This piece of evidently informed speculation comes from Zachary Woolf, chief music critic of the New York Times, in a review of the Boston Symphony’s visit to Carnegie Hall.
Woolfe concludes: This trip to Carnegie was the orchestra’s first with Chad Smith — long a forward-thinking programming leader at the adventurous Los Angeles Philharmonic, and now Boston’s chief executive. Midway through his first season, he’s beginning to lay the groundwork for the future.
Last week, the orchestra announced that Nelsons, after 10 years, would move to an unusual “evergreen, rolling contract.” Is this a sign of trust in a beloved partner? Or does it make it simpler for Smith to jettison Nelsons if a better option — a talented conductor in a more progressive mold — comes around?
The answer may well be both, and this Carnegie series gave ample evidence that Nelsons, for all his strengths, remains one of the most uneven top-rank maestros in music.
The US charity that arranges professional music tuition for under-privileged children has received its first million-dollar donation.
From the press release:
Maria Manetti Shrem’s donation demonstrates her commitment to ArtSmart’s successful program model, sustainability, scale, and impact. Together with Co-Founders Michael Fabiano and John Viscardi and the ArtSmart team, ArtSmart’s mission is to transform the lives of youth in under-resourced communities across the United States through tuition-free music lessons and mentorship, by paid professional artists. ArtSmart’s vision is to provide students with a pathway to academic, economic, and emotional stability through music mentorship.
Born in Florence, Italy, Maria Manetti Shrem moved to San Francisco in 1972. She became instrumental in the internationalization of some of the world’s most iconic fashion brands, such as Gucci and Fendi.
Message from Manchester:
The Hallé is the first UK orchestra to celebrate its archive with a fully searchable online tool. On Sunday 21st January 2024, the Hallé launched its brand new, digital repertoire database. Over 20 years in the making, the Hallé is the only UK orchestra to date to have produced such a database. The fully searchable online tool contains over 40,000 listings of individual works, artists, soloists, concert halls and much more from 1858 to 1990. The database will continue to develop and grow but already allows the Hallé to share its history – from schools concerts to international tours and everything in between – far and wide.
https://archive.halle.co.uk
Arabella Arts has taken on US conductor Chelsea Gallo for general management.
She’s a former recipient of a Solti grant (good to keep that name alive).
Sixteen months after he broke his elbow, the cellist Raphaël Merlin has ended his 24-year career in the Quatuor Ebène, one of the world’s elite ensembles.
They have replaced him with the Japanese soloist, Yuya Okamoto, who is not yet 30.
Merlin will focus now on conducting.
Police and paramedics were called to Manchester Opera House on Quay Street at 8.35 pm, about an hour into a performance of the ballet, Swan Lake.
Police said: ‘Officers attended the scene, and a 30-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of assault, the man was taken to custody where he later released pending further investigation.’
What time’s the next Swan?
The Broadway star of West Side Story and Chicago has died at 91.
A student at George Balanchine’s School of American Ballet, she had a fling with Sammy Davis Jr. and married one of the Jets in Bernstein’s show.
Obit here.
The Fouth String Quartet Biennale in Amerstadam was severely disrupted last night when pro-Palestinian demonstrators drowned out the Jerusalem Quartet. Heather Kurzbauer reports on violinist.com reports:
A series of SQBA master classes offered by the greats to up-and-coming quartets entices both audience and participants to experience work in progress. In a revelatory morning session, two members of the Jerusalem Quartet offered words of wisdom to the young Amsterdam-based ADAM Quartet.
Challenging the extremely tense performers to open up and define “what is revolutionary about Mendelssohn’s Opus 13 #2?” while calmly advising them on “how to create the illusion that what we hear goes far beyond the reality of what we do” turned teaching moments into magic.
Later that evening, the spell was broken when pro-Palestinian demonstrators poured out their wrath on the audience and performers disrupting the Jerusalem Quartet’s evening concert with catcalls preceded by flyers that insinuated that concert attendance was tantamount to warfare. The Jerusalem Quartet rose above the situation to deliver a spellbinding performance of Shostakovich’s Second string quartet….
More here.
Mstislav Rostropovich and Galina Vishnevskaya were best pals with the Brittens. But there were only 4 seats in the car.
From Psychology Today:
… A recent study in Frontiers of Psychology (Corrigall and Schellenberg, 2015), identified the characteristics most likely to predict parents who encourage music study in their children, and the characteristics most likely to predict children who stick with music study.
Using the Big Five Personality Inventory, the researchers found that parents who score high on the openness scale are most likely to encourage their children to study music. Openness is defined as being curious, creative, intelligent, and interested in novel ideas. Although openness also predicts children who tend to want to study music, it is not an essential quality. Openness becomes a more important factor as the child becomes an adolescent, and chooses to continue music study without parental guidance.
More here.
To mark the centennial of Franz Kafka’s death, the Zurich Opera are taking the bold step of staging an opera based on his literary fragment ‘Amerika’ by the Polish-Austrian composer Roman Haubenstock-Ramati.
The work has only been seen three times before. Its twice-exiled composer died in 1994.
The Zurich premiere is on March 3 and there is a planned run of seven performances until mid-April.