Friday Miscellanea

Oh, those halcyon days of yore when so much of the Friday Miscellanea was devoted to the silly side of music: really unfortunate album covers, bizarre music videos and Yuja Wang's dresses. Well, I will try to avoid a litany of woe, but it won't be easy!

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What have the musicians of the Metropolitan Opera been up to since they are not playing in the pit? Doing a little busking:

 With about five listeners, it looks like...

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I was talking to a friend of mine on the weekend who is principal flute in a Canadian orchestra. His orchestra has simply canceled next season. Not just until January, until next September. This means that every member of that orchestra will have been without work for almost a year and a half. Why are North American orchestras canceling instead of incrementally re-establishing concerts as they are doing in Europe? In Germany and Austria, for example, orchestras have started over the last week or so giving normal concerts except that many seats in the halls are blocked off. The Dresden orchestra gave a concert this week in an 1,800 seat hall that was only able to seat 480 audience members. They are only able to do this because of very hefty government subsidies. In Canada, with much smaller government grants, a couple of concerts like that and the orchestra is flat broke, because they are losing tens of thousands of dollars with every concert.

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Here is economist Tyler Cowan with some thoughts on how things for the arts might not be as horrific as they seem at the moment:

Of course, economics is known as the "dismal science."

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A little survey from Slipped Disc of how some concerts are being given with success.

The Czech Philharmonic played last night to an audience of 500, seated 20 centimetres apart and without face coverings, in the open air and intermittent rain. There were no tickets left for sale.

The New Zealand Symphony are expecting 2,000 at their Friday-night comeback concert with local hero Simon O’Neill.

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The Guardian with a very British understated headline: The future of the arts: ‘The classical music world has been transfigured’

Still no one knows when, or in what manner, live music will return. Europe is already starting up again, in confined ways. Austria hopes for audiences of 1,000 by August. America and the UK are looking, in many cases, far into next year. All musicians have sustained catastrophic loss. Some will look to other careers: an estimated 20%. Salaried orchestral players have been furloughed. Nearly half of freelancers are ineligible for government aid. Soloists, indeed all musicians, must maintain technique and commitment. Composers have lost commissions, representing years’ worth of income.

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 One of the oddest things about this pandemic is that just about the riskiest thing you can do is sing in a choir: Choirs reimagine themselves as singing proves an effective way to spread COVID-19

Early in the pandemic, the Skagit Valley Chorale in Washington State became a cautionary tale after 45 members of a 56-person ensemble became infected with COVID-19 following a rehearsal. Two choir members later died of the virus. 

"If you're a professionally trained singer, all the power from the body can really send those particles a great distance," she said, adding the latest research she's reviewed suggests singers would need to be spaced 15 feet apart outdoors to minimize transmission.

Erick Lichte, the artistic director of Chor Leoni, a 60-person amateur men's choir in Vancouver, said COVID-19 has "decimated" chorale music, and that he doesn't anticipate group sessions resuming normally until a vaccine is developed.

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Enough gloom! Time to turn to one of music's most angelic delights: Mozart’s infinite riches

One of the more intriguing games which music lovers play among themselves—formerly on long car journeys; now under indefinite house arrest—is to imagine a situation in which they are permitted, for the rest of their lives, to listen to the works of every composer, but restricted to one genre per composer. You can have as many composers as you like, and as many genres, but if you want Brahms’s symphonies, say, you can’t have anyone else’s. The challenge is to find, for each great composer, a format in which he was both prolific and characteristic; there is no point, however much one loves Fidelio, in choosing opera for Beethoven; it would be a waste of an opportunity to hear more (and even better) Beethoven, and deprives you of the operas of Wagner or Verdi, Janáček or Britten (albeit that you can only choose one of these). With a little thought, it soon becomes obvious that, among the great Viennese composers, you would be well advised to choose Haydn’s string quartets, Beethoven’s piano sonatas and Schubert’s songs. Each of these three excelled in those respective forms, and though it will be a wrench for some to forego Beethoven’s 16 essays in string quartet form, the 32 piano sonatas are more than a numerical compensation for their loss.

You should go read the whole thing, but the answer to what should you pick for Mozart is, of course, the piano concertos.

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For our first envoi, the Piano Concerto in E flat, K. 271 by Mozart. From the Grossesaal of the Mozarteum, Salzburg, 1989, Mitsuko Uchida performs with the Mozarteum Orchestra under the direction of Jeffrey Tate.

 Another delight, Holst's The Planets with the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen in a streaming music concert (i.e. without audience) from last week.