Columnist Joel Stein of the Los Angeles Times has written a great column on how to become an annoying, insufferable, classical music snob.  It’s quite a funny read, and oh so true.  My favorite bit is his concert experience with Mahler’s Sixth Symphony:

I downloaded Leonard Bernstein’s version of Mahler’s Sixth and read the Wikipedia entry about the symphony. This turned out to be really smart because I found out the symphony not only requires a triangle, a glockenspiel and, awesomely, cowbells, but, according to Mahler, a hammer that was to be pounded “brief and mighty, but dull in resonance and with a nonmetallic character (like the fall of an ax).” Somewhere, a child-prodigy percussionist is being yelled at for not pounding a wooden hammer dully enough.

That night, I did a lot of staring at the hammer guy, who, to my delight, was also the triangle and cowbell guy. And his hammer was this gigantic, Wile E. Coyote-sized mallet that he slammed maybe five times onto this enormous wood chopping block on wheels. I couldn’t decide if I was more delighted by the notion of Eschenbach, who conducts this symphony all over the world, trying to persuade airport security to let him board with his carry-on giant hammer, or the idea that the Philharmonic keeps a giant hammer and table in storage just for Mahler’s Sixth. Or that, for the rest of my life, I can talk about the sublime dullness of the hammer, which gets lost on recordings, as soon as Mahler’s Sixth comes up in conversation. Which it will. Because I will bring it up.

Read the entire column here.
Via ArtsJournal.com.

Bramwell Tovey - photo courtesy IMG Artists
(click image for full sized view)

Bramwell Tovey, music director of the Vancouver (B.C.) Symphony, has been appointed Principal Guest Conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl. He will conduct the LA Philharmonic for six subscription concerts and one opera during their summer season at the Hollywood Bowl. In addition to this new engagement, he already conducts the New York Philharmonic for three weeks each July.

UPDATE: Article from the Vancouver Sun.

Full Biography

Carrie Dennis, the phenomenal violist who has (by the anything but grizzled age of 30!) already been Assistant principal violist of the Philadelphia Orchestra, Principal violist of the Berlin Philharmonic, and was just named as Principal violist of the Los Angeles Philharmonic has a couple videos up on youtube. See and hear her for yourself - viola ain’t second fiddle no more! [Read more →]

Carrie Dennis, currently one of the principal violists of the Berlin Philharmonic (you might have seen her on the front desk for Monday’s broadcast of the BPO’s Mahler 9 with Simon Rattle), has been hired as the new principal viola of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. [Read more →]