Year in Music: North America 2006 Part II

By Leslie Kandell

ORCHESTRA NEWS

To save money, the Philadelphia Orchestra and its Pops branch merged office and operations staffs, while the Houston Symphony and Houston Grand Opera explore the possibility of the orchestra’s return to Wortham Theater Center for opera performances. The 2002 merger of the Utah Symphony and Utah Opera resulted in operating deficits that reportedly are being reversed by fundraising campaigns, ticket sales, and staff cuts; if improvements continue, the cuts may be postponed. The Montreal Symphony canceled the final concerts of last season and is starting to cancel concerts this year as well. Pittsburgh Symphony members got something that looked like a raise, but turned out not to be, and meanwhile, instead of a single music director, the orchestra appointed a triumvirate of Sir Andrew Davis, Yan Pascal Tortelier, and Marek Janowski. Esa-Pekka Salonen is magical at tying repertory of the Los Angeles Philharmonic to Walt Disney Hall’s Gehry architecture; his commissioning of John Adams’s Dharma at Big Sur, for orchestra and ambling electric fiddler was called “a rapturous bear hug.” Leon Botstein and the American Symphony Orchestra continue their questing program themes, such as “Inventing America,” with rarely performed works by Roger Sessions, Randall Thompson, and their teacher Ernst Bloch. Robert Spano conducted no fewer than three  Ring cycles for the Seattle Opera in its newly revamped Marion Oliver McCaw Hall, and with the Atlanta Symphony he is to lead Osvaldo Golijov’s exciting Afro-Caribbean Pasión según San Marcos, which is fortunately getting to be a staple.

IMAGINATIVE EDUCATION

Boston’s annual Classical Cartoon Festival in Symphony Hall, presented by radio station WCRB, features a day of Warner Bros. cartoons with classical music, which used to run on TV Saturday mornings. Cartoons are shown onstage, station personalities make appearances, and youth orchestra performances alternate with related children’s activities. The New York Philharmonic has Very Young People’s Concerts for ages three to five, introducing youngsters to classical music through games, active listening and hands-on music-making with orchestra members. For adults, a Leonard Bernstein Scholar-in-Residence will be responsible for most pre-concert talks, as well as for archive research for presentations. WorkshopLive, emanating from Pittsfield, Massachusetts, delivers music lessons through a broadband Internet connection, providing individualized teaching options. Carnegie, Weill and Zankel Halls are moving the Robert Shaw professional training workshops in new directions: Ton Koopman headed a week-long Baroque workshop (rehearsal and lectures) culminating in a Bach cantata concert, and Leon Fleisher led a similarly structured one in Mozart concertos. Thomas Hampson is making an 11-city concert tour that began in Kansas, to increase awareness of the musical holdings of the Library of Congress and to make its archival material better known. The Library also renewed its agreement with Bridge Records to produce material in its collections, and highlights 80 years of Coolidge Auditorium concerts, as well as performances by Bartók. The Brooklyn Philharmonic extended its programs to add dimension to Brooklyn Museum exhibitions, and also featured related themes at the Brooklyn Public Library. Naxos recordings are now available in libraries and, by Internet subscription, for iPods and home computers.

LEADERS

The Boston Symphony is delighted with its musically adventurous director, James Levine, whose “large cultural umbrella” (as a player put it) is appreciated by the musicians and reflected in the playing; his teaching skills also showed last summer in the rich, luxurious sound of Tanglewood’s student orchestra. Clive Gillinson left the London Symphony to become Carnegie Hall’s executive and artistic director. David Robertson, whose star is on the rise, is now music director of the Saint Louis Symphony. Kent Nagano is to be music director at the Montreal Symphony, David Gockley is the San Francisco Opera’s general director, Evans Mirageas is Cincinnati Opera’s artistic director, and Donald Runnicles succeeded Eiji Oue as music director of the Grand Teton festival. Robert Sirota is president of Manhattan School of Music, and Augusta Read Thomas chairs the American Music Center. The husband-and-wife team of David Finckel and Wu Han became directors of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Michael Christie, a protégé of Robert Spano, is music director of the Brooklyn Philharmonic, adding to his directorship of the Colorado Music Festival. Brooklyn, for its 50th, commissioned Jennifer Higdon’s Dooryard Bloom for baritone, on the Whitman text, evoking earlier American musical masters.

NIX

The Kennedy Center’s $650 million plan to create a plaza linking it to the center of Washington has been put on hold indefinitely. President Bush approved the plan, but in Congress, it foundered in a tide of cutbacks. Prokofiev’s estate has vetoed an adaptation of Cinderella that casts the would-be princess as a cleaning lady in a brothel, with the stepsisters as prostitutes and the wicked stepmother as madam. The Texas Music Educators Association denied a 17-year old countertenor’s request to sing soprano in the all-state chorus because girls were not allowed to sing male parts. Alberto Vilar’s star continues to not shine. His name has now been removed from Covent Garden as well as the Metropolitan Opera, he put his $14.5 million New York apartment up for sale, and Christie’s refused to auction his $300,000 art collection, even to help secure his $10 million get-out-of-jail bond—not to mention paying his angry lawyer.

HONORS: 2005 AND LATE 2004

Steven Stucky’s jazzy, filmic Second Concerto for Orchestra won the Pulitzer Prize, and George Tsontakis was awarded the Grawemeyer. The Ernst von Siemens Music Prize went to Henri Dutilleux, for his “organic, filigree” music, and Steve Reich was awarded the MacDowell Medal. Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Gilberto Gil have the Polar Music Prize, Joan Sutherland and John Williams the Kennedy Center Honors. The Naumburg Award went to soprano Sari Gruber, while another soprano, Susanna Phillips, won Domingo’s Operalia. The Richard Tucker Award went to tenor Eric Cutler, who delivered multiple high Ds at the competition. Alexander Kobrin, 25, of Russia, who played Rachmaninoff, won the Van Cliburn Competition. Among three-year prizes, André Previn won the Glenn Gould Prize and Alexander Gavrylyuk the Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition. Clarinetist Richard Stoltzman performed Reich’s New York Counterpoint when he received the Yale School of Music’s Sanford Medal. The ASCAP awards for the strongest commitment to American music went to the American Composers Orchestra, while the Boston Symphony and Levine were recognized for innovative programming, and the Minnesota Orchestra for educational programming. Michael Tilson Thomas was named Gramophone magazine’s Artist of the Year, 2005.

MILESTONES

A first for scholars: the discovery, in a Pennsylvania seminary library, of Beethoven's handwritten four-hand piano version of the Grosse Fuge, which was promptly auctioned at Sotheby's. Other milestones are the 90th birthdays George Perle (winner of an ASCAP Award) and Earl Wild; Pierre Boulez, Gunther Schuller and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, 80; Lorin Maazel and Nikolaus Harnoncourt, 75; Nicholas Maw, Luciano Pavarotti, Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Arvo Pärt, Seiji Ozawa and Terry Riley, 70; Caramoor International Music Festival and Colin Matthews, 60; Yo-Yo Ma, Beaux Arts Trio, and Lyric Opera of Chicago, 50.

Leslie Kandell contributes to The New York Times, The Los Angeles

Times, American Record Guide, BBC Music Magazine, The

Berkshire Eagle, and other newspapers and magazines.

OBITUARIES

In 2005 and late 2004, the music world recorded the loss of composers David Diamond, George Rochberg; conductors Carlo Maria Giulini, Sixten Ehrling, Hermann Michael, Sergiu Comissiona, Kenneth Schermerhorn, Marcello Viotti, Frederick Fennell, Lyndon Woodside, Randall Behr; pianists Ruth Laredo, Grant Johannesen, Moura Lympany, Lazar Berman, Alexei Sultanov; sopranos Renata Tebaldi, Ghena Dimitrova, Victoria de los Angeles; mezzo-soprano Nell Rankin; tenor Richard Verreau; baritones Robert Merrill, Theodore Uppman,

Piero Cappuccilli; bass Ara Berberian; violinists Isidore Cohen, Robert Koff; trumpeters William Vacchiano, Joseph Alessi; organ builder Noel Mander; critic/editors Shirley Fleming, Stanley Sadie; commentator Karl Haas; inventor Robert A. Moog; impresario Glynn Ross; philanthropist Arthur Zankel.