ORCHESTRAS

As the German press continued to voice occasional doubts about the Berlin Philharmonic’s chief conductor, Sir Simon Rattle came up with his own assessment of his first two years in the job. The musicians were rarely obedient, occasionally hysterical, not so funny as his native Liverpudlians, but unstoppable in a karaoke bar, he told the Guardian. “It can be turbulent,” he said. “But never destructively so.”

Meanwhile the Berliner Symphoniker seemed to be heading in the direction of the exit, fighting an uneven struggle in a financially challenged city with eight symphony orchestras. The financial challenge was lessened for Berlin’s unemployed, with a new deal offering tickets to the cream of the city’s performing arts for three Euros ($3.65). In January, the Berlin Philharmonic and Deutsche Oper were among world arts organizations holding events to contribute to the Tsunami appeal.

In his first official season as artistic director and chief conductor of the Hong Kong Philharmonic, Edo de Waart set out to meet the mandate of making the orchestra the best in Asia, becoming increasingly outspoken about the government’s failure to meet its expectations with adequate funding. In July he dismissed the concertmaster for auditioning for a U.S. orchestra while on sick leave.

The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic announced that 29-year old Russian Vasily Petrenko would succeed Gerard Schwarz as principal conductor; Jirví Bevlohlávek got the job at the BBC Symphony despite rumors that it was going Donald Runnicles’ way; Leonard Slatkin was named principal guest conductor of the Royal Philharmonic; the New Jersey Symphony lost its president and CEO, Simon Woods, to the Royal Scottish National Orchestra.

Jukka-Pekka Saraste was named André Previn’s successor as music director of the Oslo Philharmonic; Neeme Järvi signed a four-year contract as chief conductor of the Hague Residentie Orchestra; Finnish conductor Susanna Mälkki was appointed the new music director of the Ensemble intercontemporain.

Perhaps the biggest surprise appointment of the orchestral year was Valery Gergiev as principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, a final feather in managing director Clive Gillinson’s hat before he left for Carnegie Hall. Gillinson’s departure was marked by a gala concert and preceded by an unseemly row. Writing in Classical Music magazine, Manchester-based Hallé chief John Summers took exception to Gillinson’s “metropolitan bias” in valedictory remarks at the annual conference of the Association of British Orchestras. Gillinson hit back, and the rumpus hit the national press, with some messy mudslinging.

OPERA

In January Riccardo Muti showed his face in London for the first time since his celebrated Covent Garden Forza walkout, conducting a 60th-anniversary concert for the Philharmonia Orchestra. At a post-performance party he was relieved not to be talking about opera houses, but the relief was short lived as the drama of La Scala loomed in the background.

As bloody and tragic as any opera plot, the story saw the opera house lose not just its music director but its general manager, his replacement, and a member of the board who once played piano on cruise ships, accompanying a little-known crooner who went on to become Italy’s prime minister, called Silvio Berlusconi. It all started with the dismissal of superintendent Carlo Fontana, who had a rift with conductor Muti. Opera house workers were not impressed, and the row caused the cancellation of the first night of every opera in the repertory, and two new productions were scrapped.

Employees voted 700-3 for getting rid of Muti. The orchestra said it could not work with him. The maestro said the feeling was mutual. In the end he walked, and was soon cozying up to two U.S. orchestras, while the rumor mill was sending him back to the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, where he launched his career—a suggestion hotly denied by the artistic director. The Scala fight was made more entertaining by the contributions of legendary film and opera director Franco Zeffirelli, who poured gasoline on the flames with his opinion of the maestro: “drunk with himself, drugged by his own art and his own personal vanity; he can only talk about himself, he has become a caricature of a conductor.” With diplomatic skills like that, Zeffirelli was soon being suggested as Italy’s next culture minister.

At the Royal Opera House in London, still licking its wounds from the Muti walkout row, the new Ring continued to mixed reviews, despite the presence of Bryn Terfel in his debut as Wotan. He towered over the part, but illness blighted the run. In January he had to mime the part, having lost his voice, and in March a TV broadcast was pulled when ill health again claimed Terfel.

By the time Lorin Maazel’s 1984 opened in May, everyone already had an opinion about it, a senior member of the music staff reportedly describing the work as “crap,” and a furor blew up over revelations that the composer had sunk $756,000 of his own money into the production, leading to accusations of a “vanity project.”

Behind the scenes, the company wrung its hands over whether it should take the chisels to the masonry to remove a jailed philanthropist’s name from the Vilar Floral Hall, and found a new sponsor for what had been the Vilar Young Artists Programme. At the London Coliseum, English National Opera finally managed to find a replacement for Music Director Paul Daniel, naming Oleg Caetani, currently chief conductor and artistic director of Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. The company’s Ring cycle finally ended with a Götterdämmerung that cast Brünnhilde as a suicide bomber. Three months later, western Europe’s first suicide bomb attacks closed most of London’s theaters for a night and claimed more than 50 lives.

In June the company set the cat among the pigeons by announcing its intention to introduce surtitles, but while this produced the predictable squawks of protest, the announcement was partly buried by reports that the end of Paul Daniel’s final performance as music director had been marred when he was loudly booed—by his marketing director. Loyalists demanded a head on a plate, but the miscreant escaped with a rap on the knuckles. Scottish Opera continued its troubled journey with reports that the Scottish Arts Council had secretly sought to dissolve the company. Having lost its artistic director, Richard Armstrong, who blew the whistle on the council’s plans, the company then found CEO Christopher Barron quitting to join Birmingham Royal Ballet. As ever, the company’s artistic health belied the backstage problems and in August it presented the British stage premiere of John Adams’s The Death of Klinghoffer at the Edinburgh Festival. Welsh National Opera finally moved into its new home, the Wales Millennium Center, with a triumphant new production of Wozzeck, but soon lost its chief executive Anthony Freud to Houston Grand Opera.

The Salzburg Festival announced that it will produce all 22 Mozart operas and musical theater works in 2006 as a marathon 250th birthday present to the composer.

Frankfurt Opera’s Musical Director Paolo Carignani announced that he will quit the post in 2008; at Zurich Opera Franz Welser-Möst was promoted from principal conductor to general music director.

A planned merger of the Melbourne City Opera and the Melbourne Opera Company hit the skids in May. Lips were sealed on the reason.

A new staging of Katya Kabanová by Michael Thalheimer was booed at the Deutsche Staatsoper, MusicalAmerica.com’s reviewer Paul Moor likening Thalheimer’s work to that of a “mad dog.” In Paris a strike by Radio France employees forced the cancellation of the opening night of Henze’s The Bassarids at Théâtre du Châtelet.

PLACES

Plans for a $5 billion cultural district on Hong Kong’s waterfront attracted widespread criticism. Hong Kong Philharmonic Artistic Director Edo de Waart joined the detractors, calling the project “ridiculous” and suggesting that the government was promoting reliance on overseas performance groups instead of developing local talent.

China got its first international music academy, a month-long educational institute for string players aged 10-25. Beijing Concert Hall reopened after a three-year closure due to an alleged violation of fire-safety regulations.

The city of Luxembourg, with a population of 120,000 including suburbs, opened a new $136 million, 1,500-seat concert hall.

WINNERS

Americans scooped two U.K. music prizes, 27-year old American soprano Nicole Cabell becoming BBC Cardiff Singer of the World and conductor Marin Alsop named the Female Artist of the Year at the Classical Brits, beating mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson and pianist Martha Argerich. Bryn Terfel was made Male Artist of the Year. At the Royal Philharmonic Society Awards, Sir Charles Mackerras was presented with the Society’s Gold Medal, said to be the U.K.’s highest classical music honor. Buckingham Palace announced that Queen Elizabeth II was to bestow her seal of musical approval with a new prize, the Queen’s Medal for Music.

Other winners included 25-year old Alexander Shelley, taking top prize at the Leeds Conducting Competition; violinist Robert McDuffie, who became the first American to be presented with Rome’s “Premio Simpatia” award; and Japan’s Giun-Haruka Duo, winning Italy’s Trio di Trieste Prize for chamber music.

NEW MUSIC

The BBC Proms brought the usual clutch of first performances, with ten commissions including co-commissions with the Cleveland Orchestra, Chicago Symphony, and Los Angeles Philharmonic. Commissioned composers were Michael Berkeley, James MacMillan, Detlev Glanert, Marc-André Dalbavie, Morgan Hayes, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Bent Sorensen, John Woolrich, Mark-Anthony Turnage, and Fraser Trainer.

Sir Peter Maxwell Davies wrote Commemoration Sixty, “dedicated to the memory of all the service men and women, of all countries, who lost their lives in World War II.” It was performed at the Central Hall, Westminster, in June.

Maxwell Davies had enjoyed a flurry of performances for his 70th-birthday celebrations in 2004. It was not his music, however, that put him most prominently in the public eye but the curious episode when the local constabulary felt his collar for making a terrine from a swan that had met its maker by flying into power lines on the remote island of Orkney where the composer lives. Eating the swans is a local custom, but since they are legally the property of the Queen, his position as Master of the Queen’s Music made for much merriment in the national press and brought a twinkle to the composer’s eye. He did not believe he had done anything wrong, he told the police, but given his position with the Queen, he was prepared to spend time in the Tower of London. Luckily for British music, the case was dropped.

Keith Clarke is editor of Classical Music magazine and a regular contributor

to MusicalAmerica.com.