Monday Morning Violin Gossip, Op. 2, No. 2

By Darcy Lewis

Working ahead can be a beautiful thing, especially when doing so allows for a holiday break. However, there can be a downside, as we saw last week, when I caught the news that a Gagliano violin was stolen out of the trunk of a hapless young San Francisco violinist, Sabina Rhee-Nakajima.

The next day, after I wrote and posted my column, it came out that Rhee-Nakajima perpetrated a hoax and that the rare violin was not, in fact, stolen. The violin was spotted by a passerby on the steps of a San Bruno church. Rhee-Nakjima later admitted that the violin was never stolen and that she did, in fact, file a false police report. The violin and three bows were undamaged.

Musician News

Bard College has announced the results of its concerto competition: Nan Jia (cello), Shuangshuang Liu (viola) and Luosha Fang (violin) took top honors. They are all Chinese nationals.

According to San Francisco Classical Voice, the Del Sol Quartet has been named the year's winner of the Chamber Ensemble/Mixed Repertory category for 2005-2006 by Chamber Music America and ASCAP. The quartet members will receive their award at Chamber Music America’s annual conference in New York, Jan. 12-15. The quartet will also play during the conference. The Del Sol was also nominated for a Grammy for their release of the complete string quartet repertory of George Antheil.

1/7/06 – The Richmond Times-Dispatch reported that the warring members of the Audubon Quartet have extended settlement negotiations for a third time. “Two previous one-week extensions were granted shortly before [cellist Clyde] Shaw and [violist Doris] Lederer were to have surrendered their instruments as part of liquidation of their assets. The new extension does not have a deadline. Shaw and Lederer, who are married, filed for bankruptcy when Ehrlich was awarded $611,000 in a wrongful-dismissal judgment. A third member of the Virginia-based quartet, violinist Akemi Takayama, is in separate negotiations with [violinist David] Ehrlich.”

1/15/06 – Violinist Christina Castelli will make her Cleveland Orchestra debut at a special concert where the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Community Service Award will be presented. Castelli won the 2005 Sphinx Competition.

1/4/06 – Timothy Muffitt has been appointed music director of the Greater Lansing (MI) Symphony Orchestra. He is currently music director and conductor of the Baton Rouge Symphony, artistic director of the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra's Casual Classics Series, and music director of the Chautauqua Institution's Music School Festival Orchestra. Muffitt also writes and presents a monthly public-radio program called "The Composer's World."

Orchestra News

1/12/06 - The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra's annual tribute to Martin Luther King, "A King Celebration," will be broadcast on National Public Radio at 8 p.m. (Eastern Time) on Performance Today. ASO Music Director Robert Spano will conduct the concert from King's alma mater, Morehouse College.

1/4/06 - The San Francisco Symphony has been awarded $2 million from the Wallace Foundation.

1/3/06 - Dallas Morning News critic Scott Cantrell believes he has a handle on who might be a front-runner and who definitely isn't in the Dallas Symphony Orchestra's music director search: "Philippe Jordan, a Swiss-born 31-year-old with movie-star good looks, made his Dallas debut with richly expressive performances of Brahms and Strauss... having his mug on billboards wouldn't hurt ticket sales. Claus Peter Flor, the DSO's principal guest conductor since 1999, keeps molding one stunning performance after another... Yan Pascal Tortelier got finely finished playing from the orchestra, in spite of a strange baton technique." And the up-and-coming Andrei Boreyko is making his Dallas debut later this year.

General Music News

1/4/06 – According to the American Symphony Orchestra League, the National Endowment for the Arts received a small but symbolically significant $3.1 million increase in FY06, with the final funding totaling $124.4 million. “Congress and the President approved a $4.4 million boost for the NEA earlier in 2005, but a bite was taken out in late December when legislators opted for a 1 percent across-the-board spending cut for most federal discretionary programs. The increase in NEA funding is targeted to partially restore the Challenge America grant program and to fund the American Masterpieces national initiative.”

1/4/06 – The Metropolitan Opera has received a gift of $25 million. The New York Times reports: "The gift - not the more usual pledge, but money that is available now - is mostly unrestricted and will go immediately toward plugging any deficit this season, a figure that at the moment is expected to be several million dollars, Joseph Volpe, the Met's general manager, said."

1/1/06 - The possible demise of Boston’s WCRB has generated some thought-provoking press coverage. Richard Dyer wrote in the Boston Globe that WCRB-FM, the city's only full-time commercial classical-music radio station, "The prospect has not created the huge clamor you might imagine for a station that reaches a weekly audience of 400,000 listeners. Many music lovers, this writer included, don't listen to WCRB at all because its broadcast formula of Classical Music Lite, incessantly interrupted by commercials, doesn't appeal." Dyer notes that "it is easy to poke fun at WCRB. Large works are rarely played on the air, except in broadcasts from the Boston Symphony Orchestra ... Background information is in short supply, and when it is offered, it comes as happy talk." But Dyer writes of the likely format change that "the loss to the BSO and its public would be incalculable ... The BSO is a minority shareholder in WCRB and stands to make money from the sale, but [BSO Managing Director Mark] Volpe is worried about it. 'Of course we will benefit financially,' he says, 'but we are also concerned about the greater good of the whole Boston arts community.' "

Then, on Jan. 6, the Globe ran a response letter from reader Steven Kirstein: "With nearly half a dozen critics at the Globe devoted to the disposable sludge that is today's pop culture, one would have hoped for a more spirited defense of the one dependable oasis on the radio dial. Dyer decries WCRB's format as classical lite and would have classical music available only in the 'serious' dosages of complete symphonic works or the unapproachable dissonance of Schoenberg, an acquired taste at best. Heaven forbid someone might actually appreciate a station where, at any given point, one might hear a Chopin nocturne, Saint-Saens' 'Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso,' or even the first movement of the Mendelssohn violin concerto ... And to those who would change WCRB's format, isn't being in the top four of audiences in the market good enough?"

1/02/06 – What’s your favorite work by Mozart? The BBC recently polled 103,000 Classic FM listeners. The Clarinet Concerto came out on top, followed by the Requiem, the Ave Verum Corpus, Piano Concerto No. 21 and the Marriage of Figaro. When WFMT in Chicago asked for similar feedback during their November pledge drive, I recall the Requiem and Figaro being preferred by a fairly wide margin, with far fewer mentions of the Clarinet Concerto.

Finally, check in next week to learn the results of DNA testing on a skull alleged to be Mozart’s. Is it really the composer’s? The world is waiting….

Link to previous columns