“Every year brings us new concerts and recordings, scandals and obsessions,” writes Brian Wise in Monday’s (12/16) WQXR blog. Among Wise’s “arbitrarily granted citations for the classical music industry in 2013”: “Biggest Financial Woe: New York City Opera’s announcement on Oct. 3 that it was closing after a failed campaign to raise enough funds for its 2014 season was particularly tragic in its implications. Best Use of Celebrity Cash: To Taylor Swift for her $100,000 donation to the Nashville Symphony in December. Podium Pharmacist of 2013: To Michael Tilson Thomas, who … left the stage in the middle of a performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 9 [by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra] and returned with a handful of cough drops, which he lobbed at the offenders in the seats below. TMZ Award: To Joshua Bell for turning up as a judge for the Miss America contest in September. Precociousness Plaque: To Caroline Shaw, a 30-year-old composer and grad student, who became the youngest-ever winner of the Pulitzer Prize in music for her Partita for 8 Voices. Lemons out of Lemonade Award: To the Philadelphia Orchestra, for organizing a free, impromptu concert at Verizon Hall in Philadelphia, the night it was scheduled to open the Carnegie Hall season, before the concert was cancelled due to a stagehand strike.”
Posted December 18, 2013
