ArtsWatch

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Inquirer music critic David Patrick Stearns is about to meet up with the Philadelphia Orchestra on tour in Europe, but in the meantime take a look at photos and a blog on the orchestra's own tour website. (Pictured: The Auditorio de Tenerife in Santa Cruz, Tenerife, in the Canary Islands, designed by Santiago Calatrava.)

Lukas Foss, the composer, conductor and pianist, has died. He was 86. Foss was born in Berlin, educated at Curtis, and pursued an energetic career that expressed itself in a variety of music styles . Read the New York Times obit here.
Foss not only attended Curtis. He visited the school to lead the orchestra while Gary Graffman was director. He received an honorary degree from Curtis in 1988.
Here is what Graffman had to say about Foss this afternoon.
"He was one of those triple threats – when he was at Curtis he was studying piano and composition and conducting. I am told that when he auditioned he also wanted to audition as a flutist, but they thought enough was enough.
"He was an incredible sight-reader. I had the feeling that if you would turn a Strauss score upside down he would read it, which of course was the appeal for Koussevitzky, who relied on Lukas to read contemporary scores people sent to him."
About Foss' diversity as a composer, Graffman said:
"He was not doing it in my opinion because it was the style. He really wanted to experiment and see what he could do, what all of it could be."

(Foss is pictured with Leonard Bernstein at the keyboard in an AP photo.)

Seems to me the economic crisis is going to provide cover for bad management at arts institutions who will now be able to blame forces they portray as out of their control. Take a look at this stunning quote from the president of Brandeis University in explaining why the school proposes to dismantle its Rose Art Museum and sell off 6,000 objects.

“This is not a happy day in the history of Brandeis,” President Jehuda Reinharz said tonight. “The Rose is a jewel. But for the most part it’s a hidden jewel. It does not have great foot traffic and most of the great works we have, we are just not able to exhibit. We felt that, at this point given the recession and the financial crisis, we had no choice.”

In other words, we've spent years neglecting the museum and not realizing its potential, so, well, let's just close it.
Read the whole story in the Boston Globe. It's pretty jaw-dropping.

Turns out Yo-Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman, Anthony McGill and Gabriela Montero were not really playing at the presidential inauguration, the New York Times reports. Well, they were playing, just not that day. Well, they played that day, but that's not the performance everyone heard. They were doing the instrumental version of lip-synching.
Opinions, please.

Classical music had maybe its largest and most captive audience ever this afternoon when John Williams' Air and Simple Gifts debuted just before Barack Obama took the oath of the office.
An ensemble of clarinetist Anthony McGill, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, violinist Itzhak Perlman and pianist Gabriela did the honors.
It was a relatively introspective choice for a moment that might have been relegated to bombast or boilerplate patriotism. Harmonies were hard to hear, but when clarinetist McGill introduced the melody, first in bits, it was unmistakable: "Simple Gifts," the 1848 Shaker song by Elder Joseph Brackett. Copland used it of course in Appalachian Spring (first called "Ballet For Martha," as in Martha Graham).
The Pittsburgh Symphony gives the Williams work another chance to be heard in concerts this weekend for which Montero was already booked to play Rhapsody in Blue.

The adaptation by Williams (pictured) was instrumental, but here are the words:

'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free,
'Tis the gift to come down where you ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gain'd,
To bow and to bend we shan't be asham'd,
To turn, turn will be our delight,
Till by turning, turning we come round right.

Young Concert Artists, the prestigious New York competition, has awarded seven first prizes for its 2008-09 International Auditions, and among them are current Curtis Institute of Music violin student Ray Chen (pictured) and 2008 Curtis grad Bella Hristova.
YCA has been a pretty reliable indicator of great musical things to come since its start in 1961. Among past awardees are Pinchas Zukerman (a 1966 winner), the Tokyo String Quartet (1970) and Emanuel Ax (1973).
Winners receive two of the things that are hardest to get for nascent musicians: professional management and performance opportunities.

Clarinetist Anthony McGill joins Yo-Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman and pianist Gabriela Montero tomorrow in a new work of John Williams just before Obama takes the oath.
McGill, 29, a 2000 Curtis grad who is now a principal clarinetist in the Metropolitan Opera orchestra, said this was "probably the greatest thing I’ve eve been a part of. It is humongous, to be a part of history, any inauguration. This one especially has a little bit of special meaning personally. It’s hard to even talk about it still."
The piece by Williams - he who writes Olympic themes and some most excellent movie scores - is about five minutes long.
"Not to sound cheesy, but definitely once you hear it you know what I am talk about: it sounds like America. It does," said McGill, who grew up in Chicago and moved away for school in 1994.
It's open, it's free, it has a lot of different, very American sounding music. And in its beginning it’s almost sorrowful and in the end triumphant. And yet there’s a lot of nostalgia in the piece as well. Once you recognize the melody, it sounds very American in the best sense of the word."
McGill has played with Yo-Yo Ma before. In 2001, with pianist Mitsuko Uchida, they collaborated on Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time.
"I wanted to play with him again for a long time," said McGill.
Seven or eight years later, not a bad encore.
Here's a review of a recital McGill played here in 2005.

Christoph Eschenbach has canceled his appearance at the keyboard this weekend in a Philadelphia Orchestra chamber-music concert because of what the orchestra says is "a minor hand injury." His conducting activities with the orchestra during the month of January will go on as scheduled, a spokeswoman says.
Pianist Natalie Zhu will appear in his stead in Schumann’s Andante and Variations, WoO 10, for two pianos, two cellos and horn at the concert scheduled for Sunday in the Kimmel's Perelman Theater.

Philadelphia Orchestra president and CEO James Undercofler will depart sooner than previously announced.
Rather than leaving in July, yesterday was his last day in the office. No successor has been found. In fact, the orchestra has only just hired a search firm.
To help cover the leadership gap, the orchestra is putting in place Philadelphia businessman Frank Slattery as acting executive director and CEO. He has started the pro bono post already.
More here.