Another London Opera Company London is getting a third opera house. The impresario Raymond Gubbay, the commercial arch-rival and a bitter critic of subsidised opera, is to mount year-round productions at the Savoy Theatre. He will begin in April with two guaranteed crowd pleasers, Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro and Rossini's Barber of Seville." The Guardian (UK) 09/10/03 

Sorabji The Recluse Composer Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji was a difficult artist. "Cut off from the world and supported by a private income, he composed dauntingly huge pieces which were regarded as all but unplayable. He forbade the performance of his music lest inferior musicians ruin it. He remained alone, despising the trivial productions of others, in his artistic castle of ideal, Platonic complexity, a lone voice in the wilderness until his death." The Guardian (UK) 09/12/03 

The New Carnegie - Expanding Musical Tastes Carnegie Hall's new hall allows it to expand its musical tastes. "The first thing is that when we present a series curated by musicians like Caetano Veloso or Emmylou Harris, you are not seeing those artists replacing the traditional recital or orchestral series that we do. We're not sacrificing one for the other, we're adding something new. But also, as audiences develop and change, I think you find people who love Emmylou Harris and also go to hear the Berlin Philharmonic." The New York Times 09/12/03 

More On Carnegie's New Hall "Described by the architects as a mining operation as well as a design project, Carnegie Hall's new performance space sits within a cavity carved out of Manhattan schist. Parts of the bedrock are exposed, actually, in backstage areas and in a public stairwell." The New York Times 09/12/03 

Music Without Flavor These days, you can walk into a WalMart and buy a CD full of classical music carefully chosen to pair perfectly with your Sunday brunch. Or your Saturday night date. Or a quiet dinner with friends. "All of this would be funny were it not for the wasting disease it represents. Call it silence deprivation. One of the reasons music tastes less good for a lot of us these days is that it increasingly lacks beginnings and ends. It is the blank spaces that surround music that give it shape — allow it to breathe. Music not framed by the absence of music really isn't music. Nor is music at dinner. Works of Brahms are not well served when they accompany pork chops. It is not fair to the pork chops either." The New York Times 09/14/03 

Musicians Have Bigger Brains "Mozart increases mental mass. Scientists revealed yesterday that members of a British symphony orchestra had more little grey cells than ordinary people in a part of the brain known as Broca's area... [A researcher] examined the brains of musicians under the age of 50 and found that they had added to their grey matter. Then she looked at non-musicians under the 50, and found an age-related decline. Where musicians still played fortissimo, non-musicians were beginning a diminuendo." The Guardian (UK) 09/12/03 

Orchestras In Uncertain Times The new orchestra season begins. But "don't be surprised if you see orchestras, including the Baltimore Symphony and Philadelphia Orchestra, reopening labor contracts, well before expiration dates, in search of budget savings. Such measures, once unthinkable, may soon be common as organizations struggle to get their houses on solid ground. And all the usual things, like cut-backs in performances and costly repertoire, will continue, too. But let's not get overly gloomy. At least not yet." There are some bright spots... Baltimore Sun 09/09/03 

The "Booker Prize" Of Music? The Mercury Prize was "conceived in the early 1990s by Jon Webster, then MD of Virgin Records, who envisaged it as 'the Booker Prize of the music industry'. It would be independent of both the record companies and the music retailers, but endorsed by both. Its serious image would encourage ageing music fans to explore new albums as well as buying CD copies of their old vinyl favourites. And it would promote modern music as 'art'. But it's the sheer unpredictability of the Mercury that makes it so charming. Don't ever believe anyone who says they know who is or isn't going to win. And has it achieved its original objectives?" The Guardian (UK) 09/09/03 
 

Zankel Hall can seat 540 to 644 spectators, depending on whether the stage is at the end or in the middle and whether an orchestra pit is needed. 

The searchlights notwithstanding, Friday’s night’s opening of Zankel Hall, Carnegie Hall’s new 644-seat underground theater, was appropriately understated, as befits a non-elitist performance space designed to attract new audiences for modern and world music. 

John Adams, Carnegie’s composer in residence, put together the opening program—an multicultural musical haggis that sadly contained none of his own pieces.  He also capably handled the conducting chores and was modestly resplendent in black pants and a long-sleeved shirt of pinkish-salmon color.  Members of the “Zankel Band,” as the house orchestra is called, wore everyday clothes—as did most of the audience.  The only formal touch was supplied by the stagehands, all of whom wore dark suits and ties, thus making each stage change feel a bit like an unwelcome intrusion from John Ashcroft’s office. 

Carved into an underground space once occupied by a movie theater, the $72 million Zankel (pronounced zan-KELL, for those of you who care) is, indeed, quite user-friendly, small enough to give every paying customer a good view, and outfitted in a kind of comfortable Finnish modern a la IKEA.  The sound is fine, but close.  You don’t want to hear Mahler’s Sixth here or the Allman Brothers Band but the theater is perfect for chamber and vocal performances.  Reassuringly, for those of us accustomed to the peculiarities of New York music spaces, you can occasionally hear the rumble of the nearby N or R subway trains. 

The program was a brief, but assertive, sampler of shorter pieces, beginning with two raucous pieces by Charles Ives.  For the opening piece—From the Steeples to the Mountains—Adams stationed two trumpet players on one side of the front aisle of the mezzanine and two trombone players on the others.  A late arriving couple looked a little annoyed at finding musicians blocking the path to their seats but the effect seemed worth their temporary inconvenience.  Ives’ Scherzo:  Over the Pavements is a jolly little piece that ends abruptly on a humorous note.  I’ve always loved Lou Harrison’s Concerto in Slendro--three brief but enchanting movements in which east and west come together musically to the beat of upside-down trash cans.  Jennifer Koh handled the violin parts with aplomb. 

The British bad boy Thomas Ades’ Living Toys is a raucous invocation of a rainy, childhood afternoon in the playroom that captures the quickly shifting moods and interests of the curious child.  To sum up the evening, cellist Anssi Karttunen joined Adams and the Zankel Band for Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Mania, a bright, attractive modernist piece with oddly romantic moments.  Salonen, whose regular job is conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, came onstage to take a bow at the end of the performance.

All in all, it was a fun, informal evening blessedly free of speeches and thank yous and gratuitous public relations hype.  A fine debut for a much needed midsized performance hall.
 

Previous Articles/
Busoni The Visionary
The Composer of the Moment:  Mark-Anthony Turnage
Electronic Music
Voices: Henze at 75
Henze Meets Emenim
On Finding Kurtag
Charles Ruggles:  When Men Were Men
Ballet Mécanique
The Adams Chronicles