Tag: 07.24.03

Last month, the Philadelphia Orchestra nearly had to call off a series of free “neighborhood concerts” for lack of sponsors. A last-minute sponsor stepped in, and all was well, but Peter Dobrin has a question. Shouldn’t we be able to expect that an orchestra, which spends a good amount of time asking for financial and moral support from the community, be committed enough to its home city to put on a few free concerts every year, regardless of sponsorship? “Maybe it’s too easy to interpret this situation as one of those rich-sticking-it-to-the-poor episodes, but what the orchestra has done with this year’s cancellation interlude, intentionally or not, is to reinforce the old cliche that classical music is something only for the wealthy.”

Orchestras and their music directors part on less-than-perfect terms more often than not, but generally, industry tradition insists that all sides keep up a show of mutual respect, no matter how bitter the split. But in Fairbanks, Alaska, the former music director of the local orchestra has filed a lawsuit seeking $1 million in damages for her dismissal in 2001. Madeline Schatz claims that members of the Fairbanks Symphony Association deliberately undercut her authority and defamed her to the dean of the college which sponsors the orchestra. Schatz had been accused of throwing chairs and music stands during a youth orchestra rehearsal, and a petition of the musicians had called for her removal.

“A member of a German orchestra has been fined more than £300 for fighting with a colleague who failed to hit the right note. The Beethoven Orchestra in Bonn was holding a rehearsal in front of members of the public at the Beethoven Hall in the city when one of the first violinists played the wrong note. A fellow musician pointed out his colleague’s mistake but when the violinist failed to hit the right note for a second time a fight broke out.”

These days, when you think of Stratford, Ontario, you probably think of the town’s famed Shakespeare festival. But the Stratford Festival was originally supposed to be a multi-disciplinary gathering, and John Miller, the creator of the three-year-old Stratford Summer Music Festival, is convinced that the town has room for more than just plays. Rather than compete with the theater crowd, Miller schedules his concerts around the Shakespeare, and treats the unusual showtimes and locations he must use as selling points rather than detriments. In return the Stratford Festival has been quite supportive of its new “little brother,” with organizers of the theater fest donating money and equipment to the cause.

The Kapell Piano Competition gets underway in Baltimore this month. Competitions are a time-honored tradition of the classical music landscape, and it is almost unthinkable for a promising young soloist to skip the competition circuit. But do the juries at such high-pressure events actually award the top prizes to the best musicians? Some think not, pointing out that “the process of judging with numbers can result in a neutral person getting the best score. If a pianist does something extreme, chances are someone on the jury will disagree with it, and you end up with a very low score. Solid and straight playing then wins instead because it doesn’t offend anyone.”