Fire at Berlin Philharmonic home

Associated Press reported this a couple of hours ago:

BERLIN - A fire broke out Tuesday at the Berlin Philharmonic's home, sending thick smoke pouring from the crest of the iconic downtown building as firefighters and musicians rushed to save instruments.

The blaze broke out beneath the roof of the building directly over the main concert hall, which seats 2,500 and is famed for its extraordinary acoustics. The cause was not immediately clear, said Marco Trenn, a spokesman for Berlin firefighters. No flames were visible from the outside.

"We don't believe anyone is in danger, as the fire appears to be contained to the roof," Trenn said. No instruments were believed to be in danger either, he added.

Firefighters rushed to the scene after several calls alerting them to the blaze at 2:05 p.m. (8:05 a.m. EDT), Trenn said. Fire officials said some 170 firefighters were sent.

Bassoonist Stefan Schweigert said he had arrived at 2:20 p.m. (8:20 a.m. EDT) to find the fire already under way.

Nevertheless, musicians were allowed into the building to remove instruments they had left in their lockers overnight following Monday's rehearsal, assisted by firefighters.

"We just tried to save the instruments that were locked in the musicians' lockers," Schweigert said, noting that many of the instruments, such as the pianos and timpani, are too large to be removed.

While in the main concert hall and the musicians' locker rooms behind it, Schweigert said he could not see any visible damage but could smell smoke.

The hills are alive...

...or maybe not!

I have to admit that I'm probably the only person in the world who has never seen the film "The Sound of Music". Lots of folks love the film, of course, and it generates a lot of tourist activity in Salzburg--a little too much for the taste of some local residents. And new plans to capitalize on the film's success are meeting with opposition.

From AP:

- Plans to run a hotel out of a former home of the von Trapp family immortalized in the movie "The Sound of Music" have triggered fierce resistance from neighbors who fear tourists will tie up traffic and make a nuisance of themselves.

"We will fight this with all means at our disposal," said Andreas Braunbruck, who lives near the Villa Trapp in a part of Salzburg already teeming with "Sound of Music" tourists seeking a glimpse of the house.

"Buses and cars are constantly in the street in front of our homes as it is," he told Austrian television on Sunday.

The 125-year-old, pale yellow villa trimmed in white and black is perched on the outskirts of Salzburg, where the 1965 film starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer was made.

Wilfried Haslauer, a Salzburg tourism official, announced plans last week to refashion the villa into a hotel. Haslauer said the park surrounding the villa also will be open to the public. He said refreshments and souvenirs will be sold in a pavilion to be built there, and that original furnishings that once belonged to the family would be displayed.

Although the Salzburg villa is the real deal, it does not appear in the movie, which used a lakeside castle and other locations for the exterior garden scenes. All of the interior shots were filmed in a Hollywood studio, and the famous opening scene of Andrews running across an alpine meadow was shot over the border in Bavaria, Germany.

Who needs that conductor anyway?

Orchestra conductors often have troubled relationships with their musicians. I wonder how the musicians would respond to this...the report is from Associated Press:

DETROIT - The lights dimmed, the sold-out hall grew hushed and out walked the conductor — shiny, white and 4 feet, 3 inches tall.

ASIMO, a robot designed by Honda Motor Co., met its latest challenge Tuesday evening: Conducting the Detroit Symphony in a performance of "The Impossible Dream" from "Man of La Mancha."

Honda spokeswoman Alicia Jones said it was the first time ASIMO has conducted an orchestra, and it may be the first time any robot has conducted a live performance. ASIMO stands for Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility.

ASIMO has its limits. ASIMO's engineers programmed the robot to mimic Charles Burke, the Detroit Symphony's education director, as he conducted the piece in front of a pianist about six months ago. But it can't respond to the musicians.

During the first rehearsal, the orchestra lost its place when ASIMO began to slow the tempo, something a human conductor would have sensed and corrected, said bassist Larry Hutchinson.

"It's not a communicative device. It simply is programmed to do a sense of gestures," said Leonard Slatkin, the orchestra's musical director. "If the orchestra decides to go faster, there's nothing the robot can do about it. Hopefully, I keep that under control."

But several musicians also said ASIMO was more realistic than they expected.

"The movements are still a little stiff, but very humanlike, much more fluid than I thought," Hutchinson said.

Honda has been developing walking robots since 1986. The latest version of ASIMO debuted last year. Honda eventually intends its robots to be companions for the elderly and others in need, such as schoolchildren navigating crosswalks. ASIMO can run, walk on uneven slopes and respond to simple voice commands. It can also recognize faces with its camera eyes.

Honda brought the robot to Detroit to highlight its recent $1 million gift to the orchestra for a music education fund.

China Philharmonic plays at the Vatican

From AP:

ROME - The conductor leading the China Philharmonic Orchestra in a landmark concert Wednesday at the Vatican said he feels honored to perform for the pope, saying music breaks down cultural barriers.

Ties between the Vatican and China's communist government have been strained for decades, and the concert could indicate warming relations.

"Music is beyond any religion, culture, language, and I would say music is the language of God because language is understanding each other," conductor Yu Long told The Associated Press in an interview before the Wednesday evening concert.

He said he wanted to send a message to the Chinese people about the value of understanding Western culture — and added: "especially I hope the whole world can also understand us."

Yu is leading the 75-member orchestra in Mozart's "Requiem" and a Chinese folk song, "Jasmine Flower."

"I am especially honored to perform at the Vatican and for the pope," he said, calling it a "double honor" because Pope Benedict XVI is a Mozart expert.

Gil Shaham taught me something new

I was chatting with violinist Gil Shaham by phone yesterday (for an interview which will air soon on my station) about his recent recording of the Butterly Lovers Violin Concerto. I didn't realize that this concerto is the most programmed orchestral work in the world! Probably a majority of the perfomances originate in Asia, of course, but according to Gil, if you go to China, you'll hear the piece almost everywhere you go.

The fact that the piece is based on a well-known legend has a lot to do with the piece's popularity--it has really struck a chord with the people of China.

Gil recorded the concerto with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra on his own record label, Canary Classics.

New American Choral Music web site launched

American choral music composed between 1870 and 1923 is the focus of a new web site that's been launched by the Library of Congress music division, in collaboration with the American Choral Director's Association.

Composers featured on the site are:

Amy Beach
Dudley Buck
George Whitefield Chadwick
William W. Gilchrist
Mabel Wheeler Daniels
R. Nathaniel Dett
Margaret Ruthven Lang
Horation William Parker

In addition to photos and biographies of each composer, there is choral sheet music (in the public domain) by each that can be downloaded either for study, or for performance use by choirs. Available are both sacred and secular pieces in a variety of combinations of voices.

The address: http://memory.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/html/choralmusic/

Hilary Hahn tries something new

From the Christian Science Monitor:

New York - In a grainy YouTube video shot from the rear of a music club, Hilary Hahn, the Grammy-winning classical violinist, is in the midst of a rock jam, fiddling furiously as she shares the stage with the Texas band called ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead. As the song reaches its peak, Hahn, clad in black jeans and T-shirt, moves to center stage and kneels down to strike a classic rocker pose with her electric violin as the crowd cheers.

The moment is uncharacteristic, at least to anyone familiar with the more prim evening-gown images featured on Hahn's album covers and publicity shots. It's also part of a growing series of sideline projects that the 28-year-old violinist has forged with the indie-rock community.

In recent years she has performed alongside singer-songwriters Josh Ritter and Tom Brosseau and been featured in James Newton Howard's folk-inspired soundtrack to the 2004 film "The Village." Hahn believes these projects allow her to keep fresh as a musician, exploring the now-bygone classical musician's art of improvisation while gathering new ideas that she brings back to her classical performances.

Hahn believes that playing indie-rock helps her become more aware of harmonies and structures when she returns to the classical repertoire. Ritter, in turn, finds that Hahn takes him out of his comfort zone: "When I'm playing with my own band, there are moments to be comfortable with a song night to night," he says. "But I also enjoy the uncertainty."

One more shot at Canada

Lest anyone doubt that the Philistines are in charge of CBC radio, here are portions of an article in the Vancouver Sun written by Canadian composer Janet Danielson. Suffice it to say that the current situation at CBC Radio 2--including the disbanding of the CBC Radio Orchestra--is a combination of political correctness, dumbing down, and serving interests other than those of the listeners (an unfortunate practice which exists in American public radio as well). Here's a portion of what she had to say:

It is not altogether clear who is served by the CBC's recent decision to scrap its Radio Orchestra.
The official reason is that it is too expensive. The CBC's government support is now down to 1970's levels, less than half the average per capita national radio funding of the top 18 OECD countries.

The only lower-funded national radio (excluding U.S.A.'s NPR) is that of New Zealand, which in 1989 made the clever move of turning its radio orchestra into a Crown corporation. It costs roughly $600,000 a year to keep the CBC Radio Orchestra running, which is 0.0035 per cent of the total CBC budget and 0.3 per cent of the Radio Canada budget. Out of the annual $50 per capita cost of the CBC, this amounts to two cents per Canadian.



Radio 2 is also claiming better to reflect the people and music of Canada by presenting a broader range of genres. The scrapping of the CBC Radio Orchestra will enable it to direct funds towards this broader range of genres. The original mandate of the CBC to "inform, enlighten and entertain" does not, according to the CBC 2005 Arts & Culture Survey, reflect the "new reality."

Classical music, we are told, is one genre among many, and the paternalism of the Massey and Fowler commissions which shaped the CBC in the 1950s has become odious. The exclusively European roots of classical music, and its association with colonialism and elitism, make it less and less relevant to the changing Canadian scene.

Claims of beauty, profundity or originality are dismissed as mere window-dressing by an elite bent on retaining cultural dominance.

But in 2008, what social group constitutes Canada's elite?

Its cultural workers, earning on average $13,000 a year from their art? Recent immigrants, whose children are flooding into conservatories, music festivals, and youth orchestras?

Concertgoers, who pay far less for concert tickets than hockey fans pay to watch a game? The elderly who were promised CBC Radio 2 as a university in their own homes and are now disappointed?

And what about the majority of Radio 2 listeners, who, according to the CBC's own 2005 survey, asked for less of today's popular music and the same or more classical music?

Have we really reached the point where to voice a preference for classical music is to disenfranchise oneself?



The axing of the CBC Radio Orchestra may be best read as an act of iconoclasm. Canadian listeners feel betrayed, especially when they see how enthusiastically the real elites -- the huge multinational music companies -- support the changes at Radio 2.

The CBC Radio Orchestra gave Canadians more than their two cents' worth, and we want it back.

Schools' failure to teach the arts

This article appeared in yesterday's edition of the the British newpaper The Telegraph. I think the point is beautifully made, and certainly applies here in the U.S. as well. The writer of the article is Chris Hastings. Portions of the article are below.

An entire generation has been left incapable of understanding or enjoying the arts because of decades of neglect by Britain's schools, according to the director of the National Theatre.

Nicholas Hytner said the failure to provide children with an adequate education in music and drama was a scandal whose effects were being felt throughout the arts community.

He said it could take 20 years to put right, adding that arts organisations should not "dumb down" their productions to attract wider audiences.

In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph, Mr Hytner said: "It is an absolute scandal, an absolute scandal. Every theatre in the country is really busting a gut with departments filled with fantastically idealistic and committed people trying to undo the damage which has been done by decades of neglect in schools.

"A generation have been deprived of the tools they should have been given to open a door [to the arts] that can otherwise seem quite daunting."

The comments by Mr Hytner coincide with concerns that the arts are being squeezed off the curriculum either because they are considered too expensive, or because schools are too busy testing children in other subjects, such as maths and English.

Last year Sir Richard Eyre, a former director of the NT, warned of the existence of a cultural "apartheid" because children did not have access to decent music and drama lessons.

Ministers have introduced a series of measures to tackle the problem, including a programme to give schoolchildren five hours of culture a week, being piloted in 10 areas of the country. Some critics say the schemes are little more than spin.

Mr Hytner, 51, welcomed the Government's renewed interest in the arts, but said it was vital that opportunities be there for every child.

He singled out the damage done to classical music and contrasted the situation in Britain with that in Venezuela, which had made classical music a priority and was producing world-class musicians.

"As far as the demise of classical music is concerned, it happened between 1979 and 1992. But we can turn things around. It will, however, take 10 or 20 years."