There’s a doubly gloomy set of Nielsen Scan statistics this week.
Apart from Il Volo – who are not really classical and shifted 900 units – no classical recording broke 200.
Daniil Trifonov was top, for what it’s worth, with 190.
But what’s really, really depressing is that an appearance on The Late Show by the South African soprano Pretty Yende made hardly any impact on her record sales.
She might as well have gone to bed early that night.
The Governor of Adana has called off this week’s orchestral concert featuring the Turkish pianist İdil Biret ‘due to terror events in our country.’
The concert was linked to the city’s post-World War liberation anniversary.
The retailer wants more of your physical dollars. It’s opening an outlet in Columbus Center.
Will the new 4,000-foot store sell classical music?
Yeah, right.
There’s a box for sale.
They only come up once in a decade or more.
Own one, and you can see every event in the hall for free.
The price £2.5 million.
Worth a bid.
Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie, which opens with great fanfare this week, has named Matthias Pintscher as its Resident Composer.
The title has become completely meaningless. Does it mean Pintscher gets a free apartment in the building? Or that anyone can walk up to him in the lobby and demand ‘give us tune.’
So what’s the point of having a ‘resident composer’? To allow the bureaucrats who paid for the hall to tick a box marked ‘contemporary culture’.
That’s all.
Opera Australia, the country’s national opera company, is making it possible to experience the iconic Opera House and the classic art form from the most spectacular vantage point of all—the stage. For around $3,630 USD, you’ll get to visit the Opera Australia studio where a costume dresser will fit you with a handmade costume and the show’s Assistant Director will walk you through what will happen on stage. Then, on the night of the performance, you will enter with the cast via the stage door and report to hair and makeup to be transformed into your character (fancy wig included). The big moment comes when you get to join the chorus on stage in front of an audience of 1,500 people, including a guest of your choice who will also attend the performance as part of the package.
Not you?
More here.
Christopher Hampton, who wrote Sunset Boulevard (ALW) and The Trial (PG), gives an icy shaft of insight:
‘With Lloyd-Webber you are given the music and and have to fit the lyrics to the score. Philip Glass writes not a note until he has the libretto, and then he will call if he wants to make a cut or needs a couple more syllables. He is the perfect collaborator because he makes every effort to honour the text and make sure every word is heard.’
Full interview here.
Zdenek Machacek established a network of operetta and music theatre performances in his country in the 1950s, conducting the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra Kosice and the Slovak Philharmonic.
Czech born, he was leader of the second violins in the Brno Philharmonic until 1953, when he took up the baton.
The first two reviews for City Opera’s bold reopening this weekend are something of a let-down.
Christopher Johnson in Zeal NYC: Every decade or so, Harold Prince serves up a dog’s breakfast and calls it Candide. New York City Opera presented the latest such repast last Friday at the Rose Theatre…. The current production only adds to the mayhem. It features a mixed grill of Broadway veterans and conspicuously handsome young opera-singers, all of whom seem to have been coached to perform as if they were hyperkinetic tenth-graders. Deploying a large repertoire of funny voices and ethnic stereotypes, Edelman, Zien, and Ashmanskas turn what is arguably the greatest set of lyrics ever written for the musical theatre into near-gibberish,
Eric C Simpson in New York Classical Review: Candide, a reasonably faithful adaptation of Voltaire’s classic satire, is a bizarre road-trip farce that drags its principals from Westphalia, to Lisbon, El Dorado, Cadiz, Cartagena, and Constantinople, beset along the way by inquisitors, pirates, and marauding Bulgarians…. Broadway veteran Gregg Edelman led a cast of singers and actors drawn mostly from the New York theater circuit, a casting strategy that led to some mixed results.
The parish sheet has yet to pronounce.
Canadian soprano Layla Claire has made a video for the clothing brand lululemon about her role preparation, which always involves yoga. Interesting to see when and how she does her yoga.
A conscientious editor has sent us the booklet cover of DG’s 75th birthday compendium for the 75th birthday of the celebrated pianist.
Ah well, at least they got the right number of ls in his surname.
Celebrating his 75th birthday in 2017, this luxurious 55CD set presents Pollini’s complete recordings on Deutsche Grammophon with their original covers, including the first ever release of Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto with the NHK Symphony Orchestra under Maxim Shostakovich (recorded in Tokyo in 1974).
Jordan Cartwright is seven years old. He loves music and he has leukemia.
So the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra arranged for him to rehearse and conduct Canada’s National Anthem last week.
There are so many good people out there.
