Audio News for December 14, 2012

by | Dec 14, 2012 | Audio News

All Music News Today:
Gustavo Dudamel 2013 Musician of the Year – Musical America has already awarded the conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic (among others) with their Musician of the Year award for next year. The Trumpet Ensemble of his Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra played some Gabrieli and Sousa at the annual award celebration. The full orchestra is playing in Carnegie Hall’s Voices of Latin American festival.
Bicentennials of both Verdi and Wagner Causing Problems in Italy – Italian media critics have been unhappy at La Scala opening their upcoming season with Wagner’s Lohengrin rather than a Verdi opera. Italy’s President even wrote to Music Director Daniel Barenboim rejecting press statements that it was his decision to miss the gala season opener. A Milan daily paper asked if “the Germans would have inaugurated a Wagner year with a Verdi opera?” Barenboim was also on the podium when Cecelia Bartoli returned to La Scala to open the La Scala Philharmonic season. After her last note, a group of crusty, mostly male seniors in the balcony began booing and whistling, signifying that “it-was-better-in-the-old-days.”  Barenboim told everyone to shut up.
Rochester Philharmonic Conductor Fired – Norwegian music director of the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra has been fired from the job he has had for just over a year.  The orchestra currently has a huge deficit. The conductor’s attorney says the Philharmonic created a hostile working environment and the conductor will fight to keep his job.
Mahlermania in Berlin – A “dramatic fantasy with music by Gustav Mahler” is being staged at the West Berlin opera house alternative stage. It has fur coast scattering across the stage in front of a dismembered composing hut. An actress playing Alma Mahler in a fur hat and trench coat, douses herself with champagne. A figure representing the alter-ego of the composer gives out a blood-curdling howl. Alma, the Viennese seductress is reduced to a superficial socialite, and a dancer who is also Alma, waves to the audience Miss American style.
2013 Grawemeyer Award to Multimedia Composer – Dutch composer Michel Van der Aa has wond the 2013 University of Louisville Grawemener Award for Upclose – a multimedia concerto for string orchestra, cello, and video. The award brings $100,000, among the largest purses in the world for composition. The work was a commission from the European Concert Hall Organization and is available on a DVD from Disquiet Media, the composer’s own label. Much of the composer’s work incorporates live music and theater with recordings of both. He is currently collaborating with English novelist David Mitchell on Sunken Garden, a new 3D film.
Atlanta Symphony Swindled Out of $1.4 Million – The Woodruff Arts Center, landlord of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, has found itself $20 million in debt and reduced its musician’s pay accordingly. A mid-level employee apparently embezzled over $1.4 by simbitting fraudulent invoices during hias seven year tenure on the WAC rayroll. Thus far no charges have been filed and the man has admitted to his crime.

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