Great composer, shame he couldn't play

"He is one of the world's most eminent composers, who cemented his reputation at the vanguard of the English Romantic movement with compositions such as the Enigma Variations and the Pomp and Circumstance marches.


But Edward Elgar was also a terrible trombone player, it has now transpired, even though he wrote the most beautiful melodies for the instrument in his compositions."

For the full story, please see the Independent.

Noisy parties no problem for musical brains

"If you struggle to follow the conversation at noisy parties, music lessons might help. Nina Kraus and colleagues at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, have previously shown that playing an instrument seems to enhance our ability to pick up emotional cues in conversation.

Now her team has found differences in brain activity that they say make musicians better at picking out speech from background noise."

For the full story, please see the New Scientist.

Recounting the history of opera -- one tweet at a time

"The San Diego Opera wants to find out and has launched a Twitter project in which it will tweet about everything from Monteverdi to Mozart to Philip Glass on a daily basis. With more than 400 years to cover -- and at a rate of two tweets per day -- the project could take years to finish."

For the full story, please see the Los Angeles Times.

Ten Questions For A Critic: The State Of Classical Music

"I asked Anne Midgette, the classical music critic of the Washington Post, to join me for a glance back at the last ten years, to remember the bumps in the road, a few milestone events and the trends that emerged out of a flurry of changes. Here are 10 questions on the state of classical music in the past decade (listen right here and read more after the jump). Let us know what you think, and what we missed..."

For the full story please see npr.org.

Hollywood Swoons Over That Hair, That Baton

"They drew the line at the bobble-head doll. But the Los Angeles Philharmonic shop offers plenty of mugs and T-shirts splashed with the arms-outstretched image of its new maestro, Gustavo Dudamel. In fact, his face has been plastered across town on buses, billboards and banners marching down Sunset Strip. Children mob him for autographs. (He signs them all.) Fireworks spelled out his name at a megaconcert to introduce him to the city."

For the full story please see the New York Times.

Musical America announces 2010 awards

"Musical America, the country’s leading source of information on all things related to classical music, whether in its printed directory or online at MusicalAmerica.com, has announced its awards for 2010.

They’re a distinguished group. Conductor Riccardo Muti, who has led most of the world’s great orchestras at one time or another and been music director for a few of the most distinguished, is 2010’s Musician of the Year.” His fellows are composer Louis Andriessen, violinist Joshua Bell, mezzo-soprano Elina Garanca, and “collaborative pianist” Warren Jones; it’s hard to argue with any of the choices."

For the full story, please see the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Four letters of Franz Liszt to Espérance von Schwartz

The Netherlands Music Institute is the proud owner of a small but interesting Liszt collection, containing music manuscripts, correspondence and other items. In order to make some of this easily accessible to Liszt scholars and Liszt enthusiasts, the NMI has launched a new web presentation:

Four letters of Franz Liszt to Espérance von Schwartz.

This contains four letters by Liszt to Baroness von Schwartz, an interesting personality who has received very little attention in the Liszt literature. Under the pen name Elpis Melena she had some fame as a writer, philanthropist, and as a political activist.

In this presentation the letters are reproduced as high resolution images, in transcription and translation, and accompanied by extensive commentary by musicologist Lodewijk Muns, NMI archivist and researcher.