Rocky 2 Tops Classic FM Poll (Again) For the fourth year in a row Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No. 2 has topped Classic FM's most-loved music poll. "Its emergence - in each year so far of the new century - as the British classical listening public's favourite tune indicates Rachmaninov's position as perhaps the most popular mainstream composer of the last 70 years. Its place was secured by the votes of the commercial station's listeners." The Guardian (UK) 04/13/04

A Rossini Find Worth Finding It was 170 years between performances of Rossini's opera Ermione. Anne Midgette is aware that such long lost finds more often than not prove why they were forgotten. But "for my money, this is the best rediscovery to cross the radar in a long time. Anyone who likes 19th-century Italian opera — from Donizetti to Verdi — should see City Opera's "Ermione." The New York Times 04/13/04 

Better Sport Through Mozart Forget drugs. "A strong dose of Mozart is more likely to enhance athletic performance. This is the revolutionary theory of a Greek cardiologist who, when not attending to affairs of the heart, busies himself as a composer. He recommends music as the best stimulant for sporting success and claims that a series of studies have shown that, used in combination with the right diet, 'it can act as an energy supplement in the attempt to reduce the use of pharmaceutical substances by young people involved in sport'." The Independent (UK) 04/11/04 

Down On The People's Opera "It is not surprising that the latest venture from Raymond Gubbay, the man who brought opera to the Albert Hall, has attracted the sneers of the experts. Savoy opera, intended to offer (relatively) cheap, accessible productions of the classics in the West End, has been accused of undermining London's other opera companies by skimming off the easy stuff and offering less than perfect performances, with cheap labour in the form of young, largely unknown singers. It is the antithesis of what the purists, regardless of the viability of the product, appear to believe opera ought to be." The Guardian (UK) 04/16/04 

Critic: Opera's Cut-Rate Ticket Plan Won't Expand Audience London's Royal Opera House's plans to offer some of its best seats for £10 is not going to widen the audience for opera, says a leading think tank. The critique suggests that "such schemes are more likely to encourage the middle class to go to the opera more often, rather than widen access." The Guardian (UK) 04/13/04 

Miss Manners Vs. The Conductor's Temper In the last year alone, a conductor in Rio de Janeiro has mooned an audience which was booing the opera he was conducting, and another baton-twirler went on a 10-minute tirade against an audience in Florida for some perceived slight or other. The problem of audience behavior and musician backlash is nothing new in the music world, of course, but when conductors begin displaying their posteriors in public, someone needs to step in, and Judith Martin, better known as Miss Manners, figures it might as well be her. In fact, she's proposing a career exchange with the marauding maestros. "It is true that Miss Manners can’t count terribly well, but she looks fetching in evening clothes and has some experience at terrorizing people into silence with a mere glance. How difficult can the rest of it be?" Rockdale (GA) Citizen 04/14/04 

You Notice No One Seemed To Care About The Viola "An 18th-century Italian-made violin reported missing earlier this week was found in an alleyway near the Manhattan bar where its owner had left it, police said. Odin Rathnam, the first-chair violinist for the Harrisburg Symphony Orchestra, had been in New York for a meeting and left the violin, along with a borrowed viola, at Yogi's bar on the Upper West Side. The violin, valued at about $95,000, was made by Bartolomeo Calvaros of Bergamo, Italy, between 1750 and 1755; the viola belonged to a friend." A bar patron actually claims to have hocked the fiddle at a local pawn shop for $600, but doesn't have a good explanation for how it ended up back in the alley. Miami Herald (AP) 04/15/04 

Today's Music: Give Me That Old Time Religion Christian music is big business now. "Sales of praise and worship albums have doubled since 2000, to about 12 million in 2003. While music sales over all slumped last year, including Christian music in general, worship music was up 5 percent. A series of CD's marketed on television by Time-Life, "Songs 4 Worship," has drawn a million subscribers and sold about 8 million CD's since 2000." The New York Times 04/17/04 

A Crescendo Off A Single Piano Note? Lars Vogt is a pianist who seems to believe the impossible. "Power, he says, 'has nothing to do with the force of hitting a key. You see some pianists attack; that's what makes the sound ugly and not resonant,' he says, demonstrating with a welter of loud but indistinct notes. 'If the fingers are very close to the keys, you always have a feeling of drawing the sound out - rather than pushing the sound into the key. You can be a lot more intense in the playing while still making the piano sing.' Sit down and try to do it yourself, and you realize that much of Vogt's success comes from his head rather than his hands. He imagines the sound and wills it into being." Philadelphia Inquirer 04/18/04
 

by Greg Barns

When my friendly CD distributor handed me a recording by the Nashville Symphony Orchestra I was immediately curious.  Nashville is a place most of us in Australia, and in my case the small island

state of Tasmania, associate with country music, not the classical idiom.  But this collection of works by that giant of 20th century American music Elliott Carter, is helping to change any perceptions of Nashville I may have had, or anyone else who buys this CD.