On November 29th, the auction house Sotheby’s will be offering the complete manuscript of Gustav Mahler’s Second Symphony (the “Resurrection”) at auction from their London saleroom. Sotheby’s predict it will sell in excess of £3.5 million, the highest ever estimation for a musical manuscript offered at auction. Late in August, I met Simon Maguire, Sotheby’s […]
Category: Report
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Buried
From 1991 to 1994, Carlos Sandoval, a man with thick grey hair, brown eyes, and wide shoulders, was an assistant to the American-Mexican maverick composer Conlon Nancarrow. It was a defining, if chaotic, time for Sandoval. “[Nancarrow] was always drinking, composing, reading, just throwing away books, newspapers, scores, whatever,” he said. Nancarrow’s tendency to discard […]
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On the Road
When I received an email with an assignment to follow a piano technician during the course of his work, to explore the instruments and places he encountered, I found it hard to resist. I spent a few days on the road in Seattle with Stephen Brady—a soft-spoken, no-nonsense, award-winning piano technician who, in his spare […]
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I Am Singing About Myself
Introduction On a late night this past spring, I saw a headline in The Independent that would soon provoke exasperation in parts of the opera world, outrage in others: “Otello: Why is a white tenor leading the Royal Opera House’s new production?” I was troubled, too: the headline I’d expected to see was, “ ‘I […]
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Repression and Reduction
On April 29, 2016, the jury of a youth literature competition organized by the human rights group Memorial arrived at Moscow’s Dom Kino along with a group of participating schoolchildren. In front of the building, they were attacked by nationalist hooligans hurling eggs and paint. Among those present was the acclaimed novelist Lyudmila Ulitskaya, herself […]
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The Broken Musician
“It was impossible for me to tell people, ‘Speak louder, shout, because I am deaf.’ Oh, how could I possibly admit a weakness in the one sense which should be more perfect in me than in others.” Beethoven, Heiligenstadt Testament, 1802 Musicians expire. For some lucky members of the profession, the musical expiry coincides with […]
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Doctor Baton
In pop culture, there are usually two ways of looking at the conductor’s baton. One way is as the focal point of his or her authority and magic: as Bernstein said, the stick as a “an instrument of meaning in its tiniest moment.” The other way is as a symbol of the conductor’s pretension and […]
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Outsourced Scores
The full score of Miroslav Snrka’s opera “South Pole,” which premiered this winter at the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich, is 1,000 pages long. Each of its two volumes weighs over eight pounds. The parts for 77 unique voices add up to close to 3,000 pages. Every composer knows how frustrating and time-consuming the preparation […]
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Music for a New World
Technology is changing the recorded music business, as it is changing all businesses. 10 years ago, music piracy was seen as the great threat to the future of music. It’s since been largely replaced by music streaming—in the minds of many musicians, not much of an improvement. For classical musicians in particular, this seems a […]
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“All That Matters Is How Good It Sounds”
1. Prelude In 2007, I was introduced to the Venezuelan youth orchestra training program El Sistema. I’m the founder of the Music-in-Education program and the Center for Music-in-Education at the New England Conservatory, and the program was presented to me as a radical shift in the scope and focus of international youth orchestra development. At […]