If anyone is in the market, you can actually buy five adjoining stall seats in Royal Albert Hall. Price is listed at £825,000. I didn't even know this was a thing.
Seatholders are entitled access to their seats for all Ordinary lettings, which amount to approximately to two thirds of the performances in the Hall in any twelve month period. For those events for which seatholders do not use their tickets, the Hall operates a sucessful Ticket Return Scheme.
I guess the last sentence means you can rent your seats out when you are not using them. I'm still sorry I missed the Cream reunion concerts there in 2005.
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Via Slipped Disc: IS BUDAPEST THE NEW WORLD CAPITAL OF ORCHESTRAL MUSIC?
Since I moved to Budapest in 2015, the constant question from Hungarians is: “Why on earth would you move here?” My answer is “the music life is like no other city in the world” — an answer that usually elicits confused stares from the questioner. My response to them is: “How many professional symphony orchestras does Budapest have?”
Here is the list of 12 professional orchestras (in no particular order):
MÁV Symphony Orchestra
Budapest Festival Orchestra
Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra
Concerto Budapest
Budafok Dohnányi Orchestra
Zugló Symphony Orchestra
Óbuda Symphony Orchestra
Liszt Chamber Orchestra
Pannon Philharmonic
Orfeo Orchestra/Purcell Choir
Hungarian National Radio Symphony Orchestra
Hungarian National Opera Orchestra
I then pose the question to the questioner(s): How many orchestras do you think New York City has? The answer is: one! That answer is the same for Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia, and Boston. And none of them are supported by state or federal governments…
I think I just put Budapest on my must-visit list. But I think that other large cities have more than one orchestra. Montreal has two, the Orchestra Symphonique de Montréal and the Orchestra Metropolitaine--perhaps three if I Musici de Montréal is still going and even four if you count the McGill Orchestra. I suspect New York has a few as well. But I sure don't know of any cities that have twelve!
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Norman Lebrecht does an Inquest into the death of ENO
When the company’s funding line was finally cut this month, there was little uproar. ENO was a much-loved maiden aunt being laid gently to rest.
Did it have to die? The cause of death, in this coroner’s verdict, is a prolonged failure to address reality. Take opera in English, a founding act of faith. In the vast Coliseum the words were hard to hear, so subtitles were screened above the stage. We faced a Brobdingnagian drama of a Lithuanian tenor mangling Verdi in a foreign tongue while a trendy translation flashed above our eyelines.
This was comic opera on a boardroom scale with a lamentably unEnglish lack of irony. The decline and fall of England’s national opera is a lesson to all working in the arts that you cannot kick problems down the road. ENO died not for lack of cash or love but for want of definition.
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As you may recall, I am an occasional attendee at the Salzburg Festival. But I am thinking of checking out some other European fests. The one in Aix-En-Provence looks interesting as this review in the New York Times attests: At This Summer’s Aix Festival, the Only Laughter Is Bitter.
The characters who feel the freshest at this year’s Aix Festival are populating Ted Huffman’s vivid staging of Monteverdi’s “L’Incoronazione di Poppea.” Almost 400 years old, “Poppea” is startlingly contemporary in the gray zone of morality it occupies. Almost no one is entirely likable or unlikable; lust and ambition are simultaneously reveled in and condemned.
At the jewel-box Théatre du Jeu de Paume — which seats fewer than 500, an ideal intimacy for Baroque opera — there is barely a set. Pretty much the only element is a huge pipe, half painted white, half black, hanging over the action, perhaps a symbol of the fate that never quite falls on the adulterous, power-hungry leads.
* * *
The Culture Workers Go On Strike:
This season culture workers are organizing against their own exploitation. Professors of art, workers at museums, and assistants at a publishing house have all gone on strike or staged public protests during contract negotiations. Call this a black-turtleneck-worker uprising rather than a white-collar one. “Wages are stagnant and we earn far lower salaries than our peers elsewhere,” the union representing employees at the Brooklyn Museum recently tweeted. They’ve been busy protesting outside their work site. During one action, workers held up signs decrying the vacuity of the VIP opening for the museum’s haute couture fashion exhibit: One read, “You can’t eat prestige.” (The union is calling for a 7 percent salary increase this year and raises of 4 percent per year for each of the two years following.) Unions are currently on strike at the publisher HarperCollins and at the University of California system, where 48,000 academic workers are sitting out their underpaid teaching gigs.
* * *
Climate activists target Elbphilharmonie:
Just as the Sächsische Staatskapelle was about to begin its concert, two climate activists from Germany's "Letzte Generation" (Last Generation) movement walked onto the stage and glued themselves to the conductor's podium. They began calling for resistance to what they saw as the German government's indecisive climate policy.
You know, I would like to stage a protest of my own, if I could just figure out how and where!
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Let's hear some of those Budapest orchestras. This is the Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra with the Beethoven Symphony No. 4:
And here is a whole program from Concerto Budapest:
Well, I'm impressed.
Just saw Sofia Gubaidulina's Canticle of the Sun last night, sung by BBC Singers and Abel Selaocoe was the solo cellist (he also did a superb encore, an improvisation on African prayer). It was the first time I've managed to see anything by Gubaidulina live, though like you I have long been fascinated by her music (I can't recall if you ever did finish that series?) I found her music even more enchanting live. It had the proper feel -- as one watches, not just listens -- of something ritualistic. Selaocoe moved from his cello to a bass drum to a gong and to a flexitone which he used for a call-and-response section with members of the choir. I can see better why she calls her music 'archaic'. As cello and percussion improvisation-like passages dance atop simple harmonies -- repeated tonic chords or drones mostly -- it often sounded not unlike recreations of ancient music. Sadly, the sense I got from the audience was that, bar a small number of us who were obviously enthusiastic, it was very cooly received. The comments I heard in the interval were not favourable -- quite the opposite. Rachmaninov's All Night Vigil, which made the second half, was obviously preferred. But I confess I found it trying...
ReplyDeleteThat article is characteristically Lebrecht, rather missing the point and instead going on a rant of a topic of his choosing. The cuts were made for reasons other than those he gives. They would have cut it if it had all English singers with great enunciation. (And actually, I was there a few weeks ago for Yeomen of the Guard and the singing was clear and lovely from where I was in the upper circle.)
Thanks so much Steven for this report. No, I am ashamed to say that I never did complete that series of posts on Gubaidulina! Sounds like a project for the new year. And thanks again for the comment on the ENO. You are what we might call a reliable witness.
ReplyDeletethis year has been bursting at the seams with posts I meant to get to but never wrote. the sonata cycles by Gilardino, Rebay, Guastavino, Ourkouzounov, Koshkin, Matiegka, ... preludes and fugues by Dzhaparidze ...
ReplyDeletebut the worst sorts of IRL events happened.
Postponing blogging until 2023 has been what I'm up to, though I comment away.
Bryan thank you for your usual Friday feast; I will refrain from comment because I am such a novice at music, all I can do is look at your banquet table and fill my meager plate and come back for seconds. I will, however, toss a comment towards your brief comment on the Cream 2005 reunion concert at the RAH. You didn't miss much if I can go by the CD recording of the same. Ginger and Bruce still had energy to spare that reminded me of their youthful thrashings; Clapton seems to have settled in for a safe rendering of all the old Cream classics. His tone on the Strat is buttery and unadventurous. In his youth he had a kind of fruity style that was melodic and daring; his playing since the late 1990s seems so safe ... Johnny Winter may not have been the most technically accomplished guitar player, but he had an encyclopedic grasp of blues riffs that he could string together endlessly and entertainingly ... I see my brief comment is on the way to opening a Clapton post ... I will search your index to see how late I am to the party .... Cheers, as always ...
ReplyDeleteThanks, Dex, for the occasional comment. I was a huge Clapton fan way back when Cream were still together. I know exactly what you mean, the reunited group was playing it a bit safer, Jack didn't have quite the vocal range and both Ginger and Eric lacked the Dionysian wildness of their early years. But on the other hand, the music was cleaner and more organized and less self-indulgent. So, six of one, half a dozen of the other.
ReplyDeleteDionysian, yes ...self-indulgent yes ... that makes me tip towards the youthful Cream ... Just think of "I'm So Glad" on the "Goodbye Cream" album ... wow ... a musical frenzy ... speaking of electric blues we just saw Joe Bonamassa at the Paramount here in Seattle; he was in fine form, great band, fine back-up singers with support from amazing guitarist Josh Smith but ... but ... I can't put my finger on it ... I was oddly unmoved ... he does a super-fast descending pentatonic scale (a la Eric Johnson who Joe humbly, decently, acknowledges as a teacher and influence) any number of times ... after the tenth scale I had to get up and walk to the lobby and get some M & Ms ... I don't like what I'm feeling ... but I can't get clarity on it ... it could be static interference from classical guitar, which I practice daily ... I've just discovered a brace of complex Baden Powell compositions that I think almost place him in the top rank of composers, though they might be too short for the classical repertoire ... not sure ... yer thots on any of this (OK, if not ... you are on a higher plane .... no irony!).
ReplyDeleteIf you compare the Spoonful on Wheels of Fire with the Spoonful at the reunion concerts, no contest--the older version wins transcendentally. And yes, that I'm So Glad on Cream Goodbye reaches some kind of frenzied pinnacle. But that might be an indicator of why they couldn't continue back then. One interesting item: We're Going Wrong at the reunion concerts is better than any previous version, I think.
ReplyDeleteI think superfast scales are one of the most boring things you can do in music. You know, I don't know the Baden Powell pieces hardly at all!
Thanks for the return comments, Bryan, I always prize your thoughts, wide and precise at the same time ... I will slightly revise my Cream at RAH notes: yes, 'We're Going Wrong' was great. Also, 'Sweet Wine'; there is a beautiful moment at the end where Eric and Ginger smile at each other ... Also NSU ... wonderful grooves ... I will give a listen again ... I love the way they introduce each other after a number of songs ... as in "Yes, we are three barely known British boys doing our first tour of America ..."
ReplyDeleteI took up classical guitar because of Baden Powell ... recently, he seems to be creeping into the canon with younger players; one thing is certain: you can't play his compositions without classical technique. I lived in Central America and his music was considered standard for any real guitar player ... I was hooked ... his compositions vary from easy or sentimental (seemingly, though as classical players we know that 'easy' is the most difficult ...) such as 'Vehlo Amigo' and 'Brasiliana', to samba-jazzy - 'Fim da Linha', 'Petite Valse', 'Deve Ser Amor', to slightly avant garde, 'Babel', 'Maritima' ... (these I have recently discovered - he has a huge discography); finally, he composed in an Afro-Brazilian vein on many songs; en fin, all his compositions and covers are worth playing and listening to ...
Thanks, Dex! Now I am going to go off and listen to some of those pieces you recommend.
ReplyDeleteDex, I've also noticed more guitarists playing Baden Powell, and have started fiddling around with some of his pieces myself. They often seem to fit nicely under the fingers. You mention some I hadn't yet heard -- just listening to them -- I thought Babel particularly good. Also very good, if don't already know it, is Carles Trepat's Homage to Baden Powell: https://youtu.be/Sczg2swbWUc
ReplyDeleteBryan, Steven - wow, a great privilege to introduce fellow players to more Baden Powell on The Music Salon; be sure to check out the motherload here:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.brazil-on-guitar.de/home.html
A German site dedicated to Baden with loads of transcriptions, a discography and an endorsement by Baden Powell's son, Phelippe (also a fine guitarist) - cheers ...