Those present on November 29, 1962 were, in addition to President and Mrs. Kennedy, former President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Leonard Bernstein, Marian Anderson, Van Cliburn, Robert Frost, Fredric March, Benny Goodman and Bob Newhart.
He’s 63 today.
This is the image being circulated by musicians – and widely liked – on social media.
Just when everything seemed to be going so well, the Philadelphia Orchestra has hired Michael Kaiser as a consultant to help out with income policy and future strategy.
Kaiser’s record is mixed. He helped London’s Royal Opera House out of a deep pit of despond, leaving before the job was done, but the latter half of his decade in charge of Washington’s Kennedy Center was marred by inertia, jobs for pals and general retreat. The Center has thrived again since his departure.
Philadelphia musicians might like to be reminded that Kaiser in Washington hired his friend Christoph Eschenbach, a conductor they overwhelmingly rejected, at the highest music director salary in the US.
That Philadelphia should now need Kaiser’s non-FDA tested brand of snake-oil is cause for despair.
The quote is from the admirably grounded Karl Jenkins in his new autobiography, Still with the Music (p. 223).
This morning Karl, 71, became the first Welsh-born composer ever to receive a knighthood.
Arise, Sir Karl.
Angela Gheorghiu has announced she will be facing two different men from the ones she expected at the Met:
Roberto Aronica is the new Mario for Angela’s Toscas at the Metropolitan Opera on October 29 and November 2, replacing Massimo Giordano.
Also Zeljko Lucic will be Scarpia for both performances, replacing George Gagnidze, initially scheduled to sing on October 29.
The Met’s website is way behind her.
The 9th Unesco Indian summer festival opens this weekend in Slovakia. Details here.
A study by two researchers at the University of Notre Dame has come up with some seriously bad findings.
A sampling of 2,250 Americans were asked to rank 15 genres of music as liked, disliked, or ‘mixed feelings’.
The replies were then compared to a similar survey from 1993.
The key finding is this: Today’s highly educated young – ‘high-status newcomers”, in the jargon – tend to dislike Classical music and Rock more than those of 1993.
In the first survey only 8 percent marked ‘dislike’ against classical music. Today (the survey is dated 2012) than number rises to 15 percent.
In general, dislike of classical music across all ages has slightly declined, but among the most desirable target group for music planners young people really hate what they consider to be their parents’ music and choose rap as an alternative.
From an interview with the Chicago Maroon, a student newspaper:
Riccardo Muti: ‘In the last [several] years, we have become a visual society. So instead of listening to the music, we want to see conductors exercising on the podium, pianists that communicate with God while playing, violinists that try to impress the public with sexy attitudes…All this didn’t exist 30 years ago, 40 years ago. Today, with television and other things, people are interested in what they see. Nobody speaks about the spiritual integrity of these [artists]; what they are conveying to the public.
‘So something dramatic is happening. And instead of helping the public to become more concentrated on the substance of what art is, we are following them—giving them candies instead of vitamins. The next time you go to a concert and see a conductor who moves more than is necessary, and opens his mouth like a shark, you have to boo.’
photo (c) Todd Rosenberg
More here.
It was a big Bruckner night in Linz on Sunday, but an hour and a half before the concert Dennis Russell Davies collapsed in pain and was rushed to hospital, where he underwent surgery that night.
Davies, 70, had made an awkward turn in the podium and torn the patellar tendon behind his knee. He’s making a good recovery, we’re told.
Kapellmeister Ingo Ingesand, called in from the Landestheater, conducted Bruckner’s fourth without rehearsal. He has been engaged for the forthcoming concert while the music director recovers.
Dennis Russell Davies with old friend Philip Glass
It’s all happening too fast for Alexander Shelley, newly installed music director of the National Arts Centre Orchestra (NACO) in Ottawa, and principal associate of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (RPO) in London. So he’s told his other orch, the Nuremburg Symphony, that he plans to leave in 2017.
Shelley turns 36 tomorrow and is on a rising curve with mainstream orchestras.
Recuperating from cancer Seiji Ozawa, 80, tried his hand at an overture with the Vienna Philharmonic in Tokyo. From the Asahi Shimbun:
Photo: Wilfried Hedenborg
By JUNKO YOSHIDA/ Senior Staff Writer
Maestro Seiji Ozawa led the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra as a guest conductor after being feted with a special birthday performance during an open rehearsal on Oct. 4 at Tokyo’s Suntory Hall.
Conductor Christoph Eschenbach and the orchestra, both of whom are in Japan to give performances, played a birthday song based on the works of Beethoven and Bernstein for Ozawa, who turned 80 on Sept. 1.
During the free event, Ozawa took the conductor’s podium in red sneakers and led the orchestra in a performance of Beethoven’s “Egmont” Overture.
“We knew what both sides wanted to do the moment they played the first note,” Ozawa said after the performance. “I am totally overwhelmed. I was reminded that they are not your average orchestra.”
Few would have fancied New Zealand’s Amalia Hall to win the world’s richest violin prize, but the ex-Curtis University of Waikato lecturer has made it to the last six of the Joachim Competition in Hannover.
She’s not an outsider any more. Here are the finalists:
– Amalia Hall (New Zealand)
– Sergei Dogadin (Russia)
– Benjamin Marquise Gilmore (Netherlands/USA)
– Shion Minami (Japan)
– Ayana Tsuji (Japan)
– Richard Lin (Taiwan/USA)
Watch the live stream here. Go, Amalia!