Tag: 08.06.00

YOU CAN TAKE THE AUDIENCE OUT OF THE BAR, BUT…

Pittsburgh’s undergoing a building boom of cultural facilities. “But despite our new wealth, it sometimes seems as if we’ve invested in our venues but not in ourselves. A blue-collar work ethic is a good thing, but 25-cent manners meant for the neighborhood tavern don’t fly in a $25 million theater designed to radiate culture. Anyone who’s recently been to a film, play, dance performance or music concert has seen a recital of the Pittsburgh Inconsiderate Symphony.” – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

ON JESSYE NORMAN

“She is 54 now, and past her vocal prime. Time has accentuated her tendency to sing sharp, and the sheer brazen splendour of the sound she once produced is irrecoverably tarnished. As if to compensate, she has developed a grand manner on the platform – complete with radiant smiles, gracious waves and a rapt pose suggesting fervent prayer to the Almighty – which forcibly brings to mind the Irish adage of ‘all gong and no dinner’.” – The Telegraph (UK)

FAUST – A WORLD PREMIERE

“When one of Germany’s most celebrated theatrical directors, Peter Stein, determined to mount a production of the complete uncut ‘Faust,’ Parts 1 and 2, it became an event of national magnitude. Asserting that no one has ever presented an unedited staging of the work, Mr. Stein calls his “Faust” a world premiere, and it has certainly gained the equivalent attention. Tickets for the production, which opened on July 22 at Expo 2000 in this northwestern German city, sold out within hours when sales began in January. The premiere was front-page news in every paper in the country.” – New York Times

WHY I HATE EDINBURGH

“Brian McMaster is the man who runs the Edinburgh International Festival, and sometimes it is hard to tell whether he just has a perverse love of emptying theatres or whether it’s all more sinister than that and that he is, au fond, an out-and-out sadist, who gets his kicks out of boring people into a state of mental derangement.” – The Telegraph (UK)

THE O’KEEFFE FIASCO

The controversy over the authenticity of a set of watercolors purported to be by Georgia O’Keeffe is the biggest scandal in years to hit the National Gallery of Art. “Whether a grand deception or just a garage-sale dream gone wrong, it never should have happened. The warning signs were there from the start, but they were swept away by a tsunami of money and wishful thinking.” – Washington Post

SF-LAND

  • Plans for a huge history museum with “fake fog, a mini Golden Gate Bridge and a re-creation of the 1960s-era Haight-Ashbury district” have Bay Area residents conflicted. “Opponents deride the plan as a kitschy, Las Vegas-style tourist trap and consider the fight to stop the 70,000-square-foot San Francisco Interactive History Museum no less than a battle for the city’s soul.” – The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)

MUSICAL WHIRLWIND

Karlheinz Stockhausen’s  ‘Helikopter-Quartett’ – just released on CD – “is just as it sounds. It’s a string quartet written to be performed with each of the four players hovering above the concert hall in a separate helicopter. A ‘click track’ helps keep them together, and their individual parts, plus the ambient noise of the helicopters, is beamed down to the concert hall, where it is reassembled by sound engineers. In an ideal performance, the actual whir of the helicopters above the concert hall would be just barely audible, blending into the electronically received individual parts. It has not had many performances, ideal or otherwise.” – Washington Post

ONLY THE FOREIGN-BORN NEED APPLY

The orchestras of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and Cleveland – the Big Five. “In a cumulative history totaling more than 560 years, these five orchestras have scrupulously avoided hiring American music directors with nearly complete success. The shining exception is a fellow named Leonard Bernstein, who ran the show in New York from 1958 to 1969.” – Sonicnet.com