The chief executive of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra has struck an alarm bell about the state’s new law of religious and sexual intolerance. Gary Ginstling published this open letter tonight:

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As the Chief Executive Officer of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, I want to reaffirm our institution’s commitment to inclusiveness. The ISO does not discriminate in its hiring of staff, orchestra, musicians or guest artists, and our performances and programs are open to all.

The recent passage of the Indiana Religious Freedom Restoration Act has brought unnecessary negative attention to our state and its citizens. In addition, the economic damage of this legislation is real. Several world-renowned guest artists scheduled to perform with the ISO in coming months have expressed concerns about coming to Indiana in the future. The ISO is committed to providing our community opportunities to experience the most talented performers from around the world; that any artist might choose not to perform with us due to this legislation is but one example of its far-reaching consequences.

At a time when the nation’s attention is focused on Indianapolis this week as we host the NCAA’s 2015 Final Four Men’s Basketball Championship and our city’s unique personality and hospitality will be on display, it is a shame that the divisiveness of this legislation has become the headline. And given these headlines, it is important that the Indianapolis Symphony reiterate its commitment to inclusiveness and to the value and benefit of a diverse community.

Gary Ginstling
Chief Executive Officer
Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra

 

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UPDATE: The President of Indiana University adds his voice to the growing concern here.

The death of Barry Irving last month drained his publication of essential support.

We have received this final notice:

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March 30th, 2015

To Whom It May Concern

Due to the death of Barry Irving, the sole Director of International Record

Review Ltd, the company must now be considered insolvent and a letter has

been sent to Companies House requesting it to be struck off the register.

The final issue of International Record Review was published on March 2nd.

Many thanks are extended for your past support.

International Record Review Ltd

When you’re feeling troubled…. there’s always a lawyer at hand.

To read the 10 rules for composers to fulfil before it’s too late, click here.

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The Green Bay Symphony Orchestra in Wisconsin, founded in 1913, will give its farewell concert on April 11. Audiences are down and there is not enough will in the community to raise money, administrators say.

The last symphony it will play is Shostakovich 5th.

Story here.

GBSO-All-You-Need

The architect of Los Angeles’s stunning Walt Disney Hall and Bilbao’s Guggenheim Museum has been booked to design a production for Berlin State Opera. It’s Glück’s Orpheus and Euridice, director Jürgen Flimm, conducted by Daniel Barenboim in March 2016.

Gehry has only designed one opera before – Mozart’s Don Giovanni in LA, 2012.

He is presently working on a concert hall for Barenboim’s West-Eastern Divan Orchestra in Berlin.

 

Frank Gehry

 

The Leipzig String Quartet have posted a supportive message about their leader, Stefan Arzberger, who was arrested after running naked through a Manhattan hotel. The Quartet write:

 

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We have to announce that Stefan became on Sat. 26th victim of a serious crime in New York City. Things are in clearance now. At this time the lawyers do not allow to divulge more information. We feel great solidarity and hope for a sudden end of that nightmare! Stefan, we are with you!

Of all the things I never knew I needed, the complete works of Alexander Scriabin come somewhere near the top, along with the collected speeches of Ronald Reagan and the unexpurgated letters of the last three Popes. Scriabin (1872-1915) was a composer of great imagination and very little self-restraint. His short piano pieces, the most effective since Chopin’s, can nail your ear to the wall; his symphonic ramblings make eternity seem short.

Those were my first thoughts when the box landed with 18 CDs, and a massive claim on my time.

But – what do you know? – the music can become hypnotic. If you let it.

The Decca box is my album of the week on sinfinimusic.com. Read the full review here.

 

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Mr & Mrs Scriabin invite us to a picnic lunch. Bring your own boxed set.

 

Alexei Stepanov, conductor at the Bolshoi Opera from 1977 to 2005, has died after a long illness. He conducted the company on tour in Italy and was a frequent guest conductor across Europe and the US.

In 2011 he gave the world premiere of Toshio Hosokawa’s Shakespearian opera, Vision of Lear.

 

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They have announced Georges Aperghis, 69, as the 2015 laureate in the music category.

A Xenakis apostle, he lives in France.

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Rub your eyes, girls and boys. The Nielsen ratings are in for 2014 and the #1 music station for San Francisco is…. classical KDFC.

And by a standout margin. The ratings are measured on an average share of listening Monday-Sunday 6am to 12am; for persons aged six and over.

 

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How do they do that?

In an age where all must have prizes, the Royal Opera House has announced a degree course in making costumes.

roh degree

Seriously. A BA in cutting frocks, in association with the University of the Arts London. Read the specifications here.

You couldn’t make it up.

What next – a Met MA in media manipulation?

A Bolshoi PhD in bullsh*t?

The international opera director Dmitry Tcherniakov has written a furious denunciation of the state dismissal of an opera intendant whose Siberian production of Wagner’s Tannhäuser offended local Russian Orthodox bishops.

Tcherniakov, 44, is presently staging Parsifal at the State Opera in Berlin. Here is his response:

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Let’s say, for the sake of the argument, that there was indeed crime. If so, who is the victim in this particular case? Who suffered a loss? What exactly is that loss? Who, after attending a show at a theatre, will have suffered enough to feel his/her very religious identity threatened? I, frankly, can hardly imagine such a person. I think to claim this is a presumption, a perverse exaggeration. If a person is indeed firm in his/her beliefs, then what kind of a threat a theatre show may pose to those? What can be seen as insulting? If we are talking real, true faith – is it reasonable to believe it can be shaken by anything that happens on a stage, even if the faithful may feel offended by it? For such a faithful sees many an offensive thing in real life, too, things that are unacceptable. But what happens in real life happens, you cannot “correct” it. So why do we think it is possible to correct what happens in theatre?

For theatre aims to tell us everything about the real life, without hiding or embellishing anything. Why do we fail to trust the people – the spectators – with their own judgement, why do we feel it is necessary to question people’s ability to decide for themselves and solve the important questions on their own? Are people non-thinking objects bereft of agency who must be protected and guided?

I can imagine a person humiliated or offended by a real-life direct attack on religious tenets or holy things. But if we are talking theatre and art, you cannot regard the things that happen there as real, it is impossible and improbable. I feel this is some regrettable, shameful, primitive – if not savage – way of appreciating the art. The art, by definition, is not truly real, it is always, so to say, in scare quotes. Art is always placed at a distance; anything may happen there, even truly dreadful things. The same applies to our own thoughts and fantasies. And all three are this way by nature, you cannot correct that!

And then of course all these thoughts have no bearing at all on Timofey Kulyabin’s Tannhäuser. This show is totally outside of any religious discourse – even more so than the original libretto of Richard Wagner. The Novosibirsk show is about something completely different. And if we do try to find something to be offended by in this context, it should rather be Wagner himself as a person. In the words of one of the most respected opera directors of Germany, Peter Konwitschny, Wagner’s Tannhäuser is a story about people’s journey to freedom from the pope and the dogmatic power of the church.

At this very moment I am myself rehearsing another Wagner opera, Parsifal. Why, don’t we know, Wagner himself tells us it depicts religious services, such as communion and Good Friday. But this theology is imaginary, invented, of Wagner’s own creation. And Parsifal is a great work of art that has 130 years of history of performances in all countries and continents. You can interpret it any way you like. Moreover, the religious side of the opera gets very different reactions: some people adore it, some people criticize it, some people are offended by it – exactly because it is a faux religion, it is Wagner’s artifice, not the real thing.

 

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Only yesterday we had a talk during the rehearsals and agreed that rituals in the church cannot be subject to criticism, these things are just taken in whole, accepted without questioning by definition – in stark contrast to a ritual on a stage. The latter will always be appreciated, dissected, discussed – is it well-done, is it well-played, what is the author’s idea etc.

I cannot imagine an artist who makes a work of art, be it a show, a movie, or anything else, with the specific aim to offend anyone. All such “offensive” intents are read into the work by the audience, i.e. by the outsiders. I have worked in theatre long enough, and I can name any number of cases when I myself tried my best to tell people about something I find beautiful. My intentions were always sincere and naïve, I just found myself in a state of certain bliss and wanted to show people some beautiful things.

And then, after all was said and done, I would be shocked, time and again, to hear accusations of my supposed cynicism, malice, denigration, vulgarity, dirtiness and even sabotage. I could never quite grasp where all this comes from, why people have these urges to see insults and conspiracies everywhere they look.
Why so much hate? If we are talking Christianity – is this how a good Christian should behave? If these are Christians, people for whom the faith is a true and deep experience, how could they look at the world this way?

We all know only too well that, in a society, there will always be people who would like to standardize everything, to always point out the mistakes and remind us “how things should be”. Whatever you do, there will be someone who will say that you are wrong, that your view is not the same as his/her view. Yet if such marginal views of a marginal social group are officially adopted as governmental policy, then we are in real danger. It is horrible even to imagine the consequences.

For an attempt to protect the comfort of a couple of hypothetical spectators is in fact an act of destruction of tremendous scale. This, I think, has not been yet fully appreciated in the entirety of its horror. This is an act of treason against our very motherland, and if I sound pathetic, so be it. This is vandalism, an attempt to destroy Russian art as a whole – and do I really have to remind us that Russian art is as valuable as is Russian religion. It is not only valuable – it is one of the few things that we, as Russians, may truly, sincerely be proud of.

Things that are true, new and meaningful do not happen in art any more often than elsewhere, and it would seem natural to expect everybody to help nurture such things, help them grow, protect them.

Yet, alas, the laws of nature, of humanity, of common sense seem to have been abolished in this case. Only too well do I imagine the scale of the psychological injury that Timofey Kulyabin may yet suffer because of this story. And who, might I ask, of those allegedly offended spectators will assume personal responsibility for this? Who will answer for destruction of the fruits of labour of many people who left their heart on the stage, who went through pain and tears in order to accomplish this feat of art? For theatre is a time- and labour-intensive thing, an all-consuming effort that only a few people can truly do.

The events that happen today are nothing short of genocide of Russian theatre! Is this not a crime? Shouldn’t the state prosecute its perpetrators?

Dmitry Tcherniakov