The Year in Music: International

By Keith Clarke

After a year in which visa restrictions had done so much to prevent musicians from reaching international concert platforms, it turned out that Mother Nature could do a much more effective job with a cloud of ash. Iceland’s unpronounceable volcano Eyjafjallajökull may have terrorized newsreaders everywhere, but it made life more difficult for musicians. With U.K. air space closed for days at a stretch, it was not long before tales of Dunkirk spirit emerged as players went to extraordinary lengths to make journeys without airplanes. Countertenor Andreas Scholl travelled from Berlin to the U.K. via several trains, a limousine, a ferry, and a hire car.

For performers and audiences alike, it was another unwelcome gift from Iceland, the collapse of whose banks had swallowed up millions of pounds of U.K. taxpayers’ money, prompting the plea: “We asked for cash, not ash!”

RECORDING AND BROADCASTING
There was no shortage of publicity for EMI during the year, but the company would have happily sidestepped most of it, given the chance. It became received wisdom that venture capitalists Terra Firma had paid too high a price for the company in 2007, and they went on paying too high a price as dire headline followed dire headline.

The firm spent much of the year fighting off foreclosure by its bankers, winning a one-year reprieve that gives it until March 2011 to come up smiling. There was a spirited game of musical chairs as the company writhed. Chief Executive Elio Leoni-Sceti quit after less than two years, Executive Chairman Charles Allen walked after just three months. When Roger Faxon, previously in charge of EMI Music Publishing, was named chief executive of the whole group, it was not long before acerbic commentator Norman Lebrecht was suggesting: “If there are any bookmakers out there, you might like to give me odds on how long before Faxon Faxoff.”

Also queuing for the exit was Paul McCartney, doubtless upset at reports that EMI was putting its Abbey Road Studios up for sale, a move it later reconsidered.

EMI Classics’ Vice-president of Artists and Repertoire Stephen Johns headed for the relative calm of the Royal College of Music, where he became its first artistic director. Late in September, EMI announced that Andrew Cornall, an award-winning producer at Decca for 25 years and most recently executive director of the Royal Philharmonic, would be the new head of A&R.

One-time president of EMI Classics, classical record-biz mogul Costa Pilavachi, took a spin in the revolving door at Universal Music Group, returning as senior vice president, classical artists & repertoire to the firm where he served as president of two of its three classical labels, Philips Classics and Decca. 

In broadcasting, the BBC was under renewed pressure to cut costs but managed to avoid the kind of critical mauling that greeted ITV’s American Idol spin-off, Pop Star to Operastar. “For sheer dumbed-down tripe, it takes some beating,” wrote Rupert Christiansen in the Telegraph. “I found it deeply depressing, and if anyone else spins me the line about it ‘bringing opera to the masses’, I shall explode.”

ORCHESTRAS
When orchestras everywhere were counting the pennies, the London Philharmonic was surprised to learn that its former general manager and financial director had allegedly embezzled a cool $3.46 million. In February it won a high court judgment, and the defendant’s assets were frozen in case he did a runner to his native Australia with a swagbag.

There were happier headlines for the LPO when it put on a feast of Sibelius under Osmo Vänskä, filling seats and winning critical plaudits.

British orchestral managers had done well to weather the shock of a guest speaker at the annual conference of the Association of British Orchestras who had recently called for a cut in arts funding, singling out  orchestras and the ABO itself as especially deserving of the knife. It was going to be a tough gig, said Richard Reeves, director of DEMOS, an independent think tank and research institute (probably his toughest assignment since he went to Washington, D.C.), to speak on behalf of liberalism to the Cato Institute, whose members were not entirely in agreement with his views.

Associated Press gave the gentlemen of the Vienna Philharmonic a fit of the vapors by reporting that the orchestra had permanently appointed its first woman concertmaster. It looked like there would be a run on Vienna’s defibrillators, but then a correction was issued: It was the Vienna Opera Orchestra that had given a permanent position to Albena Danailova, one of its several concertmasters.

In the usual vigorous round of musical chairs, Lorin Maazel was appointed music director of the Munich Philharmonic; 29-year-old Israeli conductor Omer M. Wellber was signed to take over Maazel’s place as music director of l’Orquestra de la Comunitat Valenciana; Stéphane Denève was named the new chief conductor of the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra; the Orchestre National de Lyon named Leonard Slatkin as its next music director; and Spanish conductor Juanjo Mena was appointed new chief conductor at the BBC Philharmonic, taking over from Gianandrea Noseda in September 2011.

PLACES
Salzburg likes to sell itself on dreaming spires, green hills, and romantic gardens, so the city fathers were not too happy to find their town in the headlines for a scandal when Salzburg Festival technical director Klaus Kretschmer had his collar felt for allegedly siphoning sponsorship money into foreign bank accounts, inflating his expense account, and putting his wife on the payroll, among other things. Next in the frame was former Salzburg Easter Festival Managing Director Michael Dewitte, who stood accused of charging for his work twice over.

It was deemed the classical-music scandal of the decade, and the mighty Berlin Philharmonic told the festival to clean up its act or else.

There was more Austrian angst in the capital, where former members of the Vienna Boys Choir recounted stories of abuse and “sexual assaults.”

Algeria started building a new $43 million opera house with funding from China. Another new venue, the Elbe Philharmonic Hall in Hamburg, raised eyebrows along with its soaring costs, an initial $50.5 million heading for $686 million. It was described as “Hamburg’s answer to Sydney’s iconoclastic opera house,” a not altogether happy comparison, since that house was threatened with closure due to lack of
funds to update its antiquated stage equipment.

In London there was good news for organ enthusiasts whose blood pressure had been challenged by the continuing absence of the Royal Festival Hall organ. It is now to be fully restored and reinstalled by 2013, thanks to a $1.4 million grant from the U.K.’s Heritage Lottery Fund.

OPERA
After 90 years—more than half of them spent running the Bayreuth festival—Wolfgang Wagner died in March, bringing down the curtain on a saga of truly Wagnerian length and intrigue. Some 1,500 people including German Chancellor Angela Merkel attended a memorial service to pay tribute in the opera house his grandfather had built, but after decades of family squabbling his son Gottfried found he had a more pressing engagement, as did some of the cousins.

Wolfgang Wagner withstood so many years of internecine struggle to unseat him that it did not come as much of a surprise to learn that a Bayreuth spokesman was found to have worked for the Stasi, the East German secret police.

In Berlin, the Staatsoper moved to smaller, more frugal premises in West Germany for three years while its 19th century home undergoes renovation. Musical Director Daniel Barenboim pledged to live up to the challenge of luring the opera’s fans across the city’s former Cold War divide. For collectors of well-worn red plush, seats from the old house were put up for sale at $63 each.

Opera was also ending up in smaller venues in London with the arrival of OperaUpClose, a company presenting opera in bars. There was a rousing reception for La Bohème with a cast of young professionals accompanied by a single piano.

English National Opera also played the wacky-venue card, joining forces with “immersive theater” company Punchdrunk to take Torsten Rasch’s The Duchess of Malfi to a disused office block in Docklands. ENO offered tales of the unexpected at its London Coliseum home, too, announcing that film director and Monty Python creator Terry Gilliam would make his opera house debut staging a new production of Berlioz’s The Damnation of Faust.

Scottish Opera got into bed with a downmarket tabloid newspaper to discount tickets to its La Bohème. There was some disappointment north of the border when it became apparent that the company’s singers would not follow the example set by one of their more racy colleagues in London: When the paper sponsored the Covent Garden production of Don Giovanni, lithe soprano Emma Reed stripped off for a photo. “The Fit Lady Sings,” ran the intro.

Welsh National Opera was criticized for licentiousness of a different kind, throwing a grand party for its new Meistersinger at a time when Welsh arts groups were losing funding.

The future of Italy’s opera houses was thrown into doubt, with reports that all but La Scala, Milan, and one or two other high-profile theaters were threatened with extinction because of financial difficulties. La Stampa critic Alberto Mattioli said: “It really is disastrous, with the government failing to give the money opera needs, and the situation being made worse by the ridiculous and indefensible position of the unions, which gives ministers an excuse.”

There was turmoil in France, too, where early-music specialist Emmanuelle Haïm abandoned her debut with the Opéra National de Paris in Mozart’s Idomeneo, because of what the house termed “a reported mutual understanding, after the early rehearsals, that the time necessary to merge her artistic approach with that of the orchestra was not compatible with the programming constraints of the Opéra National de Paris.”

In Vienna, a revival of Franco Zeffirelli’s production of Carmen lost its hot-ticket status along with stars Rolando Villazón and Elīna Garanča and conductor Mariss Jansons, all of whom got a dose of cancellitis.

WINNERS
The Philharmonia Orchestra’s “Re-rite,” an interactive performance of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring that gave patrons a chance to conduct, play, and “be” inside an orchestra, won the Royal Philharmonic Society’s audience development award. The RPS also honored the late Philip Langridge in the singer category, Oliver Knussen for conductor, the London Sinfonietta for ensemble, and Kaija Saariaho for large-scale composition with her Notes on Light.

It was a busy year for Saariaho’s trophies cabinet as she also picked up Denmark’s highest musical honor, the $110,000 Sonning Music Prize.

Dame Kiri Te Kanawa won the lifetime achievement in music award at the 11th annual Classical Brits. Conductor and film composer Ennio Morricone and Icelandic singer/songwriter Björk won the 2010 Polar Music Prize—the dual award is intended to bridge the gap between classical and popular music. Russian pianist Denis Kozhukhin won Belgium’s Queen Elisabeth International Music Competition.

NEW MUSIC
In what the BBC deemed “a golden age of British contemporary music,” the Proms provided the usual boost for new music, with major premieres for 19 living British composers, including 12 BBC commissions, almost double the number in recent seasons.

BBC-commissioned British composers were Tansy Davies, Jonathan Dove, Alissa Firsova (Russian-born but now a British national), Graham Fitkin, Robin Holloway, Gabriel Jackson, David Matthews, Stephen Montague (American-born but a
U.K. resident since 1974 and a British national since 2000), Thea Musgrave, Tarik O’Regan, Mark-Anthony Turnage, and Huw Watkins.

There were also premieres by Julian Anderson, George Benjamin, Cornelius Cardew, James Dillon, Simon Holt, James MacMillan, and Colin Matthews.

Tod Machover’s Death and the Powers received its world premiere at the Opera Monte-Carlo in September, complete with a chorus of robots and a musical chandelier, and is due for a North America premiere in March 2011. •

Keith Clarke is editor of Classical Music magazine and a regular contributor to MusicalAmerica.com.