The newness of everything is a very strange ding. I listen to WQXR and WMHT both listener supported radio stations and as free of ads as possible. I heard that WQXR would be broadcasting Sir Simon Rattle’s final Carnegie Hall concert as music director of the Berlin Philharmonic. That's no…uumm..tonight!?? No. It was Wednesday, November 9, 2016, 8 PM. Yet it is as new. If you tune in (Note: Archive streaming rights for this broadcast have expired.) Opinions are various about Sir Simon but methinks you are in a minority if you don't think that Rattle was the best thing to come the Berlin Phil's way since…better not finish that sentence and get in trouble...
Rattle has always championed the new. Not/never out of cunning brinkmanship, simply, that is/and was the only way to go. Music is littered (thankfully not clogged, though sometimes maybe! ) with those critics who couldn't see beyond that night's program. And doesn't that craving for being the first in line get justly mis-labelled under 'cunning brinkmanship'? Not criticizing brinkmanship per se but look what happened to Dauntless Little John..
Forgive the shorthand, but the following events you would very unlikely get a seat anywhere in the world in the sold-out house even London. I guess 'New Yorkers' would never allow themselves to be standing anywhere but at The Proms.
July 25-Jarvis Cocker and friends: Scott Walker
Aug 25- Riccardo Chailly
Aug 28
La clemenza di Tito
Mozart's last opera with some of the most sublime music of all time. You can 'YouTube' it but to hear those notes live is an experience that you will never forget.
Aug 30
Renée Fleming joins Sakari Oramo and the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra for music by Barber and Strauss.
Sept 1
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra returns to the Proms for the first time in almost a decade, under Chief Conductor Daniele Gatti. Bruckner Ninth Symphony
Sept 2- Mahler 4th
Sept 4
The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and Manfred Honeck perform Mahler’s First Symphony
{I know you'll be amazing! Don't screw up Pittsburgh. You'll get the Irish Spring soap treatment over your bows on return if u do:) !}
Sept 7
Daniel Harding conducts the Vienna Philharmonic- Mahler’s Sixth.
Daniel Harding was on the scene eons before Dudamel. Long time ago. Harding conducted Mahler's uncompleted 10th in Berlin just after Giuseppe Sinopoli died. Never to be forgotten. In fairness maestros.
then later that evening, Prom 73: András Schiff performs Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier
Sept 8
Pianist Emanuel Ax joins the Vienna Philharmonic for its second Prom this season, under Michael Tilson Thomas.
Now: where were we? A group of very courageous ducks are performing Aristophanes The Frogs (without a license) somewhere near the Loeb Boathouse. No more info on that. Just follow the strange quack. How hard could that be in NYC?
Next on tonight's show we have a new presenter !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Quack indeed! How dare you.
I should have stuck to 'venison' jokes. We have an understanding upstate.
