The competition was intense. In the first pair of performances, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra eked out a slight advantage over the Philadelphia Orchestra in terms of ticket sales and the octane of its playing — but hold on to your opera glasses. In a grand upset, the Cleveland Orchestra arrived. - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The Dutch maestro is also music director of the Hong Kong Philharmonic; he leaves both positions in 2024, as he starts on a five-year contract term as music director of the Seoul Philharmonic. He succeeds Osmo Vänskä, who's leaving the turbulent orchestra after only three years. - The New York Times
Even after the Soviet Union crumbled, Russia was able to keep up its classical strengths—and attract artists from all around the world. But now its musicians are leaving, and Western ones have stopped arriving for guest performances. - Foreign Policy
In response to the Second Vatican Council's reforms, the monks of the Abbey of Keur Moussa set about Africanizing their worship, researching traditional music and adapting it to their liturgy. It was when they discovered the kora that everything clicked — and even got them a recording contract. - The New Yorker
"(He) was the influential missing piece in American music, (with) a profound impact on Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, and Broadway from the 1930s to the 1960s. The Communist overtones in his work that polarized 20th-century listeners ... plus the circumstances of his 1964 death, ... make him all the more intriguing." - The Philadelphia Inquirer
For those blessedly anchored in the real world, here is a brief summary of a case that began as a passionate-yet-niche dispute between scholars and has reverberated—or been manufactured—into a broader referendum on academic and free speech in the United States. - Van
"Indiana University for the last 40 years has been trumpeting early performance practice. Now there are maybe 20 or so extraordinary pockets of incredible culture, from Texas up to Seattle and from Maine down to Miami. I think Juilliard is now the cutting edge, standing like a beacon." - Early Music America
Historically, songs were employed by labor unions to create a sense of solidarity and move labor rights forward against overwhelming odds. If music can be a salve and a rallying cry, is the opposite true? - 3 Quarks Daily
Sources also say that both sides were eager to avoid another protracted, distracting and brutally expensive legal battle, to put it mildly: The fight over the previous, 2018-22 rate period went on for more than three years and cost many millions of dollars in legal and other fees. - Variety
"He is an artist for whom Americanness truly matters, as much as the tradition of Western classical music — both heritages treated not with nostalgia, but with awareness and affection." Joshua Barone profiles Adams ahead of the world premiere of his Antony and Cleopatra in San Francisco. - The New York Times
One aspect of Rachmaninoff’s legacy that deserves greater scrutiny is his peculiar resonance with early-twentieth-century American pop music. George Gershwin, the son of Russian immigrants, could not have composed “Rhapsody in Blue” without the example of the Rachmaninoff concertos. - The New Yorker
There seem to be several currents in European composition: the heirs of Pierre Boulez, post-serial, and neotonal. Among the younger composers, however, there is a yearning for the freedom of being decompartmentalized. And many look to the U.S. for new models. - Strings
"I am still struggling with the consequences of the vasculitis I was diagnosed with in the spring," said the conductor in a statement. For this new Dmitri Tcherniakov staging at the Berlin State Opera, Barenboim will be replaced by Christian Thielemann for two cycles and Thomas Guggeis for one. - OperaWire
A piano has more than 8,000 individual parts. The building process begins with curing the wood, leaving large sheets of maple, beech and mahogany to dry for a year and a half. - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
"People with more experience of playing a musical instrument showed greater lifetime improvement on a test of cognitive ability than those with less or no experience. ... This was the case even when accounting for socio-economic status, years of education, childhood cognitive ability, and health in older age." - The Guardian
