Category: News Briefs

In Friday’s (2/20) Detroit Free Press, Mark Stryker writes about the role Leonard Slatkin has in the Detroit Symphony Orchestra’s 2009-10 season. “It’s not just that in Leonard Slatkin’s first full season as music director he’ll lead 12 weeks of subscription concerts, an unusually big chunk—50%—of the 24 classical weeks. Or that he’ll also conduct a week of free community concerts at churches, schools and the like in September. Or that, pending secure funding, he’ll lead a short Florida tour in early 2010. It’s that Slatkin’s presence and philosophy inform next season with a decisive omniscience missing during the DSO’s long transition between music directors. American music has always been Slatkin’s passion and there’s a blitzkrieg next season—30% of the pieces are homegrown, including eight by romantic Samuel Barber to celebrate his centenary. Thirteen pieces are by living composers, including world premieres by Cindy McTee, Billy Childs and Wlad Marhulets, and three works promise fusions with styles from jazz to klezmer. … The DSO is investing in recording for the first time since the glory years under Neeme Järvi in the ’90s.”

Photo: Leonard Slatkin
Credit: Matthew H. Starling/Detroit Symphony Orchestra

The Elgin Symphony Orchestra in Illinois is one of many orchestras recently announcing plans for the 2009-10 season. The orchestra will open its 60th season on October 2 with a concert featuring Respighi’s Pines of Rome and an appearance by The Romeros, the guitar quartet, and will conclude the season in June with three performances of Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique. The ESO’s 60th birthday will be celebrated on April 17, 2010—the date of the orchestra’s first concert in 1949—with an “ESO Goes to Hollywood” concert featuring pianist Kevin Cole in music by Gershwin, Kern, John Williams, and Max Steiner. During the season, the orchestra will perform symphonies by Schubert, Brahms, Shostakovich, Tchaikovsky, and Beethoven; and the ESO’s pops series will include music by Henry Mancini, a 100th-birthday celebration of Benny Goodman, and three performances by the vocal quintet Five by Design, showcasing television music from the 1950s and ’60s.  

During its recent tour of Europe and the Canary Islands, The Philadelphia Orchestra arrived in Budapest for a February 12 performance at the Béla Bartók National Concert Hall to discover that the cargo trucks carrying the orchestra’s instruments and concert attire from Luxembourg to Budapest had been delayed by a blizzard in Germany. While awaiting the instruments’ arrival, which delayed the start of the concert by 90 minutes, maestro Christoph Eschenbach, who is also a pianist, performed with First Associate Concertmaster Juliette Kang and Associate Concertmaster José Maria Blumenschein in Bach’s Double Violin Concerto; Principal Oboe Richard Woodhams joined Eschenbach for Schumann’s Three Romances. During an intermission before the originally scheduled concert program—Beethoven’s Egmont Overture, Schubert’s Symphony in C major (“Great”), Sibelius’s Violin Concerto, with Leonidas Kavakos—concertgoers received free glasses of champagne. The orchestra’s tour, which began on January 26 in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, ended on February 14 with a concert at Vienna’s Musikverein.

YouTube Symphony Orchestra, the online collaborative orchestra, has opened public voting for participants in its April 2009 summit at Carnegie Hall. Nearly 4,000 video performances of professional and amateur musicians have been submitted to YouTube for membership in the orchestra; a preliminary judging panel—taken from orchestras including those in Berlin, Hong Kong, Sydney, and New York—screened the submissions and narrowed them down to 200. Winners chosen for the orchestra will be announced on March 2; they will travel to New York for a “collaborative summit” on classical music from April 12 to 15, culminating in a concert on April 15, led by Michael Tilson Thomas. Repertoire for the concert will include Tan Dun’s Internet Symphony No. 1 (which the composer has dubbed the “Eroica”). YouTube created the YouTube Symphony Orchestra program with the London Symphony Orchestra, Tilson Thomas, Tan Dun, Carnegie Hall, Lang Lang, and other classical-music institutions and artists from around the world. To vote, visit youtube.com/symphony.

The Orchestras Feeding America national food drive has expanded to all 50 states, as the need for food grows more urgent. Nationwide, 215 orchestras are now participating. A front-page story in Friday’s New York Times (2/20) reports on the many “newly poor” who are turning to food banks across the country. Many of them are people who have recently lost jobs or homes; for them, food pantries are “the first tentative step” in seeking help. “These are people who never really had to ask for help before,” a New Jersey Salvation Army official says in the article. “They were once givers and now they’re having to ask for assistance.” Demand at the nation’s food banks increased by 30 percent in 2008 over the previous year, according to Feeding America. For more on the Orchestras Feeding America food drive, click here.

In Friday’s (2/20) New York Times, Daniel J. Wakin writes, “Glenn Dicterow, the concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic, has joined an illustrious club: prominent musicians who forgot their instruments in taxis. In Mr. Dicterow’s case, it was a 1727 Guarneri del Gesù violin belonging to the orchestra. But his separation anxiety lasted barely 30 minutes because of a lucky set of connections that sent the taxi driver zooming back in time for a concert curtain.” Dicterow left the instrument in a cab he took to Carnegie Hall, where the Philharmonic was playing Wednesday. After realizing his misstep he made arrangements to borrow an instrument from a colleague, “who in turn borrowed the instrument of a substitute violinist. Meanwhile, the next fare told the cab driver, whom Mr. Dicterow identified as Gordon Addai, about the instrument. Mr. Addai called a phone number from a luggage tag on the case, reaching the Philharmonic’s travel agent in California, who called a Philharmonic staff member and passed on Mr. Addai’s number. The driver was reached in Lower Manhattan and made it up to Carnegie Hall in time for the Guarneri to be passed to Mr. Dicterow, who was waiting in the wings to go onstage. The other two violinists received their own fiddles back.”

In an Associated Press report published Friday (2/20) on MusicalAmerica.com, Louise Nordstrom writes, “Tenor/conductor/impresario Placido Domingo on Friday won the first $1 million Birgit Nilsson Prize for his ‘unrivaled’ contributions to the world of opera, the award foundation said. The late Swedish soprano picked Domingo as the winner of the inaugural award—billed as the biggest prize in classical music—before her death in 2005. Prize officials said the name had been kept secret for nearly a decade. Nilsson, considered one of the greatest Wagnerian sopranos, sang with Domingo several times, the foundation said. … Domingo has performed in 130 roles and is celebrating his 40th season at New York’s Metropolitan Opera. The 68-year-old singer won worldwide acclaim outside the opera scene as a member of The Three Tenors, with Jose Carreras and the late Luciano Pavarotti.” In the late ’90s, Nilsson had informed a confidant of her choice for the foundation’s first award, which she stipulated should be given three years after her death. Subsequent awardees will be chosen by the foundation council every two or three years.

In Wednesday’s (2/18) New York Times, Javier C. Hernandez reports, “The Italian designer and billionaire Giorgio Armani celebrated Fashion Week on Tuesday with the announcement of a $1 million donation to promote arts programs in New York City public schools. The money will be used to create the Armani Arts Institute, an umbrella program that will fund arts initiatives in schools serving some of the city’s most disadvantaged populations. At a news conference with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg that coincided with the opening of Armani/5th Avenue, the designer’s new flagship store in Midtown, Mr. Armani called the donation ‘an investment in the future generations of New York City.’ … The donation will go to the Fund for Public Schools, a nonprofit corporation that collects private money to support the school system. It has raised more than $240 million since 2003.”

In Thursday’s (2/19) Star-Ledger (Newark, New Jersey), Ruth Bonapace writes, “The Westfield Symphony Orchestra has not so quietly embarked on a mission. Under David Wroe’s leadership, they’ve been taking classical music and turning it on its head, wringing it for every combination and permutation possible to make it, well, fun. … This weekend, get a taste of that ongoing effort as the WSO joins forces with the Omayra Amaya Flamenco Dance Company to put their own spin on the popular opera Carmen, with a score adapted from Bizet’s masterpiece. ‘I wanted a unique retelling of the Carmen story,’ Wroe said. ‘So I commissioned Amaya to choreograph an aspect of Carmen’s life, using Bizet’s music, the book that the opera is based on, and the Pushkin poem that inspired the book.’ … Omayra Amaya is the grandniece of the legendary dancer Carmen Amaya, and her parents had their own dance company in Spain. Amaya’s company is based in New York, and they are known for mixing American jazz with traditional flamenco. … ‘We are moving away from the overture and concerto model to a different idiom in our culture. This program is very much in that ilk,’ said Wroe, a native of Great Britain who has been music director of the 26-year-old orchestra since 1997."