February 2000

• WHAT DREAMS MAY COME: San Francisco's classical music radio station is the No. 1 music station in the market. In Seattle, the classical music station is owned by local arts groups and turns a profit every year. Why can't Philadelphia even manage to keep a classical station on the air? Philadelphia Inquirer 02/29/00

• SIMON SAYS: As Simon Rattle takes his leave of England, a few thoughts on the state of modern musical life in Britain, Berlin and America. London Times 02/28/00

• AN OPERA TO BE LIVED IN: With everything whizzing by faster and faster, Wagner's "Tristan" forces you to suspend time, inhabit music, rather than listen to it fly past. Chicago Tribune 02/27/00

• COMING OF AGE: There was a time when Michael Tilson Thomas was regarded as that brilliant kid who never quite lived up to his potential. Five years into his job leading the San Francisco Symphony, Thomas has come into his own. Hartford Courant 02/27/00

  • Capturing the hearts of an orchestra...and a city. Boston Globe 02/27/00

• AN OLD IDEA, BADLY DONE: "Modern concert halls need to be less like airport lounges, devoid of atmosphere, charm or humanity, and more like somewhere you would choose to spend an evening. No wonder people prefer concerts by candlelight in churches or at stately homes with firework displays: at least they have an interest and value to offer the eye. The truth is that audiences do not care one iota who a symphony orchestra's oboe or cello players are, but they will pay good money to see a star soloist, a star conductor or a star singer. But just as opera has benefited from enlightened and provocative staging, a way has to be found for symphonic concert music to rediscover the live performance. London Telegraph 02/27/00

• FOR THE LOVE OF...: Angela Gheorghiu and Roberto Alagna are opera-world husband-and-wife stars. But something about their chemistry together has the major opera companies closing their doors to them. London Sunday Times 02/27/00

• WORDS RULE: New operas have to have selling points, and music is not first among them. For better or worse, words seem to be coming out on top. New York Times 02/27/00 (one-time registration required for entry)

• THE NEXT 100: Dallas Symphony, riding a string of successes, convenes a conference on the future of the modern orchestra. Dallas Morning News 02/27/00

• NOT TO BE UNKIND, BUT...  "By and large, at the beginning of the 21st century, the symphony audience goes to a concert looking for easy, passive entertainment, whereas once upon a time, this audience consisted largely of active, even passionate participants." Former LA Philharmonic chief Ernest Fleischmann warns we have to turn it around. Here's his plan. The Guardian 02/25/00  

• HECKLE THIS: Frederic Stocken once briefly formed a group of anti-modern malcontents called The Hecklers, who made headlines when they disrupted the first revival of Sir Harrison Birtwistle's opera "Gawain" at Covent Garden in 1994. Now Stocken's considered one of Britain's brightest young composers. "He composes modern music according to pre-modern principles. He hates the idea that artists should, by definition, be provocative and sees no reason why the fundamental laws of harmony had to be broken by 20th century composers." Sequenza/21 02/28/00

  • The darling of local royalty - a review. Financial Times 02/23/00

  • Another review The Independent 02/23/00

  • And another The Guardian 02/23/00

• WHO WANTS TO CONDUCT THE BSO? It's been eight months since Seiji Ozawa announced he was leaving as music director of the Boston Symphony. While there are still no front-runners to replace him, the kind of conductor the orchestra is looking for has become clearer. Boston Herald 02/25/00 

• SLOW DANCING: College students are downloading so much music over the internet, university computers are slowing to a crawl on many campuses. Chicago Tribune 02/25/00

• ON THE ROAD: Its musicians' strike settled and its vote to go ahead with concerts in Vienna decided, the Toronto Symphony embarks on a European tour with much riding on the outcome. Toronto Globe and Mail 02/25/00

• CLASSICAL GRAMMYS: A good year for music of the 20th Century. Who won what. Los Angeles Times 02/25/00

• ONLY IF YOU DO IT OUR WAY: As the technology and music industries merge into one, the majors want to encourage the transition to digital downloading, but only with companies willing to play by their rules. The unanswered question is how users will fare in the recording industry's playbook. LA Weekly 02/25/00

• SANTANA TIES RECORD for most Grammy Award wins. Complete coverage - pictures, interviews, stories. Los Angeles Times 02/24/00

  • List of winners. Grammy.com 02/23/00

• ON SECOND THOUGHT: Salzburg Festival director Gerard Mortier changes his mind about quitting the festival to protest Austrian politics, according to the Vienna daily Der Standard. Times of India (AP) 02/24/00

• SCORE ONE FOR THE BLIND: New software allows instant translation of sheet music/recordings into Braille for blind musicians. Wired 02/24/00

• "A MILKY TEA, HEAVILY SUGARED": That's one description of today's British classical music journalism. Shake-ups in the editorial leadership of the small world of British music magazines and the Grove Dictionary has put classical music journalism in an uproar, writes Norman Lebrecht. "The common weakness is that all these magazines rely primarily on record-label advertising, and most classical labels are in trouble." London Telegraph 02/23/00 

• POP! GOES THE... A new kind of songwriter has infiltrated the soul of the Broadway musical - the pop-tune writer, who's work plays as well alone on the radio (or skating rink) as it does onstage. Chicago Tribune 02/22/00  

• CHARLOTTE CHURCH is the biggest thing to hit the classical charts in recent years. Now the manager who helped get her there is suing the 14-year-old for breaking her contract with him. BBC 02/22/00

• LONDON TO GET new mid-size 1,100-seat concert hall. BBC Music 02/21/00

• RICHLY MISERABLE: Recording companies are raking in the cash. So why are record execs looking so unhappy? "They don't like the music, they don't get it, and they're horrified that people like Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera are becoming stars," said Jeff Pollack, a programming consultant for more than 100 U.S. radio stations. "It drives people who have been in the industry absolutely nuts." Los Angeles Times 02/20/00

• PRICE FIDDLING: The trade in string instruments is as much an art as it is commercial transaction. When Gerald Segelman died in 1992 at the age of 93, he left one of the world's great collections of rare stringed instruments, worth between $15 million to $34 million. Eight years later, Segelman's estate claims in a lawsuit that a handful of the world's top violin dealers colluded to plunder the collection, robbing the estate of millions that had been willed to charity. Minneapolis Star-Tribune 02/20/00

• YO CARUSO! Producer digitally lifts all the scratches out of Enrico Caruso's early 20th Century recordings, removes primitive accompaniment and inserts Vienna Radio Symphony behind him. What's next, Elvis and Enrico in duet? New York Times 02/20/00 (one-time registration required for entry)

• CONTEMPORARY BLOOM: Contemporary classical music is flourishing in London this winter. London Sunday Times 02/20//00

• DETROIT OPERA HOUSE readies for $10 million restoration. Detroit News 02/20/00

• STADIUM OPERA: The disaster of his last big opera production ("Carmen") in a New Zealand stadium left him with a second mortgage on his house. But an Auckland promoter believes he's found the secret this time out with his new stadium "Traviata." New Zealand Herald 02/18/00 

• CONDUCTING DIVERSITY: Have the ranks of American conductors become more diverse in the past decade? One conductor says not. “I can count the number of African American conductors on the fingers of my two hands,” he says. “The scene has not opened up, but an important part of what has not opened up is opportunities for African Americans as music directors. You’ll find a good handful who are conductors, perhaps even associates or assistants. But it pretty well stops there." Detroit News 02/18/00

• FLOWERING FLEMING: "Not since the days when Birgit Nilsson dominated the German dramatic opera repertory, and the first half of Luciano Pavarotti's career, before he started straying from the Italian lyric tenor roles he sang so splendidly, has there been such an international consensus among the critics and audiences about the excellence of a vocal artist." Soprano Renée Fleming could write her ticket to almost any concert hall or opera house in the world. New York Times 02/18/00 (one-time registration required for entry) 

• ANNIVERSARY SCHMANIVERSARY: It's another Bach anniversary this year. Too much of a good thing? "It is disappointing that these celebrations usually involve a great deal of recycling and money-making, and not a great deal of rethinking or reassessing, or even an emphasis of context," says Christopher Hogwood, who believes that Bachian fanatics should not be encouraged. Sydney Morning Herald 02/18/00

• OPERA FOR THE 21ST CENTURY: Maybe not a masterpiece on the order of a 21st Century "Peter Grimes," but Mark-Anthony Turnage's "The Silver Tassie," which had its debut at the English National Opera this week is damn good. London Telegraph 02/18/00  

  • A dazzling piece. London Times 02/18/00

• LIBERATION: Increasingly, musicians are ditching their record companies and taking it to the web. Christian Science Monitor 02/18/00

• TENOR TRIO: Three Tenors to perform for the first time in same evening at the Metropolitan Opera. Times of India (AP) 02/18/00

• SEIJI OZAWA opens music school in Tokyo. CBC 02/18/00

• CANADIAN MUSICIAN organizes campaign to ship 2000 musical instruments to Cuba. CBC 02/17/00 

• TORONTO SYMPHONY votes to go ahead with planned concerts in Austria. CBC 02/16/00

  • PLAYING IN AUSTRIA: Musicians of the Toronto Symphony will decide Wednesday whether they will play  scheduled concerts in Austria next month. CBC 02/15/00

• SEOUL SEARCHING: The Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra will appoint Mark Ermler, conductor of the Bolshoi Opera, as its chief conductor for the 2000-2001 season. Korea Times 2/15/00

• CLASSICAL MUSIC HALL OF FAME: Szell, Ormandy, Sills, to be inducted. Cleveland Plain Dealer 02/15/00

• MOZART MYTH: Contrary to popular legend, Mozart was not the victim of foul play, says a professor of medicine. It was a case of severe rheumatic fever. Singapore Straits Times 02/14/00

• CONDUCTOR QUITS OSLO: Mariss Jansons quit as music director of the Oslo Philharmonic last week to protest poor working conditions, particularly bad acoustics in the city's concert hall. Newsday 02/11/00

  • Gerard Schwarz named to direct Royal Liverpool. Seattle Post-Intelligencer 02/11/00

• ONLINE ORCHESTRA: Dallas Symphony hits the internet with its first online concert broadcast. The potential audience was enormous - was anyone listening? Dallas Morning News 02/14/00

• OPENING THE DOORS: PBS's "Aida's Brothers and Sisters: Black Voices in Opera" attempts to tell the complex history of black Americans and their struggles to enter the musical mainstream of opera. "Unfolding without benefit of narration, the documentary allows those who helped break the color barrier, and those who followed in their wake, to relate the story in their own fashion." New York Times 02/13/00 (one-time registration required for access)

• RAVI SHANKAR receives France's highest civilian honor. BBC 02/13/00

• UNDER A SPELL "If music is truly distinct from speech, then it ought to have a distinct processing mechanism in the brain—one that keeps it separate from the interpretation of other sounds, including language. The evidence suggests that such a separate mechanism does, indeed, exist." What exactly is the biology behind our reaction to music? The Economist 02/11/00

• OBJECTION AUSTRIA: Washington DC's Austrian Embassy is "essentially a concert hall with offices wrapped around it, a fitting architectural metaphor for a country whose primary exports in the past century have been intellectual and artistic." Pianist Andras Schiff was supposed to have played a concert at the embassy last night, but canceled in protest over right-wing extremist Jörg Haider's rise in the Austrian government. Washington Post 02/10/00

  • CULTURAL POLITICS: The London Symphony Orchestra played in Vienna this week. How odd, writes one of the orchestra's cellists, to think of oneself as a national export from somewhere. But a new climate of nationalism was in the air and in the concert hall. With a French conductor, Argentinian-Jewish soloist, playing French and Russian and Austrian music, the LSO has been asking itself many questions on this tour. The Scotsman 02/10/00

• SAN FRANCISCO PREFERS... classical music. The city's only classical music radio station is the top music station in town, narrowly beating an adult-contemporary station. "The breezy, unchallenging classical format currently in favor at KDFC may have raised the ire of committed music lovers, but the station clearly has found a niche among a wider Bay Area audience." San Francisco Chronicle 02/10/00

• AL GORE'S MUSICAL DEBUT: Don't quit your day job. MSNBC (AP) 02/09/00

• ATLANTA SYMPHONY chooses Brooklyn Philharmonic's well-regarded Robert Spano as its new music director. Atlanta's budget is $21 million and has an endowment nearing $70 million, making it the largest performing arts organization in the Southeastern US. It is ranked 13th in budget size by the American Symphony Orchestra League. Spano is considered among the most important young American conductors. New York Times 02/09/00 (one-time registration required for access) 

  • San Francisco Opera music director Donald Runnicles appointed Atlanta's principle guest conductor. San Francisco Chronicle 02/09/00

• LOS ANGELES PHILHARMONIC records a $2.7 million deficit for last season, its largest ever. Los Angeles Times 02/09/00

• A HANDLE ON HIP HOP: The big lie in writing about hip hop. New York Press 02/08/00

• PIANIST ANDRAS SCHIFF has refused to play a concert at the Austrian Embassy in Washington DC in protest against the inclusion of the far right party in the Austrian government. CBC 02/07/00 

• OPERA RULES: Connecticut's Goodspeed Opera House, has for years talked about building a larger, state-of-the-art facility to complement his Victorian candy box of a theater in the town of East Haddam. Now the company is planning not just for a new theater but for the literal transformation of the town, with theaters, new retail space for galleries, restaurants and specialty shops, a pedestrian plaza, a possible musical theater school, a 30,000-square-foot scene shop, riverfront walkways and, most dramatic of all, a showboat with a 700-seat dinner theater cruising the river. Hartford Courant 02/07/00

• THE MUSIC WORLD IN BALANCE: Just what is the world looking for in its classical music artists? How high can fees go? And what is the right supply/demand ratio for the musician world? New head of the London-based International Artist Managers' Association has some ideas. Sydney Morning Herald 02/07/00

• MIDI-MOZARTS: New generation of music software effectively allows anyone with a computer to be a musician. "The current technology allows someone without any musical knowledge to effectively collage together music out of other people's music," says one software pioneer. "Forget about home studios and samplers. Increasingly sophisticated software and a slew of new beat-generating synthesizers have further democratized music-making, putting professional production tools in the hands of anyone, no formal training required. It doesn't even cost much: Some of the software can be had for 49 bucks." Philadelphia Inquirer 02/06/00

• IN THE MONEY: If the modern symphony orchestra is in trouble, somebody forgot to tell the Boston Symphony. The orchestra is just finishing up its $130 million capital campaign, which it will "comfortably exceed." Ticket sales are booming, and orchestra management is confident as it considers where it wants to go next. Boston Herald 02/04/00

• THE END OF CD's and good times ahead. Digital downloading of music and film isn't to be feared, says the president of the recording label BMG. Instead, it will create a new boom in the entertainment business. Variety 02/04/00

  • THE ART OF NAPPING: A new MP3 music-sharing software program called Napster enables listeners to download music files from one another. Is this what the recording companies fear? Salon 02/04/00

• ALL'S FARE: Embattled Covent Garden announces it will reduce some of its ticket prices, in response to mounting public criticism. BBC Music Magazine 02/04/00

• NEW EUROPEAN CLASSICAL MUSIC NETWORKS: Franco Zefferelli and David Frost will launch a new cable network - the Opera Channel - in July, to broadcast music. MediaCentral 01/26/00 

• THE TORONTO SYMPHONY STRIKE may be over, but now comes the hard part - repairing relationships, and, perhaps more important, figuring out how an already-broke orchestra is going to afford an extra $5 million management agreed to pay its players over the next four years. CBC 02/03/00

• "IRRESPONSIBLE AND INADEQUATE": Government report calls Scottish Opera management "irresponsible and inadequate." The company was saved from bankruptcy only by an emergency £2.1 million bailout by the government last year. Former SO director calls the charges "untrue and unfair." BBC 02/03/00

  • SCOTTISH OPERA BOSSES are due for a drubbing over their management of the company as new government investigation into the opera's affairs is completed. BBC 02/02/00 

• NEW AND NEWER: The Netherlands Opera closed out last year with a new opera, the premiere of Louis Andriessen's "Writing to Vermeer." It opens this year with another premiere, and much praise. Financial Times 02/02/00

• CLASSICAL CROSSOVER: Musicians from the "high" and "low" ends of the spectrum are increasingly experimenting on one another's turf with sometimes interesting results. Singapore Straits Times 02/02/00 

• THE TASTE OF OPERA in Berlin comes in six flavors. The city's smaller houses are distinctively different and very successful. Die Welt 02/02/00 

• NOT TO WORRY, NOT TO WORRY: Chief executive of Covent Garden downplays crisis over his building and says problems are to be expected of any new performance hall; that the Opera House will work magnificently. Further, ticket sales are on target to fill 97 percent of the house, and he's confident in the company's choice of repertoire. Financial Times 02/01/00 

• GENERAL CULTURAL COLLAPSE: South Africa's National Symphony Orchestra plays its final concert. The rest of the country's orchestras are teetering and may follow the National out of business within a month or two. Critics wonder if this signals the general collapse of the country's arts institutions. South Africa Daily Mail and Telegraph 02/01/00

  • A changing era and a changing culture. New York Times 02/01/00 (One-time registration required for entry)

• ONE HIT WONDERS:  Pondering the mysteries of the "standard repertoire." Is it a matter of quality? Why do good composers like Dukas or Orff or Mussorgsky have one of two pieces that are performed but nothing else? Philadelphia Inquirer 02/01/00 

• CYBERORCH: The Dallas Symphony will hit the web playing. Orchestra to webcast performances in $10 million web initiative. Dallas Morning News 02/01/00