The Year in Music: International

By Keith Clarke

In a year when musical headlines included a $1.97 million Stradivarius being offered for $167 and a school opera hitting the skids for having a gay character, it took the devastation of the Japanese earthquake to underline the fragility of human existence and music’s place within that.

The knock-down Strad had been liberated from a musician who put it down while buying a coffee in a London railway station. While trying to figure out its value in an Internet café, the thieves offered it for £100 to a man at the next console. He declined, saying his daughter already had a recorder. The opera—Harvey Brough’s Beached, was very nearly beached when schools objected to librettist Lee Hall’s use of the word queer, leading to a storm of accusations of homophobia and some nifty footwork behind the scenes by Opera North before the work went ahead with minor revisions, without causing anyone to faint with shock.

Japan was hit by an earthquake that claimed 18,000 lives, but musicians worldwide soon stepped in to raise funds and awareness for the victims. The Berlin Philharmonic was among orchestras presenting special fundraisers.

Elsewhere, financial cuts threatened music, notably in Holland, where 34 percent arts cuts saw high-profile organizations such as the Royal Concertgebouw protected while smaller groups suffered, and in the U.K., where almost all arts organizations were given a haircut by Arts Council England.

In Austria, the Salzburg Festival’s administration was under fire for handing out too many free tickets to sponsors and for defective management. Shaming in a different way was the story of the Vienna cabbie who refused to drive African-American soprano Angel Blue, singing in Theater Wien’s production of The Rape of Lucretia, telling her “I don’t drive black women—get out!”

ORCHESTRAS
The aftershock of the Japanese earthquake cut a swathe through the country’s concert activity. While the Sapporo Symphony was among orchestras playing overseas dates to raise funds for quake victims, at home the orchestras struggled to retain audiences in a country obsessed with the star names of Western musical culture. At the same time, the earthquake deterred many from touring to Japan. Universal Music’s chief operating officer, Max Hole, appealed in the press for musicians not to abandon Japan: “I am extremely concerned that the live classical music business has been decimated by the number of artists cancelling their visits, due to unfounded fears about radiation,” he wrote.

The BBC Philharmonic was on tour in Japan when the quake hit, but escaped unhurt. A month earlier, the Association of British Orchestras annual conference had been addressing survival.

Unbowed by nature, the Tokyo Symphony celebrated its 65th anniversary in May. A new youth orchestra was planned by conductor Charles Dutoit and his violinist wife Chantal Juillet for North-South Korea, where harmony is much needed; there was talk of reviving the Honolulu Symphony; and the Hong Kong Philharmonic named Michael MacLeod its new executive director.

Musical chairs in Europe included new music directors for the Royal Scottish National Orchestra (Peter Oundjian), the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields (Joshua Bell), the Strasbourg Philharmonic (Marko Letonja), and the Iceland Symphony (Ilan Volkov); new chief conductors for the Oslo Philharmonic (Vasily Petrenko), the BBC National Orchestra of Wales (Thomas Søndergård), and the Ulster Orchestra (JoAnn Falletta).

The Palestine National Orchestra made its debut, the Israel Philharmonic celebrated its 75th anniversary, and Gustavo Dudamel impressed with some mature conducting that suggests there will still be something there when the whiz-kid label wears out.

Faced with funding cuts, London Mozart Players issued a mayday call and found that people cared enough to save it from closure.

OPERA
Rome’s Teatro dell’Opera got its biggest ever chorus when Riccardo Muti told the audience it would only get an encore of “Va’ pensiero,” in Nabucco if it joined in. He had opened the performance by lamenting the Italian government’s arts cuts, and the rousing chorus, which many would prefer as the national anthem, was sung with gusto throughout the house.

Muti conducted the work in defiance of medics who told him to rest following surgery to have a pacemaker implanted and to address facial injuries sustained when he fainted during a rehearsal.

Colin Davis managed to escape the scalpel but had everyone worried when he collapsed in the pit at Covent Garden.

English National Opera reported no collapses in the audience when it staged Nico Muhly’s first opera, Two Boys, featuring social networking and some enthusiastic masturbation. More surprising was ENO’s venture into 3D TV when the broadcaster Sky claimed a first with a chance to see Mike Figgis’s staging of Lucrezia Borgia through funny glasses, screened live to homes and cinemas. The show was impressive, as was the fact that it managed to revive the corpse of a deadly dull production, Figgis having made some wonderful mini-movies to accompany the piece while somehow forgetting to direct the opera itself.

Berlin Staatsoper named a new opera director in Ivan van Kalmthout, as did Covent Garden, appointing Kasper Holten, following in the footsteps of his former Royal Danish Opera colleague Elaine Padmore. Berlin also managed to find a pay raise for its opera musicians, and there was good news for opera in Bologna with the return of Francesco Ernani as the new intendant of Bologna’s Teatro Comunale, following his enforced departure from Opera di Roma at the hands of politicians.

Cairo fared less well, with its opera house closed down as civil unrest worsened. Plans for the creation of a national Irish opera company were abandoned in the face of deepening economic difficulties. Théâtre de la Monnaie Intendant Peter de Caluwe extended his contract for a further six years, Tonkünstler Niederösterreich got a new executive in Maria Grätzel, who also took over as director of the Grafenegg Festival, and Hungarian conductor Henrik Nánási was named music director of the Komische Oper.

Glyndebourne announced the appointment of Robin Ticciati as its next music director, taking over from Vladimir Jurowski in January 2014, becoming only the seventh holder of the post in what will be the festival’s 80th anniversary.

Plácido Domingo got caught up in an Argentine labor dispute, standing down from a performance at the Teatro Colón to avoid being seen as taking sides, and later went on a publicity drive, declaring that he had been neglecting Europe during his 15 years as director of Washington National Opera.

PLACES
There was a grand opening for a smart new opera house in Guangzhou, constructed at record speed, but within a year reports came in that it was “falling apart,” with large cracks in the walls and ceilings, glass panels falling from windows, and rain seeping in.

More unwelcome headlines for the Orient followed CEO Graham Sheffield’s departure from the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority Hong Kong, just five months after leaving the U.K. for what he considered the job of a lifetime. Lips were sealed on the reasons for his decision, but local politics loomed large at the rumor mill.

In Barcelona, the Teatro del Liceu announced that it was to host in-concert performances of 2012 Bayreuth Festival productions for the first six days of September 2012, but had to delay the opening of its 2011–12 season because of government funding cuts.

The Bolshoi was set to reopen in October following a $660 million reconstruction and named a new director in Sergei Filin, no doubt hoping for better news than surrounded its “Pornogate” episode at the Bolshoi Ballet when the director of its ballet troupe, star dancer Gennady Yanin, was forced to resign after pornographic images were posted online.

RECORDING AND BROADCASTING
It was a memorable year for EMI, and not on account of the number of records it was selling. Venture capitalist owner Terra Firma spent a lot of time denying it had paid way too much for the firm and pleaded for more time to square things at the bank. Time and patience ran out when Citigroup took control, leaving a trail of corpses. Undeterred by the blood on the floor, would-be suitors lined up to pledge their troth to the battered remains of a once proud record company.

There were equally downbeat headlines for Warner Music when its chairman, Edgar Bronfman, Jr., was convicted for insider trading during his time as vice-chairman of Vivendi.

Plácido Domingo was announced as new chairman of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, taking on the pirates and adding to his extensive CV. (He also joined a “council of wisdom” at FIFA, the world governing body of football.)

Deutsche Grammophon found itself snubbed after offering the role of executive producer to Sam Jackson, who politely declined when British broadcaster Classic FM persuaded him to stay on and assume the newly created role of managing editor, overseeing programming output across the entire schedule.

Having won a reprieve from threatened closure, the Netherlands Broadcasting Music Centre set about its work with a significantly smaller budget. The BBC, too, was required to slash £1.3 billion over four years, though the arts channel Radio 3 remained buoyant, announcing schedule changes and new programming.

WINNERS
The XIV International Tchaikovsky Competition offered unexpectedly high levels of entertainment with insults flying and jury walkouts and hissy-fits galore. The audience joined in the fun, booing the jury from time to time, especially when Russian pianist Alexander Lubyantsev was eliminated for the final round. In the end another Russian, Daniil Trifonov, netted Grand Prix, First Prize, and a Gold Medal.

Trevor Green, former managing director of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, director of the Australian Academy of Music, and head of music at BBC North, was appointed chief executive officer and deputy chairman of the Leeds International Pianoforte Competition, ensuring a succession for the competition, said founder Dame Fanny Waterman, a sprightly 91-year-old.

Moldovan soprano Valentina Naforniţă won the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition, and also picked up the Dame Joan Sutherland audience prize. Mezzo-soprano Kitty Whately, 28, was First Prize winner at the 2011 Kathleen Ferrier Awards.

Aribert Reimann was awarded the Siemens Prize, and Emma Kirkby won Her Majesty’s Medal for Music.

South African soprano Pretty Yende and American tenor René Barbera were joint first-prize winners of the international opera competition, Operalia 2011; Menahem Pressler, founder of the Beaux Arts Trio, won the lifetime achievement gong at the International Classical Music Awards.

Matthew Peacock, founder and chief executive of Streetwise Opera, was awarded an MBE for services to music and to homeless people.

At the Royal Philharmonic Society Awards, 82-yearold American pianist Leon Fleisher, who regained the use of his right hand after four decades, won the Instrumentalist category, and James Dillon became the most celebrated winner in the event’s history, picking up his fourth award for his epic orchestral work Nine Rivers, two decades in the making and performed for the first time in its entirety in 2010.

NEW MUSIC
Covent Garden courted controversy with Anna Nicole, based on the larger-than-life figure Anna Nicole Smith, though its lawyers were probably more troubled than its well-heeled audience, who chuckled through the fellatio and a spicy libretto as if it were The Marriage of Figaro.

The BBC Proms boasted the usual array of new music, with 12 world premieres, including nine of the 11 major BBC commissions, and a further 14 key premieres. The BBC-commissioned composers were Georges Aperghis, Sally Beamish, Pascal Dusapin, Graham Fitkin, Robin Holloway, Simon Holt, Thomas Larcher, Joby Talbot, Kevin Volans, Judith Weir, and Stevie Wishart, and there were also major premieres for Michael Berkeley, Judith Bingham, Harrison Birtwistle, Elliott Carter, Marc-André Dalbavie,
Peter Maxwell Davies, Thierry Escaich, Anders Hillborg, Colin Matthews, John Tavener, and, surprise surprise, Benjamin Britten, whose Piano Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge received its London premiere.

British publisher Novello celebrated its 200th anniversary with a special concert at London’s Royal Festival Hall, including first performances of newly commissioned fanfares by John McCabe and Patrick Hawes. •

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