Sounding off on the South Bank
You love him or hate him, but Norman Lebrecht can always be counted on to be full of ... strong opinions about the music world he surveys! From Sounding off on the South Bank his most recent column for La Scena Musicale, he writes of an unusual letter written in support of "the restoration of the acoustic of the Royal Festival Hall to be the chief priority in the coming refurbishment of London’s South Bank." The thing that establishes this letter as unusual is that it was signed by 30 of the world's top conductors (including Paavo).
Excerpt
"The roll of names includes such sworn enemies as Daniel Barenboim and Christian Thielemann; Riccardo Muti and most other Italian maestri; Simon Rattle and several of his less guarded professional critics. What unites them is a concern for London’s premier concert venue and a fear that it may suffer as a result of declining political regard for classical music and the general decay in British arts policy
"The sheet bearing these 30 names is a rare, if not unique, testament of baton solidarity. Offered for sale at Sotheby’s it could raise enough money to pay … oh, I’d guess, the undisclosed salary of English National Opera’s inauspicious new music director.
"Conductors don’t come cheap, and they don’t come wholesale. If you think that 30 of them appealing for the renewal of a concert hall is like footballers voting for better pitches and turkeys for the abolition of Christmas, think again. A hall, to a conductor, is just a place of work, not something to get worked up about. You can count on the fingers of two hands the halls conductors value, and it is by no means a foregone conclusion that the Royal Festival Hall, with its deficient sound and Balkan levels of backstage comfort, would come out as one of their favourites.
"That it does is a mark of London’s enduring centrality as a capital of orchestral music, and to the inadequacy of the Barbican and Royal Albert Hall as first-choice facilities for touring bands. The Barbican is too small for profit – 800 seats fewer than RFH – and the Albert is not and never will be a place where symphony seekers will throng year round. Like it or not, the Festival Hall has history, geography, good sightlines and a sense of occasion. It’s the best of a poor bunch and the world’s swagger-sticks are united in its defence - to the extent that some of them, I gather, have privately offered to make a financial contribution towards the acoustic refit."...
Excerpt
"The roll of names includes such sworn enemies as Daniel Barenboim and Christian Thielemann; Riccardo Muti and most other Italian maestri; Simon Rattle and several of his less guarded professional critics. What unites them is a concern for London’s premier concert venue and a fear that it may suffer as a result of declining political regard for classical music and the general decay in British arts policy
"The sheet bearing these 30 names is a rare, if not unique, testament of baton solidarity. Offered for sale at Sotheby’s it could raise enough money to pay … oh, I’d guess, the undisclosed salary of English National Opera’s inauspicious new music director.
"Conductors don’t come cheap, and they don’t come wholesale. If you think that 30 of them appealing for the renewal of a concert hall is like footballers voting for better pitches and turkeys for the abolition of Christmas, think again. A hall, to a conductor, is just a place of work, not something to get worked up about. You can count on the fingers of two hands the halls conductors value, and it is by no means a foregone conclusion that the Royal Festival Hall, with its deficient sound and Balkan levels of backstage comfort, would come out as one of their favourites.
"That it does is a mark of London’s enduring centrality as a capital of orchestral music, and to the inadequacy of the Barbican and Royal Albert Hall as first-choice facilities for touring bands. The Barbican is too small for profit – 800 seats fewer than RFH – and the Albert is not and never will be a place where symphony seekers will throng year round. Like it or not, the Festival Hall has history, geography, good sightlines and a sense of occasion. It’s the best of a poor bunch and the world’s swagger-sticks are united in its defence - to the extent that some of them, I gather, have privately offered to make a financial contribution towards the acoustic refit."...
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