Greg Sandow on the future of classical music

Listen to the overture, on the new Cecilia Bartoli recording of Bellini's Norma. Hot! Giovanni Antonini (the man in the photo) conducts, and the Orchestra La Scintilla plays period instruments. This is the kind of classical performance I like to hear. It has personality. And — as my Juilliard students said this year about classical recordings from past generations — the musicians go for it.  Which gives them a marvelous colloquial touch. Sometimes they sound like the town band. That's completely appropriate for bel canto opera, which — … [Read more...]

Last week, when I talked about Jed Distler's piece for grand piano and 128 keyboards, I neglected to say that it's part of a terrific one-day festival -- happening today! — called Make Music NY, which advertises "over 1,000 concerts on streets, sidewalks, and parks" in all five boroughs. Go here for links to what they all are. And Distler's isn't the only massive one. There's a piece by R. Murray Schafer, for 144 singers in rowboats and 11 trombones on shore, unfolding on the lake in Central Park. Plus 21 other mass extravaganzas like … [Read more...]

I am a composer in her fifties, so a New York Times article about how innovators get better with age piqued my interest. According to the article, The directors of the five top-grossing films of 2012 are all in their 40s or 50s. And two of the biggest-selling authors of fiction for 2012 — Suzanne Collins and E. L. James — are around 50… According to research, the age of eventual Nobel Prize winners when making a discovery, and of inventors when making a significant breakthrough, averaged around 38 in 2000, an increase of about six years … [Read more...]

For anyone who loves opera -—and, maybe, even people who don't — here's an astonishing performance by Franco Corelli, singing "Un di all'azzurro spazio," from Andrea Chenier. Corelli's power, focus, conviction are all so strong that you might get swept away, at least in places, even watching the video without any sound. And with the sound, it's enough to make you believe that Giordano was a great composer. One point I really want to stress: Corelli had an unmatched voice, huge and silvery gold, with soaring high notes that just about define … [Read more...]

  Cameron Carpenter, the spectacular indie classical organist, has major news. He's signed a major record deal, with Sony Classical. And he's also unveiling a new organ, which he can take with him everywhere he tours, and play anything from his repertoire. Thus freeing the organ from concert halls and churches. And unleashing Cameron, with lots of well-deserved fanfare, to play more or less anywhere.   He'll unveil the new organ with performances at the 2014 Lincoln Center Festival. Of course, some old issues come into play … [Read more...]

Last week I was in Norway for three days, as a guest of the Bergen International Festival. I had two official duties. One was to speak for about an hour to a lovely group of people, mostly older, with a deep and serious love of classical music. Some that I talked to were amateur choral singers. (And I must say I loved talking to some of them, after my official talk, at a dinner, about subjects other than classical music. Let's never forget that we're full=fledged human beings, with more on our minds, let's hope, than the classical music … [Read more...]

Here's part of a live recording of Haydn's "Surprise" Symphony — the surprise part. Marc Minkowski conducts Les Musiciens du Louvre Grenoble, in a performance at the Wiener Konzerthaus in 2009. Unless you want the surprise to be spoiled, don't read further until you've clicked the link and listened. … … … If you Google this performance, you'll find that some people hate this. The orchestra playing nothing, where the surprise loud chord is supposed to be! The orchestra starting the piece again, and this time shouting, instead of … [Read more...]

This week: A solo Beethoven marathon, the Frite of Spring, a new Kennedy CD. Plus two out-there festivals, and a thorough — definitive — debunking of the idea that studying music raises kids' test scores. Debunked The last item first. One problem we have in classical music, if you ask me, is that we pat ourselves on the back, when we think how wonderful — and how helpful to humanity — our music supposedly is. Not that I'm saying the music isn't wonderful, but we should be careful not to make extravagant claims for it. One of these claims, … [Read more...]

Well, today's my birthday! And to celebrate — this link goes to a bagatelle by Stravinsky, a composer I love more than I know how to say. It's his Greeting Prelude, which is an arrangement of a tune that…oh, you'll recognize it. Twisted into smiling new shapes. Reminds me of films I've seen, in which Stravinsky, talking about music he loves, just radiates joy. This is a big one for me — 70. And I run around the house, chasing my little boy, while he squeals with delight. I've never felt younger. As this new year of my life goes on, … [Read more...]

A passionate new music fan -- and donor to new music groups — in Washington has said, maybe wistfully, that the core audience for DC new music concerts is 50 people. That bears out what I've seen at DC new music events, and I'm sure others elsewhere in the US would say the same for their cities. But there's at least one big exception — Milwaukee, where Present Music has for 31 years been playing new music, and for much of that time to really large audiences. How do they do it? I'm going to be talking to their founder and artistic … [Read more...]

In the US, it's our Memorial Day holiday. So in my Monday Post I'll remember Maria Callas, the great, vulnerable soprano. And her audience! In this brief excerpt from a live performance of Bellini's Norma, Callas sings a gorgeous soft high C (not something she could manage every day) — and the audience audibly reacts while she's singing it. Which takes us back to the 19th century and earlier, when audiences routinely made their feelings known in the middle of the music. I apologize for not knowing which performance this comes from. I ripped … [Read more...]

What we want to do is to show people that "classical" music is a living, vibrant tradition that is far from being the museum art of dead men played incredibly formally by people dressed very uncomfortably. That's a statement by Armano Bayolo, director of the Great Noise Ensemble, which might be Washington, DC's leading new music group. It's printed in the program book for the concert they gave a week ago. And this is the first of my Friday Posts, in which I'll pass on things that I've found out about, mostly things that show how quickly — … [Read more...]

On hearing all four Ives symphonies on a single concert (Spring for Music, May 10, the Detroit Symphony, Leonard Slatkin): The fourth, despite its bristling reputation — so much dissonance! needs more than one conductor! full of wild collages! — is the easiest to hear. Maybe some people in the old-line classical audience would find it difficult, but for anyone who swims in contemporary culture, it's a rapt and sometimes romping soundscape. You just sit back, and let it flow. The other symphonies, by contrast, will make most sense if you … [Read more...]

On the musical frontier, all around the country, there's a new sheriff in town. Increasingly, many performing musicians, including several of my close friends and colleagues, are taking charge and instating a new order in the dual role of performing artist and concert presenter, in communities nationwide. People like cellist Zuill Bailey, who's building a nationwide franchise of imaginative chamber music festivals, transforming towns from El Paso, TX to Sitka, AK with a vision of bedrock-deep community engagement. Like pianist George Lepauw, … [Read more...]

From Janet Baker-Carr's Evening at Symphony: A Portrait of the Boston Symphony Orchestra: During the first [Boston] performance of Brahms's Third Symphony the audience left the hall in hundreds.…During the last movement of the first performance of Bruckner's Symphony No. 7 (1887) there were more people on the stage than in the audience.…[One critic] suggested that in case of fire Bruckner's Seventh should be played so that the hall would empty instantly. Do most of us know that new music could be greeted this way, decades before modernism? I … [Read more...]