As medici.tv’s Chief Content Officer I spend a lot of time thinking about classical music—and a lot of time on the internet. Here’s my selection of the top five news items you need to see this week if you want to stay in the know.
View author's page
Reading time estimated : 3 min
The Royal Ballet and Opera eliminate 64 positions (Operawire)
The Royal Ballet and Opera announced plans this week to cut 64 staff positions—roughly 5% of its work force—in an effort “to address long-term financial stability.” The world-renowned institution is not alone: arts organizations across the UK and more broadly around the world have been facing financial strain…
Tom Service’s ode to the SNCF jingle (BBC)
As frequent SNCF travellers, Tom Service’s tribute to the “miracle of micro-composition” four-note SNCF (French rail network) jingle was a big hit on the medici.tv group chat. “With the possible exception of the four notes at the start of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, the four pitches of the SNCF motif are the most powerful, and prevalent, ever conceived.”
A relaxed dress code helps Berliner Phil musicians cope with the heatwave (DW)
As much of Europe suffered through a record-breaking heatwave this past week, the Berliner Philharmoniker relaxed the dress code for their annual open-air concert at the Waldbühne. Dress code modifications allow orchestra members to perform without a jacket, roll up sleeves, or wear tops with sleeves that reach the elbow. You can just about feel the heat radiating off the orchestra members, conductor Kirill Petrenko, soloist Jonas Kaufmann, and audience in the replay of Saturday’s excellent livestream:
Innovative new research project on historical instruments uses 3D printing (RCM)
Researcher Dr. Ingrid Pearson from London’s Royal College of Music has been awarded a £100,000 grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council to fund her work on historical music instruments. Using 3D printing technology, the project aims to create “playable replicas of historical woodwind instruments for performance, recording and public engagement.”
Animated film “The Violinist” earns industry top prize (Variety)
Singaporean film “The Violinist” has walked away with top honors at the Annecy Animation Festival, including awards for best feature and best original soundtrack (by composer Ricky Ho). The film centers around a pair of childhood friends and gifted violinists as they navigate a particularly tumultuous stretch of Singapore’s history in the twentieth century. In an interview with Variety, director Ervin Han talked about animation as the ideal medium for this story: “Because the narrative is built around music and virtuoso violin performances, a live-action film would demand an extraordinary level of realism… Audiences would naturally scrutinise every performance, every bow movement and every musical gesture…. (Animation) invites a degree of suspension of disbelief from the very beginning, allowing the music to function less as a technical performance and more as an emotional language.”
