by Sedgwick Clark It’s amazing, really. This month New York has been graced by a veritable deluge of Shostakovich. I remember when the Fifth Symphony was all we could hope to hear with any frequency. These days, I can barely stand to hear it because of the unbearably “meaningful,” post-Testimony manner in which most conductors […]
Read the rest of this article »By Sedgwick Clark “He’s so variable.” That’s the first thing critics say about Valery Gergiev. He conducted his Mariinsky Orchestra three times at Carnegie Hall in an eight-day period early this month, interrupted by four Met performances (two on Saturday) and runouts to Newark and Washington, D.C. Even when he was busy at the Met, […]
Read the rest of this article »Tune in next Thursday for another testament to why I left Muncie: Valery Gergiev, currently at the Met and with his Mariinsky Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, through Tuesday the 15th.
Read the rest of this article »by Sedgwick Clark “Hope you are having a good week,” ended an unwitting e-mail to me this morning. To begin with, my last week of deadline for the Directory is never good. But look at the reports on Wednesday’s Musical America website: First is Carnegie Hall’s announcement that it was forced to cancel its opening-night gala […]
Read the rest of this article »by Sedgwick Clark The bloated pomposity of Lorin Maazel’s “interpretation” of the Star-Spangled Banner was the first reason PK swore off his concerts. I’m certain she would have been relieved initially by Alan Gilbert’s spiffy tempo last night at the New York Philharmonic’s season opener. But by the final cadence I could imagine her saying, […]
Read the rest of this article »by Sedgwick Clark This ecstatic smile has popped up on my computer screen saver nearly every morning for the past 11 years. She’s Scarlett, our second bichon frise, a week after giving birth to her first litter at around 5 a.m. in our living room. How’s that for a proud parent? That gleam of […]
Read the rest of this article »by Sedgwick Clark Will the Minnesota Orchestra board of directors and musicians union commit corporate hari-kari? The deadline imposed on the players by the board is this Sunday, September 15. Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak is quoted in the local StarTribune, “Lock yourself in a room and shut up about it until you come back with […]
Read the rest of this article »by Sedgwick Clark In a thought-provoking article in the August 25th issue of The New Republic, Philip Kennicott addresses the crisis of American orchestras. “How an effort to popularize classical music undermines what makes orchestras great,” reads the deck. What exactly does “popularize” mean, and what will it undermine? Is it “popularization” for the New York […]
Read the rest of this article »by Sedgwick Clark EXTRA! EXTRA! Moments after posting this blog I received a press release announcing that “The Minnesota Orchestra Board Negotiating Committee has issued a revised contract proposal in the ongoing labor dispute with the Musicians’ Union that would lift the musician lockout and significantly modify both the proposed wage reduction and the number […]
Read the rest of this article »by Sedgwick Clark A long weekend of festival gluttony left me exhausted but happily so: the first weekend of Bard’s Stravinsky deluge (8/9-11), Tanglewood Contemporary Music Festival’s U.S. premiere of George Benjamin’s ecstatically received opera Written on Skin (8/12), and back home for David Lang’s the whisper opera at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival (8/13). […]
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