ArtsWatch

Yesterday, on New Year's Eve day, I saw the last Pennsylvania Ballet Nutcracker of the season. It's been billed as a new production, though it didn't look like much of a departure from the previous, two-decade-old version. The tickets we were sold gave us only a partial view of the stage (even though there were hundreds of empty, better seats in the Academy), so it's hard to say anything about Peter Horne's sets. Judanna Lynn's costumes, however, were spectacularly detailed.
The orchestra remains a weak spot in the production. The conducting by Salvatore Scarpa was dull, and some of the playing careless. The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy was particularly disturbing. After the short string introduction, the celesta entered - with the theme from The Pink Panther. Not just once, but twice. It's the sort of gag that's funny in rehearsal. In performance it sounds not merely irreverent, but almost contemptuous of the composer.
Not as bad - though also amateurish - were the very last bars of the entire ballet. Instead of the rising, slow arpeggio Tchaikovsky wrote, the orchestra played a few bars from Auld Lang Syne.
Witty? Creative? Close. But no cigar.

Jerome Ashby, associate principal hornist of the New York Philharmonic and a faculty member at the Curtis Institute of Music, died Dec. 26, Curtis reports. Ashby was one of the few African-American members of a major American orchestra - not only in 1979 when he joined the Philharmonic as associate principal hornist, but also today. He was a native of Charleston, S.C., and attended the Performing Arts High School and the Juilliard School.
As I've written before, it's hard to measure the power telegraphed by the presence of an African-American musician in such a prominent spot. But every anecdotal hint suggests it sends a very strong signal about what's possible in life. We'll never know what the sight and sound of Ashby at the Philharmonic, Curtis and Aspen would have meant to budding classical musicians in the two, three or four decades by which his life was cut short.

No one at the Philadelphia Orchestra has said a word, but the Pioneer Press reports that Kathleen van Bergen is the new executive director of the Schubert Club in St. Paul, Minnesota. Van Bergen, 31, has been vice president of artistic planning at the orchestra since 2004, the job that, just below music director, has the most to do with the music programmed and guest artists heard.
Van Bergen, a New Jersey native, was hired by former orchestra president Joseph H. Kluger. Tall, pleasant and quite smart about artists and repertoire, she was widely considered to be too young for the job when she started. Some players have recently tried to oust her, though their reasons have never been clear to me. Since the planning of repertoire and hiring of guest conductors and soloists happens many years in advance, her work here will be in evidence for several seasons to come.
The Schubert Club, by the way, is more than the small society its title suggests. It operates a musical instrument museum, educational programs and a prestigious concert series.

Telling the New York Times that to stay longer would be to “skirt decency,” the Metropolitan Museum of Art's three-decade leader, Philippe de Montebello, informed his board yesterday that he intends to leave the job. James R. Houghton, chairman of the board, told the Times that “it was a mutual decision and I think the right one.”

The Los Angeles Philharmonic has named Carrie Dennis its new principal violist. Dennis, a Curtis Institute of Music graduate, was wooed away from the Philadelphia Orchestra to the Berlin Philharmonic by Simon Rattle in 2006. Apparently it didn't work out. She starts in Los Angeles in Sept. 2008. Dennis was born in Saratoga Springs in 1977, and came to Curtis at the age of 16 to study violin with Victor Danchenko.

Arts leaders say Mayor Nutter's administration is working on reconstituting the city's Office of Arts and Culture, which is exactly what the Mayor said he would do. Said one insider: "A lot of discussion is going on about what it's going to look like and who is going to run it. It's going to happen."
Nutter's predecessor abolished a separate Office of Arts and Culture, putting some of its activities under the Dept. of Commerce.
Arts. Commerce. Arts. Commerce. We're glad to see that our new mayor understands the distinction.

That's been the backstage rumor lately at the Philadelphia Orchestra - that the Washington, D.C. ensemble is set to name Eschenbach its next music director. It certainly added credibility to the rumor that Nigel Boon, the National's artistic chief, recently stopped by the Kimmel Center to hear several Eschenbach concerts. Now, lots can happen between courting time and sign-on-the-dotted-line time. But Eschenbach will conduct the National in February in a special benefit concert; that might be a good time to expect an announcement.
The NSO recently named Ivan Fischer to a two-year interim position starting in 2008-09 while its search to replace Leonard Slatkin continued, as explained in an article in the Washington Post.
Eschenbach is in the last few months of his contract as music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra. His deal officially ends August 21.
Addendum: Eschenbach didn't take up the Inquirer on a offer to talk about the NSO rumor. But the Philadelphia Orchestra's spokeswoman says: "I’ve spoken with Christoph and with his management about the rumor/blog posting and have been asked to convey back to you that the rumor is untrue and Christoph doesn’t wish to comment on it."

With no blockbuster show to explain the draw, the Philadelphia Museum of Art was packed with youngsters Sunday. Not just five-year-olds attending one of the special programs for children, but also young families, 25- and 45-year-olds and college students. It was kind of amazing to see the line out the door at the east entrance and find not a strand of white or frosted hair in sight.
It was the last day of the Antonio Mancini show, which was bustling. But crowds also gathered to see the Portrait of Professor Benjamin H. Rand, the Eakins work with one foot out the door to Arkansas. It was sold by Jefferson University and is headed for the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, in Bentonville, which is scheduled to open in 2010, but sits at the PMA through May 31. [Addendum: A PMA spokesman says: "We do expect to extend that loan for some time, until it's needed at Crystal Bridges."] It's one of those pieces whose power comes from a level of nuance that does not come across in reproduction.
Also drawing attention was Bruce Nauman's The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths, a recent acquisition (shown here).
Speaking of acquisitions, the Metropolitan Museum of Art is searching for a director, and several bloggers are pointing their fingers at PMA director Anne d'Harnoncourt as a likely successor. You never know of course - bigger sandbox and all that. But Harnoncourt had this to say to me a few months ago about how busy she is in Philadelphia with the museum's expansion plans:
"I have no plans to go anywhere. I'm totally devoted to Philadelphia and the museum and realizing all this potential. There is a lot of art waiting for galleries, a lot of projects waiting for public space, and a lot of the Web site waiting for images."

We're getting our news about the Philadelphia Orchestra these days by reading newspapers in other cities. The Pioneer Press in St. Paul had the story about the Philadelphia Orchestra's artistic vp leaving. Crain's in Detroit told us the other day that the Philadelphia Orchestra is one of a dozen or so orchestras participating in a commissioning program for African American and Latino composers. And today, if you want to read what the orchestra will be doing in Saratoga Springs this summer, you have to pick up the Daily Gazette in Schenectady. As in Schenectady, New York.
The orchestra by the way sent out press releases for none of these news items.
The Philadelphia Orchestra - big in St. Paul, Detroit and Schenectady. But in Philadelphia, no where to be found.