This was last night after a performance of Ginastera’s violin concerto by Hilary Hahn.
Apart from the conductor, Dudamel, there are no males in sight.
The locker-room has certainly changed in the decade since the frat-pack times of two recently suspended players.
We’ve been given to understand that tonight’s Lebrecht…
Pablo Casals conducts a gloriously old-fashioned 1971 performance…
From the last Lebrecht Album of the Week…
Jiří Pánek, who died on December 19 aged…
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At least there are no women in the percussion section.
In Chinese orchestras there women in the percussion sections, including a fine timpanist. The orchestras are excellent and play European traditional and contemporary classical music as well as original Chinese compositions.
Chicago Symphony’s percussionist is a petite Chinese woman.
Check out her in action: https://youtu.be/fyNnXxr2PBY?si=HggCrhq9fPy3_RK6
Taiwanese
Of Chinese ancestry. Unless she is one of the natives that are 2% of the Taiwanese population.
Nationality is political. Otherwise we’re all ultimately of African ancestry. And since you don’t know her descendants, maybe just accept that he bio lists her as Taiwanese, and don’t arrogate to yourself the right to define other people.
And Patricia Dash. She was appointed by Solti in 1988
Never trust an anonymous professional musician. They may be right and still get it wrong.
Recently heard the Nielsen Fifth, and the snare drummer was a woman. She knocked it out of the park!
Seeing a woman banging the drums gives me a profound feeling of revenge!
Sally
Here it is (with Hahn):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCHfeo3C2Uo
Thanks. I heard it when the Frankfurt Radio Symphony (with Orozco Estrada) still had it on their YouTube channel. It was magnificent, challenging for performers and audience, certainly not ugly.
Praise to Hillary Hahn for venturing a non-popular work such as the Ginastera concerto.
That work is of legendary difficulty for all concerned — written for (but not delivered until after) the NY Phil’s first season in Lincoln Center. Ruggiero Ricci was the soloist at the premiere conducted by Bernstein and for a long time about the only way to hear it was with him playing, on a rare and hard to find CD from Hong Kong’s One-Eleven label, in sound that was more than OK but did not do full justice to the percussion-rich scoring. I’m impressed that Hillary Hahn has sought it out and learned it. Just maybe it’s time has come?
She recorded it in 2022 [with the Dvorak concerto] on DG.
Missed it.
DG called the disc “ECLIPSE” — getting in the way of the composers’ names!
‘Just maybe it’s time has come?’
Seems very unlikely, because it just sounds terrible, all the way through. Pretentious ugliness, unmotivated virtuosity, psychologically misconceived – the thing begins with a ridiculously long solo cadence, the orchestra waiting, waiting, waiting…. Revenge for Beethoven’s 3rd pf concerto where the soloist has to wait, wait, wait?
It is a piece in the category of Schoenberg’s absurdist violin concerto: trying to get it as difficult and ugly as possible, giving the soloist the opportunity to convey the impression of ‘breaking boundaries’ and showing-off olympic prowess. For people loving all these things, ideal music. But their number is very small, as is their musical perception framework.
Hi Sally , tell us about your upcoming performances!
Here’s a list…. but I only tell real professional musicians. There are not many….
Sally
Exactly what i expected….”Ohn Antwort ist der Ruf verhallt…”
Is it really so difficult to listen to? There is nothing ugly about it. What frightens you more, the virtuosity of the composer or of the violinist?
It has been a conventional trope of modernist ideology that what audiences experience as ‘ugly’ is simply their lack of exposure to the new, like Beethoven’s ‘shocking’ moments. It was expected that writing the unusual and unexpected one would become a Beethoven. Alas, some 70 years of exposure has not resulted in the expected outcome, so it was a silly projection, nothing more.
Nine orchestra members are (partially) visible in this picture – just about a tenth of all musicians on stage. But I’m sure that’s a sufficient base for drawing conclusions …
Also: “there are no males in sight” – might I suggest looking at the person right next to Hilary Hahn, standing just behind Dudamel?
Perhaps less important, certainly less interesting: how was the performance?
Or should we rather discuss the soloist’s dress? The conductor’s hair?
The NYP is about 50% women. Orchestras like the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics lag far behind and yet they serve as national symbols of their countries. Something to think about?
No.
The Vienna Phil doesn’t have its members fired for “misconduct”. I don’t know about the BPO.
No, Willy O., it is not something to think about!~ What is with your bizarre bureaucratic obsession that there must be at least 51% women in every orchestra on the planet? Is that an automatic guarantee of elevated musical standards? Is that appropriate for the cultural milieu of the orchestras and nations in question? Give it a rest already…
Vienna Philharmonic aside, maybe women at that a high level would rather live other kinds of life within the music vocation. Berlin is a high charged orchestra. It’s full of disagreeable personalities who share a competitive attitude.
Is the Osborne solution to choose women applicants over men? —on the grounds of their birth organs?
Would Mr Osborne question American orchestras’ ‘propensity’ to hire Asian female string playing musicians?
I don’t care what the players look like so long as they won the job fair and square.
Mr Osborne seems to believe orchestras should hire based on sex.
Mr Osborne, the rest of the Far Left no longer believe in male and female anyway. Soon they will protest too many cisgender women in the orchestras.
I heard stories of members of the [REDACTED] orchestra banging their instruments on each other’s heads during quarrels at rehearsels. Competition is harsh.
It makes absolutely no difference, but there is only one male among the 29 violinists in the NYPhil.
Talent and ability will out.
Why is it talent and ability when the majority is female but bias and discrimination when the majority is male?
If I were a player in a symphony orchestra I would want to see only males around me. What else would there have to be to distract me??
Sally
So that’s why Gustavo took the job. Target-rich environment…
What if there were only one female among the 29 violinists of the NY Phil? The woke would be having a cow, talent be damned.
Did you actually read the full sentence?
“Apart from the conductor, Dudamel, there are no males in sight.“
did you actually look at the picture?
did you actually read my comment?
apart from Dudamel, there IS in fact another ‘male’ in sight:
“the person right next to Hilary Hahn, standing just behind Dudamel” is wearing a suit and – although their head is not visible -might be not a woman …
Has Hilary let her hair go gray?
What kind of shoe polish do you recommend for naturally-aging hair
How is that at all relevant? She’s a phenomenal talent and that’s all that matters.
That’s what happens when you play the Ginastera.
It’s the result of practicing the Ginastera piece.
If she ´d played your concerto, which got only one performance so far, she would be in a coma now. I asked one of the world´s top violinists from Germany, whom i happen to know for 30 years, if he would play it….He stopped after five minutes listening, responding” over my dead body”
Going through the reviews, they must all have lied terribly, probably they were paid but by whom? Infliltrated by professional musicians with tenure at a respectable German conservatory? In these days, you would believe everything!
Sally
Sally….you are a conspiracy theory become flesh….
“let” her hair go gray? when in fact, hair does tend to be one gray, and interestingly enough it happens to any gender! Think about what you are saying. Did you think the same of Dudamel’s grays, I wonder?
Yes, it really shows in that photo. I guess playing Ginastera will do that to you.
Has Dudamel let his hair go gray?
Do you see how ridiculous that question sounds when you direct it at a man? They’re both humans. That’s what happens to humans as they age.
Appalled that you would assume their gender, Norman.
This place has become Hate Central.
Become?
No. That’d be Columbia University.
They’re trying to compete with Andrew Rieu’s orchestra.
Yes but, more importantly, where are their coloured frocks?
No men in sight other than Dudamel? What concert are you talking about? I was there and saw plenty of men, like the concert master, etc.
From: Richard Stanbrook.
Date: 26th April 2024.
As far as I’m concerned, careers should be open to talent and ability, irrespective of age, gender and ethnicity.
Performing music to the highest possible standard is what really matters.
You must direct your comments to DEI officers everywhere.
Meritocracy? That’s so passe. What a dinosaur you are!
The Sarasota Orchestra has an amazing timpanist, Yoko Kita!
Who cares what the gender is, its the music that counts. Unless they play in the nude, im not interested
So you’d be interested if they *did* play in the nude? Hmm…
And for the avoidance of doubt, orchestras, conductors, and soloists shout NOT play in the nude.
Choirs also.
It exists:
https://twitter.com/i/events/1343575717175582721?lang=bn
https://slippedisc.com/2011/06/meet-the-naked-orchestra-and-vote-for-the-next/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wl4OBdAJ7DQ
Rhine Classics has released the 1963 world premiere performance with Ricci, Bernstein, and the New York Philharmonic on a 6-CD Ricci box and has put the third movement on SoundCloud (wisps of Paganini’s Caprice No. 24 are audible in the movement):
https://www.rhineclassics.com/products/rh-008-ricci-edition-1-concertos
https://soundcloud.com/rhine-classics/rh-008-cd2-tr-7-ginastera-vc-iii-ricci-nypo-bernstein-1963
Last I checked, musicians make it into orchestras based on their ability to play an instrument, not their gender or anything other physical traits. Let’s hope it stays that way and that orchestras are not forced to fill gender quoatas
Thats what I call… DIVERSITY
Classical music is dead. Has been for decades. Who cares about music the intellectual and moral equivalent to the Jerry Springer Show? Modern academia destroys everything it touches.
LOL…..
It’s not modern academia, but people who parade as professional musician but have no talent whatsoever. And they have been around always, as history clearly shows. They bluff themselves through music life, but they inevitably disappear in their own black hole. There are enough quality musicians around to keep the art form alive…. it only takes longer than the Jerry Springer Show.
As a man I really feel I make no chance to win a orchestra audition anymore this days..
Lots of women in the string sections.
The winds and brass not so much.
Ahem. There’s a male musician right behind Ms Hahn and adjacent to Mr Dudamel. Anyway, what does it matter (hasn’t the brass section made extraordinary and excessive attempts in recent times to keep their section entirely male….)? Surely the only thing that matters is how well the pieces were played.
HH is the Taylor Swift of Violin Virtuosi, in so far explaining what the music means to her and how she communicates. Here is her YouTube talk on Ginastera Violin Concerto https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hjdXqvvFfg See what I mean?
But in that video she says many very sensible things, like music being an emotional record of history, in terms of experience. So, awful times produce awful music. This leaves the question open why so much music from premodern times is so beautiful and meaningful, in spite of terrible wars, famines, plagues, death raging in daily life, political turmoil etc. etc.
Was experience in former times better or worse? Or were composers ‘en masse’ entirely hypocritical, creating a façade of respectability in stark contrast with reality? Or were they merely focussed on some higher awareness of meaning? I believe: the latter.
Yeah, well that’s one way of getting rid of male musicians.
Male players drugging and raping female colleagues take care of that themselves.
And not one of them worth a second look, Also Hilary Hahn has really let herself go
Haven’t been to a Philharmonic concert in years but I would presume the violins sound much more refined than during the Mehta years – with all those angry disillusioned old white guys hacking away at their instruments long gone….
They indeed sound much better now. Less coarse, better balanced.
Norm, quit stirring the pot. There are PLENTY of men on that stage. Most importantly, there is TALENT on that stage.
Wonderful! Now let’s redress the glaring gender imbalance in fields like mining, construction, logging, high-voltage line work and Bering Sea crab fishing.
NYW Orchestra
Hey Norm,
I was browsing Facebook today and by chance noticed that you stole this photo from a private individual who posted it on FB. Yet you use it here without permission or attribution to try to convey a tendentious message that is not in line at all with the photographer’s own position.
I guess that lines up with your ‘values’…