music maestro Riccardo Muti talks about how our music tradition decays in italy and blooms in china

...and how italians are losing the sense of the "beauty".

it's an interview, where in few words riccardo muti lets me touch the matter of fact that decadence of a country can be felt in that too - letting our music tradition rot here, economically (because governments do not invest), culturally - while it blooms fresh and beautiful in countries like china that decide to invest in it.

i translated in my words, but almost literally.
"italy gave up on its cultural and musical history in particular", says the maestro. "because of a general conceivement of culture that comes not just from contemporary politicians. it comes from a long time back."

"we italians have forgotten that music is not only entertainment, but a spiritual need. this is serious, because it means we're cutting essential roots of our history."

riccardo muti is just back from shanghai china, where he directed the orchestra.
he says chinese are very attentive to our music and are studying in the west to be back in china to play in their own orchestras. because they bet culturally on what we italians think is exhausted.

how sadly true, dear Maestro.

his beautiful website: http://www.riccardomuti.com/homepage.aspx
the link to the article, in italian:
http://www.repubblica.it/spettacoli-e-cultura/2010/01/09/news/muti_l_italia_ha_abdicato_alla_sua_storia_musicale-1888219/?rss

I cannot tell you how the Chicago Symphony Orchestra sings when Muti, its maestro designate, has come to conduct. I can't wait until next season when he takes up full residence. It's why we bit the bullet and bought a season subscription this year (we usually just buy single tickets) -- so we can get the same seats next year when he arrives.

Music is indeed a spiritual need (as is art), and we need to recognize its importance in the life of our nation. Not just classical music, but jazz and other forms. When things get too crazy in our daily lives and in our focus on politics and the economy, there is nothing like good music to take us to a better place.

...that the process begins.

and with all the responsibilities of politics, i must say there's a general decadence of my people' sense of the beauty.
in general.

in favor of commercialized crap.

It's amazing to see how Asians are going for Western classical music. Classical music is one of the fields I translate in, and every assignment introduces me to the name of yet another Japanese professional symphony orchestra.

I was in Tokyo in the summer of 1990, and I happened to walk past one of the major concert halls one Sunday afternoon. I saw disappointed-looking people walking away from the hall and a large, handwritten sign posted near the entrance. When I went to investigate, I saw that the sign was announcing that a concert in which Leonard Bernstein was to have conducted the NHK Symphony Orchestra was canceled due to Bernstein's illness but that it would be rescheduled when he recovered.

As sharp-eyed music lovers will know, that was the summer he died. He never did conduct that concert.

But what was striking about the crowd walking away from that concert hall was that they were overwhelmingly in their twenties and thirties, quite a different scene from the typical American concert hall where the majority of audience members are over fifty.

I credit the Japanese school system for this phenomenon. While they're renowned for their rigorous math and science instruction, they also have a national music curriculum.

Sure, their pop music is as shlocky as everyone else's, but it isn't all they have.

Similar things are happening in China, Taiwan, and Korea. There are now lots of Asians in America's music conservatories and America's symphony orchestras and chamber ensembles.

Recently, there's a lot of talent coming out of Latin America. One of the most recent celebrities in classical music is conductor Gustavo Dudamel, a young (I think he's still in his twenties) product of Venezuela's Sistema, a nationwide program in which children and youth from poor neighborhoods are taught to play instruments. The best players get to join the Simon Bolivar National Youth Orchestra, which has toured internationally to great acclaim.

Latin America is also producing some terrific ballet dancers, both male and female.

and i'll tell you more.
we have a great piano player, Giovanni Allevi, young talent and already world famous author.
he said he had to leave italy to find his own way. because the italian environment is either hostile or too stiff and deadening in the music academies - by which he means that classic music is treated like u would treat a piece into a museum.
while music lives and throbs alive every time you play.

an attitude that produces bad feedback in the average people, choked by tv and radio networks.

the italian institutions suffer from draught (because ill financed by the state) and from a conservative mind that pushes away young talents and young potential public from the river banks of that beauty that music is.
our educational system has its own responsibilities.

i will look closer into Gustavo Dudamel. thanks for quoting.
ciao.

this is giovanni allevi. his style and sound remind me of keith jarrett.
enjoy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKMZ2H_a0z8

the same in a live version, in his casual style. see what i mean?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAMJGlvym-0

at the London Proms. You can see clearly how young both he and the musicians are--and how fantastic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZbJOE9zNjw

I'd love to go see him perform.

are the musical groups, orchestra, band, and chorus. Never are sports cut. Just music.

Another sign is that you can get a piano for free, any day of the week, on Craigs List. Free. Usually, there are several available. Of course, you do have to haul it, but...

"luxury", and unnecessary to society. The only people that appreciate it are "the rich". Therefore, it should be scrapped. :eyes:

Music not only feeds the soul, it's an expression of art. Composers and writers were musing on the same things 200 years ago we struggle with today -- love, lust, betrayal, jealousy -- the gamut of human emotion and experience.

When we decide art is expendable, we rob our society.

Of course, IMHO.

I strongly agree that our local opera is a weapon against poverty.
I graduated with a musician that went on to land some recording deals. He made it, so to speak, on some level.
I often wonder what he may have been able to accomplish if he had been exposed to the Opera along with hard rock, rap, and marching band music.

There's a theater troupe in the Twin Cities that takes Shakespeare plays into jails, homeless shelters, and other non-traditional venues and leads discussions with the audiences afterward. They report that these non-traditional audiences GET the issues explored in the play.

When I volunteered working with street kids in Portland, the Portland Opera used to give away dress rehearsal tickets to the agency. There was never any problem getting the kids to use the tickets.

I've seen the late, lamented Boys' Choir of Harlem perform their varied program of everything from Bach motets to hip-hop dance numbers.

The founder of Venezuela's Sistema was asked why his program emphasized classical music instead of Venezuelan pop music. His answer, "Venezuelan pop music is what the children's parents listen to while they're getting drunk. We want to take them out of their environment and show them something different."

...would not take a seat and listen even if the concert was free and in public square.
music is music. when someone puts a label on it commits a crime.

i listen to mozart and shakira according to the moments.
and you know how so much of the pop owes to paganini music phrases even.

hehe, so do not mind what extremists say. you're right, music feeds.
ciao.