Nobel Prize committee calls Gustavo Dudamel
mainThe LA Phil music director will conduct the award-giving concert with the Royal Stockholm Phil on December 8, it has been announced.
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And, of course, the Dude finally criticized the Maduro regime but only after intense and unrelenting pressure. The man does not belong in Nobel Prize company. OTOH, I think these Nobels have become diluted and politicized somehow. I still can’t figure out that Peace Prize awarded Barack Obama. For what?
It was basically a way for leftist Europeans to congratulate Obama for simply getting elected and for not being Bush (nevermind that Obama actually took drone warfare to levels Bush, McCain, or any other warmonger could only have dreamt of).
The prize committees have often made an award in the hope of future achievement, rather than reward those who have actually done something. And some of the awards (one thinks of Literature and Peace) have been bizarre.
But one hopes they try to get it right
But wasn’t there once a Swede who said that Graham Greene would never win the Literature prize, so long as he could stop him?
Even as a great admirer of Obama I’m at a loss to understand why they gave him the award. But they do often give the peace prize as encouragement rather than for achievement – Kissinger, Arafat, etc..
Dudamel will not conduct the commemorative concert of the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo (that usually is a concert of “cross-over” music). He will conduct the Stockholm Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in the ordinary Nobel Prize commemorative concert. Ay least concerning Kissinger, Arafat, Obama et al. Sweden pleads “not guilty.”
Even harder to figure out is Dylan’s prize for literature. At least the Swedish Academy has come to their senses and cut the ties with the French sleazebag who milked them for years. (His wife is a writer and academy member. Her writing is an acquired taste.) It’s not a crime to be a repugnant person, but in his case it should be.
Right. Will never figure out Dylan’s Nobel in Lit. WTF, as they say in French.
Such prizes, especially in the soft areas, such as the arts, are really awarded by the committees to themselves. Here they wanted to remain relevant, they figured this award might look them look hep. People aren’t reading so much these days, especially things as long as novels.
I was surprised though by the Dylan announcement, sure it would enrage him. They put him on the spot, without asking, in the wrong company, subject to much ridicule, derailing his own p..r., a field in which he excels. His long failure to respond came as less or a surprise.
Why not Sakari Oramo, the the orchestra’s chief conductor?
I believe he’s busy with his other orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, around that time.
Additionally, it appears customary to invite mostly well-known “outside” conductors to take the concert…..2017 – Dudamel, 2016 – Noseda, 2015 – Welser-Möst, 2014 – Nelsons, 2013 – Muti, 2012 – Eschenbach, 2011 – Mottadelli, 2010 – Oramo, 2009 – Temirkanov, 2008 – J.E. Gardiner, 2007 – Ashkenazy, etc.
There really should be a Nobel Prize for Music – I can think of many deserving potental recipients…I asked them about this a couple of years ago when I wanted to nominate someone but they said no
Look at the Polar Music Prize and the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize, but don’t mention in this blog some of the recipients, because that will trigger lots of bashing.
I believe the categories were specified in Alfred Nobel’s will and can’t be changed.
New ones can be added; the economics prize was first awarded in 1969.
Please don’t push them to do it though, it would only make everything worse, fighting to the end of the night. Bob Dylan might make it a double.
Or how about this guy, “for services to Terpsichore that includes methods of composing never before imagined”. (This real btw. If you liked Spinal Tap, you’ll love this, it goes all the way to 12)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPPw1JiQ-kQ
The economics prize is in fact ” the swedish National Bank’s Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel”.
It also is in fact a Nobel prize (ask any of the recipients).
Of course it is now considered as a Nobel prize but Nobel initially selected his favorite subjects: physics, chemistry (he invented dynamite), medicine, peace (he was a friend of Bertha von Suttner, an austrian pacifist), literature (he wrote plays, one of them beiing called Nemesis).
Though a wealthy industrial, he was not particularly interested in economics and surviving members of the Nobel family are among the harshest critics of the economics prize,
Ad famously prohibited a Maths prize.
Yes, no Maths Prize…
Fields Medal instead.
Interesting that some people seem to read this as Dudamel receiving a Nobel Prize. I wonder why.
Nor should there be an Ig-Nobel for music, intriguing as that prospect sounds. Let us treat life as an opportunity to be kind!