Since the Times doesn’t know an arts story unless it comes from a handful of PRs, this must have been a frustrating experience for an expert judge of musical quality and news values. Allan performed the task uncomplaining. He receieved recent assurances that he was not at risk because he was incredibly productive and unquestionably knowledgeable.

Now he has been rewarded with the  sack.

I feel terribly sorry for him. I feel even sorrier for the New York Times which, time after time, refuses to recognise and sensibly engage the experts under its own roof and, time after time, promotes mediocre keyboard pounders at the expense of refined and intelligent writers.

This is a rotten decision by a newspaper that cannot get much right, a newspaper that has lost its authority.

(Further arts casualties should emerge during the course of today. Indeed they have: see update here.)

UPDATE: Don’t bother to seek  review in the Times. Click here.

The Russian January issue of the fashion magazine is out now. In it, the diva talks about her son’s autism.

 

Anna Netrebko - Tatler Russia, January 2015 1