“Friday is the 250th anniversary of Bach’s death. The classical music business treats big, round-number anniversaries of births and deaths as pretty much equivalent. And because Bach is Bach and because this anniversary coincides with the year 2000, it is likely to be the biggest classical music anniversary that any of us will live to experience. Indeed, the celebration has long begun.” – Los Angeles Times
Tag: 07.23.00
ODE TO BACH
“He has been, in popular estimation, both the great avatar of conservative polyphony and one of the foundational geniuses of modernity. Those he influenced make the strangest of bedfellows: Mendelssohn and Schoenberg, Mozart and Chopin, Glenn Gould and Keith Jarrett.” – Washington Post
ENSHRINING A CONDUCTOR
Is the larger world ready to appreciate the late great Sergiu Celibidache? “Little did anybody at that time know to what extent Celibidache lacked a cordial relationship with the real world. At one point, he wanted to fire the entire Berlin Philharmonic. He demanded extravagant amounts of rehearsal time, declined to perform with American orchestras until a 1984 engagement with the Curtis Symphony Orchestra, and, most curious of all, refused to record.” – Philadelphia Inquirer
CARUSO 80 YEARS LATER
“The Italian tenor died nearly 80 years ago. But the music that fills the Enrico Caruso Museum in a small New York City house endures around the world, too – and still stirs controversy.” – Chicago Sun-Times
THE SOUND OF MUSIC LEAVING TOWN
The movie-score recording business is down considerably in Los Angeles. “The slump may, in part, reflect a general reduction in orchestral scores, replaced by pop and rock songs, especially in films aimed at the huge teen audience. In part, it may also be a result of the cutbacks in studio production overall. But…the downturn also indicates that production companies are increasingly heading to London, Seattle, Prague, even Moscow to record scores less expensively.” – Los Angeles Times
SURVIVOR
- Being the chairperson of the National Endowment for the Arts is a no-win job – the criticisms come from all sides. Jane Alexander’s big accomplishment in her time heading the Endowment was that it managed to survive. But her naivete and growing anger about the battles that had to be fought took their toll. Her memoir of her term is a sad chronicle. – New York Times Book Review
DO WE HAVE TO MENTION THE SPONSOR?
The Roundabout Theatre sold its name to American Airlines. The Winter Garden almost had “Cadillac” above the marquee. The arts love those corporate dollars. But at what price? – Newsday
PATRONAGE AMERICAN STYLE
American internet investor and opera lover Alberto Vilar has donated $2 million to Milan’s La Scala – the largest private non-European donation in the opera house’s history. “He is now waging a sort of one-man campaign to bring U.S.-style arts patronage to Europe at a time when governments are scaling back their arts spending.” – Yahoo! News (Reuters)
A HORRIBLE HOMECOMING
Since earning the grand prize at the Cannes Film Festival in May for his “Devils on the Doorstep,” director Jian Wen has met with nothing but resistance from government censors since returning home to China. “Censors have refused to allow his movie about wartime China to be shown in his homeland and they won’t tell him why. They also want to confiscate the movie’s negatives, and Jiang fears that he could be banned from directing and acting in China.” – Nando Times (AP) 07/23/00
THE STAR OF PBS
“The Boston station produces or co-produces nearly 35 percent of PBS’s prime-time lineup – an output rivaled only by WNET-TV in New York – and also generates roughly 20 percent of the children’s programs. The advent of the Internet has expanded the station’s reach: More than one-third of all visits to PBS Web sites are for WGBH programs. As for the numbers that matter most – ratings – WGBH accounts for more than half of PBS’s 10 most-watched shows in any given month.” – Boston Globe 07/23/00