Sarah Bryan-Miller is not a popular individual with some St. Louis Symphony Orchestra musicians at the moment, due to her decision to break a little-known taboo in her reviews of the ensemble. Bryan-Miller is not known for overly caustic reviews, and doles out far more regular praise than some of her predecessors in the city, but last year, she made a decision to use her platform to address one of the problems that nearly every orchestra faces, but no one ever talks about. “There are several players [in the SLSO] who sometimes appear in the spotlight but are simply not up to the challenge. A couple of them are downright bad. And there’s no apparent end to the problem: In the absence of a music director, no one can fire an inadequate player. What to do? Last season, I reluctantly began naming names.”
Tag: 10.25.03
Measuring The Origins Of Ideas
Charles Murray did a statistical analysis of humankind’s greatest accomplishments in history. “According to his statistics, a whopping 72 percent of the significant figures in the arts and sciences between 1400 and 1950 came from just four European countries: Britain, France, Germany and Italy. But after weighing a number of possible explanations, including the effects of war, civil unrest, economic growth, cities and political freedom on achievement rates, Mr. Murray still was not satisfied. Why, he wondered, when he factored in population growth, did the achievement rate in Europe appear to plummet beginning in the mid-19th century, a period when peace, prosperity, cities and political freedom were steadily increasing?”
Christie’s Accused In Nazi Painting Case
“Christie’s is refusing to disclose the likely location of an 18th century masterpiece stolen by the Gestapo and being claimed by the heirs of its original Jewish owners. It is the second case uncovered by the Guardian in which the London auction house is accused of failing to help families whose property was looted by the Nazis.”
Director’s Cut To Profits
There’s an epidemic of “director’s cut” dvd’s being issued. “It’s hard not to detect a whiff of marketing ploy in all these bulked-up reissues. Far from rectifying the wrongs done to their work the first time round, it tends to look as if the directors just can’t leave well enough alone. Forman’s Amadeus feels 20 minutes longer without feeling noticeably different at all; Cameron’s revamped Abyss adds lots more of what doesn’t work in the film anyway and hardly any of what does; and the new stuff in Apocalypse Now Redux is at best a curiosity box, with the lengthy plantation sequence the obvious low point of the movie as it now stands.”
The Royal’s Hold On Europe
London’s Royal Court has an outsized influence on European theatre. “Instead of engaging in the difficult process of cultivating new local writing, directors from Warsaw to Lisbon appear to be simply scanning the forthcoming programme at the Royal Court and snapping up the rights. One major appeal of these plays is that they afford a progressive gloss without risking any kind of dangerous formal experimentation or tackling relevant issues that might challenge local audiences.”
The Man Who Saved The National Arts Center
Peter Herrndorf is an arts turn-around artist. His latest triumph is revitalizing Ottawa’s national Arts Center. And he didn’t do it by playing safe. “The trouble was that as money got tighter through the nineties, people [within the NAC] became risk-averse, and this is an organization where you want the sensibility to be exactly the opposite. We’re going through a fascinating experiment. We’re trying to take an organization and say it will play an important national role, not in rhetorical terms, but in its ability to support arts organizations in different regions and to build communities and have this organization raise funding across the country.”
Is Art Gallery Of Ontario Cynically Keeping Visitors In The Dark?
The Art Gallery of Ontario has a Degas show that is deeply suspect. Rather than explain some of the complications to the public, the AGO says nothing. “Following the Royal Ontario Museum’s 2001 display of Auguste Rodin plaster casts that were repudiated by the Musée Rodin in Paris, the show reveals a depressing willingness from leading Canadian museums to abandon their educational role and fudge ethical standards to move bodies through the turnstile.”
Adding Up The Futility Of Writing
The economics of being a writer in Canada just don’t add up. Out of that $32 book price, the author gets $3.20. “In Canada, a country of more than 30 million people, a novel is considered to have sold respectably if three thousand copies leave the shelf. You do the math: 3,000 x $3.20, minus 15 per cent, minus hundreds of dollars in expenses, minus your advance on these royalties, divided by four or five (depending on how many years the book took to write), equals, on a bad day, a fairly deep sense of futility.”
Chaucer Online – BM Puts Canterbury Tales Online
For the first time, the Britih Library has put the full 748-page text of the Canterbury Tales online. The book is believed to be the first book printed in England (in 1476). “The library’s copies of the first and second editions – so rare that no visitor is allowed to touch them – are now expected to be read electronically by up to a million people in the next six months.”