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The Academy of St. Martin in the Fields had plenty before Tuesday's downbeat in Jones Hall. First, Murray Perahia, the announced conductor and piano soloist, withdrew from the 11-city tour after his doctors recommended extended rest to recover from a skin infection. Then his replacement, Sir Neville Marriner, who founded the Academy in 1959, stabbed his left hand with his baton during Tuesday's rehearsal onstage. NEWS | WEB LINKS | IMAGES | SHOP Sir Neville Marriner
American conductor Dennis Russell Davies has been named music director of the Basel Symphony Orchestra, filling a position that had been vacant since 2006.
Weekend Edition Saturday, March 1, 2008 - In the 1950s, more than one big-haired kid from the South shook up the world with the way he played music. Van Cliburn was a lanky and laconic 23-year-old from Texas when he won the first International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow on Apr. 14, 1958...LISTEN to NPR feature
PYONGYANG -- The New York Philharmonic performed "The Star-Spangled Banner" for North Korea's communist elite on Tuesday -- a feat of musical diplomacy aimed at improving ties with the isolated nuclear-armed country that considers the U.S. its mortal enemy. The Philharmonic is the first major American cultural group to perform in the country and the largest delegation from the United States to visit its longtime foe. The unprecedented concert represents a warming in relations between the nations. MORE | LATEST NEWS | SHOP New York Philharmonic
Israel's Eliahu Inbal has been selected to become the chief conductor of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, an official said Wednesday. Inbal, 71, was assuming the post for the 2009-2010 season, replacing Zdenek Macal, who resigned last year after taking the job in 2003, orchestra spokeswoman Barbora Kalosova said. In the past, Inbal served as a music director for Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra from 1974-1990, and in 1995-2001 was the chief conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra of the RAI in Italy's Torino. In 2001, he was named the music director of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra. WEB LINKS | IMAGES | SHOP Eliahu Inbal
The 74-year-old founder and conductor of the Stuttgart Bach Academy is considered a leading expert on the music of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750). He was trained as an organist and church musician. Recently Rilling was one of the speakers at the evangelical convention “Vivace” on classical and contemporary church music in Schwaebisch Gmuend near Stuttgart. He emphasized that the church’s main purpose is to glorify God. He observes, however, that personal feelings are increasingly coming to the fore. In Rilling’s opinion it is not good enough to say, “I had a good time” after a worship service or a church concert. “Shouldn’t we rather say: I had a decisive or a deeply moving time?” asked the conductor. In his opinion entertainment and seriousness should be clearly distinguishable. Rilling is concerned that churches pay too much respect to the tastes of outsiders in their choice of music, for example by organizing Gospel or Pop concerts. The church has such a unique and great message, he said, that there is no need to snuggle up to entertainment elements. Rilling has recorded the complete choral works of Bach, involving more than 1,000 pieces of music and spanning 170 compact discs. He is also co-founder and artistic director of the Oregon Bach Festival.
AS fast as news travels in a world of blogs, downloads and streaming audio, musicians’ reputations can still vary a lot from one place to another. In London and his native Moscow the 35-year-old conductor Vladimir Jurowski ranks as a star.
Sir Colin Davis — “the reluctant king of English music making,” the FT calls him — recounts in conversation a turning point in his life that sounds like a parable for each and all of us and maybe for great nations, too. The year must have been 1962. Davis, who’s now 80, was then 35, a tempestuous young superstar conductor with the BBC and other symphony orchestras in London. He had just come through “the last night at the Proms,” the traditional spring revels, when… MORE.
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