Doug Peters/PA Wire
Simon Rattle leads his first concert as music director of the London Symphony Orchestra, on September 14, 2017, in an all-British program.
The great unknown of Brexit continued to cast a long shadow over music, with continued free movement of musicians across borders a major concern. The European Union Baroque Orchestra announced a move from the U.K. to Antwerp to retain European funding. The world of opera held its breath as ongoing health issues forced Dmitri Hvorostovsky into cancellations. Also rewriting their diaries were Jonas Kaufmann, with a hematoma on his vocal cords, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, with an arm injury, and Gianandrea Noseda, recovering from back surgery.
Pianist Reggie Dryer, forbidden 56 years ago by apartheid to perform publicly with a white symphony orchestra, finally made his debut with the Cape Town Philharmonic aged 74.
Violin dealers needed medication when researchers at the Institut Jean Le Rond d’Alembert in Paris emerged from a series of double blind experiments to claim that neither musicians nor audience could tell the difference between an antique Stradivarius violin and a newly constructed instrument.
ORCHESTRAS
Anticipation grew for Simon Rattle’s arrival as music director of the London Symphony Orchestra, with the announcement of a ten-day 2017-18 season opener featuring works by British composers and a commission from one of that group’s newer members, Helen Grime.
Esa-Pekka Salonen extended his rolling contract at the Philharmonia, leaping into Virtual Reality with The Virtual Orchestra, a 14-minute journey featuring the orchestra both backstage and onstage at the Royal Festival Hall in a full 360-degree view with 3D audio and 3D video. Also demonstrating cool credentials was the Royal Philharmonic, trialing a cellphone program note app “specifically aimed
towards new and potentially younger audiences.”
Mahler Competition winner Kahchun Wong, Musical America’s New Artist of the Month in June 2016, was named chief conductor of the Nuremburg Symphony starting in the 2018-19 season. Stepping into the same job at the Swedish Chamber Orchestra is clarinetist/conductor Martin Fröst, succeeding Thomas Dausgaard in the 2019-20 season. Paavo Järvi was announced to succeed Lionel
Bringuier at Zürich’s Tonhalle Orchestra as chief conductor and music director from 2019-20, and Thomas Søndergård will succeed Peter Oundjian as music director of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, effective September 2018 through 2021.
Andrew Litton signed up as principal guest conductor of the Singapore Symphony, and the BBC Philharmonic hired 27-year-old former Los Angeles Philharmonic Dudamel Fellow Ben Gernon as its next principal guest conductor.
Heading in the other direction were Lan Shui, stepping down as music director of the Singapore Symphony in January of 2019 after 22 years, and Florence Notter, controversial president of the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, who decided not to renew her contract after four years that have seen the departure of a number of key personnel. The Malta Philharmonic saw a power struggle between artistic director and conductor Brian Schembri and Chairman Sigmund Mifsud, who was reported to have told musicians not to take any orders from the Malteseborn maestro.
A group of 30 musicians from 15 different European countries set up shop as La Banda, aiming to spread “a message of hope in shared humanity” in the face of Brexit and Trump. Organized by composer Jim Sutherland, the group said it wanted to “make a statement by example” against the “rise of hate” and the “slither to [the] right across Europe.” It did so with nykelharpas, Armenian duduks, the Celtic carnyx, and the two-meter-long Slovakian Fujara flute, as well as bagpipes from seven countries. Also making a political point were Zohra, Afghanistan’s first all-woman orchestra, led by Negin Khapalwak, Afghanistan’s only (visible) female conductor, playing at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and winning the 2017 Freemuse Award, and Gustavo Dudamel,
who finally broke his silence on the Venezuelan crisis, telling the government: “It is time to listen to the people: Enough is enough.” The government’s response: to cancel the National Youth Orchestra of Venezuela’s U.S. tour under Dudamel in September.
RECORDING AND BROADCASTING
Record buyers continued to confound predictions with sales of vinyl surging in the U.K., accounting firm Deloitte predicting that in 2017 alone sales of the black discs would reach $1 billion for the first time since the 1980s.
Decca Records Group U.K. appointed Rebecca (“Becky”) Allen its new president; she had been with Universal for 17 years, working her way up from director of media through general manager and managing director.
The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra announced that it was making most of its concert videos recorded in recent years available free online. The F word continued to worry executives. Costa Pilavachi, who held top positions with all the majors before becoming an independent consultant, was candid about the move towards free streaming, stating that it would “ultimately devalue the product, as surely as if the participating institutions offered their tickets for free. How will we ever develop a self-sustaining, viable business if prime artistic product is continually offered gratis?”
A colloquium on “The Future of Music—the Digital Revolution” in London noted the growing importance of live experiences to the recording industry. In a keynote speech, former EMI Classics and Jazz President Richard Lyttelton said that classical recordings can still be profitable, with the re-release of archive material subsidizing new recordings. Observing a general shift in the industry towards live performance, he predicted that it wouldn’t be long until concert-goers could take away a recording of the performance they had just attended.
In broadcasting, the BBC experimented with “Concert Sound,” broadcasting the Proms live in lossless sound, and also transmitting 20 of the concerts in binaural sound, a way of hearing in 3D using a computer and ordinary headphones.
OPERA
Even operatic clouds can have a silver lining. When Grange Park Opera had a dramatic falling out with the owners of its venue over a proposed rental increase, it looked like curtains for the company. In fact, out of one country-house opera company came two. The original company built a new opera house in six months on an estate left by a deceased duchess to a veteran broadcaster. Not wanting to be upstaged, the original venue created an opera company of its own, dubbed the Grange Festival, drafting in countertenor Michael Chance as artistic director. Both companies put together summer seasons that made up with chutzpah what they may have lacked in finesse.
English National Opera continued its roller-coaster ride, raising eyebrows by hiring La La Land music director Marius de Vries as a creative consultant. As in the recent past, fiscal problems did not stand in the way of artistic excellence, recognized by six nominations and two wins at the Olivier Awards: Akhnaten was named Best New Opera Production, and departed Music Director Mark
Wigglesworth won Outstanding Achievement in Opera for his conducting of the company’s Don Giovanni and Lulu.
In June, Arts Council England re-admitted ENO to its list of regularly funded companies but without reinstating the £5 million lopped off its budget three years ago. The company announced a 2017-18 season that includes nine operas, four of them in new productions, including the world premiere of Nico Muhly’s Marnie.
The Royal Opera has a world premiere in its 2017-18 season too, in George Benjamin’s Lessons in Love and Violence, hoping for a winning follow-up to his groundbreaking Written on Skin. The final season from departing director Kasper Holten, it could be the “best in years,” opined the Daily Telegraph. Holten had a rough ride with the critics for his own productions. “Nothing could prepare
me for so deep an abyss of idiocy,” said The Spectator of his parting shot, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.
Opera North said a sudden unexplained farewell to its music director, Aleksandar Markovic. Also making early exits were Denmark’s Royal Theater Opera Chief Sven Müller and Norway Opera’s Music Director Annilese Miskimmon. Another split was Bologna Opera and the Rossini Opera Festival, divorcing after 30 years, and not amicably. Former ENO chief John Berry launched a new opera company, Opera Ventures, with former ENO CEO Loretta Tomasi as executive producer. Two of Ireland’s major opera companies, Opera Theatre Company and Wide Open Opera, were lined up for merger from 2018.
The Vienna State Opera reported record revenues from ticket sales for its season, which included the premiere of a full-length opera by 11-year-old British composer Alma Deutscher. Less cheery news was that its incoming Intendant Bogdan Rošcic was being investigated for alleged plagiarism in his doctoral thesis, submitted to the University of Vienna in 1988.
Vying for a Wackiest New Production award were the Scottish Opera, presenting BambinO, a new opera for babies, and the punningly titled Grimeborn Opera in London, whose season included a reinvention of The Marriage of Figaro basing the opera around the life of reality TV star Kim Kardashian.
PLACES
All eyes were on Hamburg for the grand opening of the Elbphilharmonie, which took ten years and a cool $903 million. From all reports, it was worth every euro, but that was not enough to retain Thomas Hengelbrock, chief conductor of the newly renamed NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, who decided not to renew his contract, which went to departing New York Philharmonic Music Director
Alan Gilbert.
Also celebrating new halls were Berlin, where the Frank Gehry-designed Pierre Boulez Saal opened as a center for chamber music and for the Barenboim-Said’s West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, and Paris, whose new performing-arts center La Seine Musicale features two halls along with a garden the size of a football field, offices, and recording and rehearsal space. Interlochen announced plans for a $24 million music building, to include 25 teaching studios and ten practice studios.
In London a proposed new hall remained a hope following a setback when the government clawed back cash allotted for a feasibility study. Undaunted, the project’s backers—the Barbican Center, the London Symphony Orchestra, and Guildhall School of Music—announced a design competition supported by a $3.27 million grant from the City of London Corporation. The competition attracted a high-profile shortlist, including Frank Gehry, Renzo Piano, and Norman Foster.
Kuwait’s new $770 million opera house caught fire three months after opening.
Beijing’s Music Festival celebrated its 20th anniversary, artistic director Long Yu conducting the China Philharmonic with soloist Frank Peter Zimmermann to open a 22-day program that featured a symphonic marathon featuring nine native orchestras all on one stage, a complete cycle of Beethoven symphonies with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen under Paavo Järvi, a joint production with Salzburg Easter Festival of Die Walküre conducted by Jaap Van Zweden, and Maxim Vengerov playing the premiere of composer Chen Qigang’s Violin Concerto.
In France, the Festival d’Île-de-France closed after 40 years following a 68 percent cut in funding, and the Théâtre du Châtelet of Paris appointed Ruth Mackenzie as artistic director and Thomas Lauriot dit Prévost as general director.
In Italy, La Scala honored Toscanini’s 150th birthday with a concert and exhibition, and there was a turnaround at the Arena di Verona with a modest profit in contrast to multi-million-euro losses in previous years. Also on the up was the Vienna State Opera, again posting record revenues througzh ticket sales and an audience capacity of 98.83 percent.
Snape Maltings, home of Britten’s Aldeburgh festival on England’s east coast, was the scene of some heated exchanges when a plan to build a parking lot provoked a petition whose signatories included Oliver Knussen and Mark-Anthony Turnage.
WINNERS
Catriona Morison, a 31-year-old Scottish mezzosoprano, became the first U.K. singer to win the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition. “I’m over the moon,” she said.
Victor Julien-Laferrière, 26, from France was the first cellist to win the Queen Elisabeth Competition, which in previous years has rotated between piano, voice, and violin.
The bass-baritone Bryn Terfel was made a knight in the 2017 Queen Elizabeth II New Year honors list, which also recognized percussionist Evelyn Glennie, London Symphony violinist and former Chairman James Mackenzie, and City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra Chief Executive Stephen Maddock.
French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard was awarded the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize for 2017, British cellist Steven Isserlis received the 2017 Glashütte Original Music Festival Award from the Dresden Music Festival for his work with children, and the American scholar, musicologist, and critic Richard Taruskin was named one of the three winners of the international 2017 Kyoto Prize, a
quadrennial award to “honor those who have contributed significantly to the scientific, cultural, and spiritual betterment of mankind.”
Royal Philharmonic Society gave its Opera and Music Theater Award to Opera North for its Ring and the Conductor Award to the company’s outgoing chief conductor, Richard Farnes.
Juan Diego Flórez skipped the Met Opera’s 50th Anniversary Gala to pick up a Singer of the Year gong at the International Opera Awards. Anna Netrebko received the same accolade, but chose the Met party.
NEW MUSIC
Shakespeare provided the inspiration for two of the year’s notable opera premieres, Brett Dean taking on Hamlet at Glyndebourne and succeeding where many before him had failed, and Ryan Wigglesworth compressing the three-hour The Winter’s Tale into 100 minutes for English National Opera.
After a 2016 Salzburg premiere, Thomas Adès’s The Exterminating Angel made it to the Royal Opera House en route to New York’s Metropolitan.
The BBC Proms offered 30 premieres in 2017, with 16 world premieres including works by Kerry Andrew, Gerald Barry, Lotta Wennäkoski, and Roderick Williams, alongside 14 European, U.K., or London premieres. Also at the Proms, Harrison Birtwistle’s Deep Time finished what turned out to be a triptych, following The Triumph of Time and Earth Dances, pulsating with energy.•
Keith Clarke is consultant editor of Classical Music magazine and a regular contributor to MusicalAmerica.com.
