Radio France has conducted an investigation into conductors’ earnings and finds that monstrous fees are a thing of the past.
Music directors of regional orchestras receive 2500 and 8000 Euros monthly, rising to 15 000 if the conductor is of international stature.
Douglas Boyd at the Paris Chamber Orchestra, for instance, is paid 3,000 Euros per month for his role as musical director, plus 8000 Euros for each concert.
Major international maestros appearing with the Paris orchestras can still command up to 50,000 Euros a night, but the budgets are tightening and the top fee is paid less often.
This is the late conductor, fooling around for his student Brett Mitchell at Vienna Airport.
photo (c) Brett Mitchell
Brett, assistant conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra, has sent us some memories of Kurt:
Nothing illustrates better the musician and human being I came to know than the time I asked him about a certain crescendo he requested of an orchestra: “Maestro, if Mozart wanted a crescendo there, why didn’t he just write one?” Masur replied, “Because if he wrote it down, you’d do it with your head instead of with your heart.” For Maestro, music was never about sharps and flats, dots and dashes; at its core, music was about communicating thoughts, ideas, and feelings. Technique was important, yes, but only insofar as it served the music; everything else was superficial.
Agreement has been reached to merge the Boston Conservatory with Berklee College of Music, effective in June 2016. The merger will release millions of dollars in real-estate sales, as well as payroll cuts.
Neither of the schools is in the national top flight. Boston is also served by the variable New England Conservatory.
If I can dream, by Elvis Presley, has been included in the US classical crossover charts, as applied by Nielsen Soundscan.
This week, Elvis is in second place, behind Andrea Bocelli and with 14,000 fewer sales.
I guess to be classified as classical you have to show that you’re selling very few records.
For the English arts settlement, click here. For the Scottish squeeze, click here.
So which government is working better for us, his or hers?
Lovely seasonal flashmob.
From a radio interview in Houston:
The words ‘music’ and ‘guilt’ don’t go together for me. I got involved with doing benefit concerts and raising money for different kinds of organizations and I often put together all kinds of people to play. Sometimes it could be a string quartet with the Kronos Quartet, but it could be Paul Simon, or it could be David Bowie, or it could Iggy Pop… I’ve played with all these people. Part of the fun of doing these concerts is playing with someone who I’d never played with before. I remember years ago we did a concert for a place called Tibet House – which is a cultural center in New York – and David Bowie was going to play on the concert. Then he told me, ‘Well, we have to rehearse.’ Now, we had never rehearsed before. I usually got together the day before, pick out the songs, then play them. Not David. We had to get together two days before and have a whole rehearsal of his songs. That was really intense. So, sometimes really nice things can happen like that, that I wouldn’t really have planned. Those aren’t guilty pleasures. They’re pleasure pleasures.
The orchestra has published a 55-page scholarly investigation into its ‘ambivalent loyalties’ in the period from 1938 to 1970. During the union with Hitler’s Reich the orchestra was a willing collaborator with racial persecution and other crimes against humanity. That much is well documented. The post-War period is more hazy.
The orchestra’s chairman from 1938-45, and its most influential board member for the next quarter-century was the charming Wilhelm Jerger, an avowed Nazi and lifelong anti-Semite. Jerger proclaimed that the orchestra’s first loyalty was to itself. His exchanges with Nazi leaders are among the most revealing passages in the new research.
Jerger emerges as the force behind the 1960s decision to award the orchestra’s Ring of Honour to the Nazi war criminal Baldur von Schirach (pictured), the genocidal Gauleiter of Vienna. However, the research team of Silvia Kargl and Friedemann Pestel, admits that there are gaps in the archive for 1966-68 and decide that the post-War actions and attitudes of the orchestra require extensive further investigation.
The new paper, funded by the Birgit Nilsson Award, is a stride in the right direction.
You can download it here (in German, bottom righthand column).
We have been informed by his son, Alexandre, that the Argentine-born conductor Carlos Païta died in Switzerland on December 19, at the age of 83.
After a promising career launch, giving the South American premiere of Mahler’s second symphony, Carlos moved to Europe in 1968 but failed to settle with any of the orchestras he conducted.
A Decca producer, Tony D’Amato, signed him after hearing a concert in Brussels to record for the snazzy Phase4 sonic brand. His debut with Wagner orchestral pieces became a demonstration record. Païta followed up with further orchestral spectaculars, first on Decca and subsequently on his own label, Lodia (now defunct), mostly with London orchestras.
