Modern audiences are used to performances that try to get as close as possible to a composer’s intentions. So it will likely be a shock when Leonard Slatkin performs Beethoven in versions as interpreted by Mahler. M”ahler, like many before and after him, simply filled in places where notes were missing. The range of most of the woodwind instruments had increased, too, so Mahler used the added notes to keep the flutes, say, from having to drop an octave for a note or two.”
Tag: 02.15.04
Vienna Embraces Ozawa
A year-and-a-half ago, Seiji Ozawa finished up 29 years leading the Boston Symphony, and headed for Vienna to direct the State Opera. “Ozawa seems energized by all the change. Some critics and musicians felt that he had overstayed his welcome in Boston, that 29 years was too long a marriage for any conductor and orchestra. He acknowledges that it was a long time, adding that his style is to work slowly and methodically. But now he finds himself living in an even more musical city, associated with two of Europe’s great musical institutions. And already Vienna has adopted him as its own.”
Acting In The Golden Age (Right Now)
“It has long been an article of faith among movie lovers of all tastes that the present — any present — is but a pale shadow of the past.” But critic A.O. Scott writes that there is mounting “evidence that we are living in an extraordinary period, one we will eventually look back upon as a golden age of screen acting.”
A Met Legend Departs
Last week, Joseph Volpe announced that he was stepping down as general manager of the Metropolitan Opera in New York. His departure will end a remarkable 42-year association with the Met. “Improbably, that association took a Flatbush-born high school graduate with no advanced education, no musical training and scant feeling for opera from an entry-level job as an apprentice carpenter to the general manager’s office in 1990. It is sometimes said of a hands-on chief executive who has worked his way to the top that he knows every nail in the place. This is really true of Mr. Volpe, who hammered quite a few nails into the place himself.”
Music Under Glass – In The Museums
“Over the past decade, popular music has decisively joined visual art and science as a subject for museum treatment. Just in time for the midlife crisis of rock ‘n’ roll, advocates of popular music and chambers of commerce found common cause: suddenly, music was not a diversion or an embarrassment but an asset. And these museums promise visitors an irresistible package deal: a pilgrimage, a party and some painless education.”
Rich: The Hypocrisy Of The SuperBowl Stunt
The reactions of CBS, Michael Powell and the FCC, protesting parents’ groups, MTV and just about everyone else complaining about Janet Jackson in the Superbowl halftime show are so hypocritical they’re laughable, writes Frank Rich. “You can argue that Ms. Jackson is the only honest figure in this Super Bowl of hypocrisy. She was out to accomplish a naked agenda — the resuscitation of her fading career on the eve of her new album’s release — and so she did.”
We’re Being Buried In Books!
Each year more and more books are being published. “The most recent figures show that, in 2002, total output of new titles and editions in the United States grew by nearly 6 percent, to 150,000. General adult fiction exceeded 17,000 – the strongest category. Juvenile titles topped 10,000, the highest total ever recorded. And there were more than 10,300 new publishers, mostly small or self-publishers.”
Blockbustering Back To Our Roots
Three new blockbuster shows open in London. They’ll draw mobs. “But is that the true purpose of a museum or art gallery? For there exists a growing disquiet in the curatorial world that in the process of launching an ever more high-profile temporary exhibitions, part of the deeper function of the museum – as a place of reflection free from the everyday maelstrom; as a public sphere with a different ethos to the marketplace – is being lost.”
Italians Struggle To Return Ancient Obelisk
After years of pressure from the Ethiopians, Italy agreed in 2002 to return a 1,700-year-old obelisk that was stolen by Mussolini and placed near the Coliseum. “So late last year a team of experts carefully dismantled the obelisk, dividing it into three pieces each weighing between 40 and 70 tonnes. The pieces were wrapped up and stored in a hangar near Rome. But now the Italian authorities have run into a hitch. They say they cannot find a plane big enough to transport the pieces safely.”
Can’t We Applaud While We’re Sitting? (Please)
Timothy Mangan says enough with the standing ovations. “At every concert that I have attended for the past several years (and I do mean every single one), there has been a standing ovation (either by some in attendance, or all). The standing ovation is as ubiquitous as smog. Performers are beginning to smirk at it. When someone writes to me complaining about a review I wrote and asks, ‘Didn’t you notice the standing ovation? I laugh.”