The Virginia Commonwealth University Music Department has extended to May 23 the deadline for registration in its Summer String Camp, an intensive program for students entering grades 6 to 12 this fall. The camp runs from July 6-12 at Maggie Walker Governor's School in Richmond.
For details on curriculum, registration and fees, call the VCU Music Department office at (804) 828-1166 or visit:
http://www.pubinfo.vcu.edu/artweb/music/orch/camp/index.htm
The Library of Congress has added 25 more titles to its National Recording Registry, a collection of audio recordings it rates as most "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant," bringing the registry up to 250 selections.
Headline new entries are Michael Jackson's "Thriller" album of 1982, the sampler of sounds of Earth launched on the Voyager spacecraft in 1977, the original cast recording of Lerner & Loewe's "my Fair Lady" (1956) and New York Mayor Fiorella La Guardia reading the comics during a 1945 newspaper strike.
The only classical title among the latest selections is Rosa Ponselle's rendition of "Casta diva" from Bellini's "Norma," recorded in 1928-29. Previous classical selections in the registry include George Gershwin's 1924 recording of "Rhapsody in Blue;" Sergei Rachmaninoff playing his Piano Concerto No. 2 with Leopold Stokowski conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra (1929); Igor Stravinsky conducting the New York Philharmonic in his "Rite of Spring" (1940); Henry Cowell's New Music Quarterly Recordings series, 30 discs of contemporary works recorded between 1934 and 1949; Harry Partch's "U.S. Highball (a Musical Account of a Transcontinental Hobo Trip)" (1946); and Glenn Gould's 1955 recording of Bach's "Goldberg Variations."
Also on the registry: William Jennings Bryan's "Cross of Gold" speech, re-created on a 1921 disc; the radio dramatization of "War of the Worlds" by Orson Welles' Mercury Theater (1938); Kitty Wells' "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels" (1952); Chuck Berry's "Roll Over, Beethoven" (1956); Alexander Scourby reading the King James version of The Bible (1966); and Firesign Theatre's "Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers" (1970).
The full National Recording Registry can be found here:
http://www.loc.gov/rr/record/nrpb/nrpb-masterlist.html
The Virginia Symphony and its assistant conductor, Matthew Kraemer, have won a $10,000 grant from the Bruno Walter Memorial Foundation, David Nicholson reports in The Daily Press:
http://www.dailypress.com/features/dp-now_kraemer_0510may10,0,3407941.story
Odell Hobbs, the longtime Richmond chorusmaster and former chairman of the Virginia Union University music department, has died at the age of 71.
Dr. Hobbs, a scholar of the Negro spiritual and African-American classical, folk and church music, was a graduate of Howard University and Catholic University of Washington.
He taught at Langston University in Oklahoma from 1960-66 and was interim director of the Tuskegee Choir of Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University) in Alabama from 1960-62. He joined the Virginia Union faculty in 1966 and founded its music department a year later. He served as the department's chairman and director of the Virginia Union Concert Choir until 1991, when he joined the faculty of Florida A&M University and became director of the Florida A&M Concert Choir. After his retirement, he returned to Richmond.
In later life, Dr. Hobbs directed The Choral Society of St. Paul’s College in Lawrenceville, VA, conducted instructional workshops and led several community choirs in the Richmond area.
Dr. Hobbs was a 2005 recipient of Catholic University’s Alumni Achievement Award for outstanding accomplishments in his field.
The Richmond Symphony Chorus, directed by Erin Freeman, will hold auditions for the 2008-09 season from 6:30-9:30 p.m. July 1.
The chorus rehearses from 7:30-10 p.m. Tuesdays. Next season’s repertory includes Handel’s “Messiah” and the holiday-season “Let It Snow” pops concert, Stravinsky’s “Symphony of Psalms” and Bach’s “St. Matthew Passion.” A chamber ensemble from the chorus will sing Haydn’s “Little Organ” Mass.
Prospective members must submit applications by May 31. Applications may be obtained by calling (804) 788-4717, ext. 109. More information is available on the Richmond Symphony’s website, http://www.richmondsymphony.com/
Ruben Zavenovich Vartanyan, the Russian-born conductor who since 1992 had led the Arlington Symphony and its successor, the Arlington Philharmonic, and conducted the Williamsburg Symphonia 
from 1993 until 2003, has died at the age of 71.
Vartanyan, a native of Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) and graduate of Moscow Conservatory, assisted Herbert von Karajan at the Vienna State Opera and Vienna Philharmonic and Kirill Kondrashin at the Moscow Philharmonic. He was principal conductor of the Armenian State Symphony from 1967 until 1971, when he was named principal conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra of Bolivia.
He fell afoul of Soviet authorities after refusing to spy on Bolivia’s government. The Brezhnev regime allowed him to return to conducting at Moscow’s Bolshoi Opera in 1980. During a 1988 guest-conducting engagement in Bolivia, he defected and emigrated to the U.S., settling in Northern Virginia.
Vartanyan taught at Shenandoah College and Conservatory of Music in Winchester and George Mason University in Fairfax. He guest-conducted the Richmond Symphony in 1991.
Vartanyan’s obituary in The Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/10/AR2008051002508.html
Mark Russell Smith conducting
Karen Johnson & Madison Vest, violins
May 9, Bon Air Baptist Church
The Richmond Symphony’s four-part Bach Festival has been a mixed bag, programmatically and executionally, but this weekend’s finale marks a satisfying peak on both counts.
Throughout the series, the orchestra has see-sawed between "historically informed" Bach, fast-paced with low-vibrato strings and period-styled phrasing and ornamentation, and a more measured pace and the kind of modern instrumental sound applied to repertory from Mozart to Shostakovich.
This time the ensemble splits the difference stylistically, with an ornate Suite No. 3 in D major, BWV 1068, its "Air on a G String" rendered as a brisk near-siciliano and other dance movements with similarly folksy inflections, and a more richly toned reading of the Concerto in D minor, BWV 1043, for two violins, strings and continuo.
In the first of three weekend performances, Karen Johnson, the symphony’s concertmaster, and Madison Vest, a 13-year-old prodigy making her second appearance with the orchestra, were assertive, technically assured and nicely contrasting solo voices, Vest’s second violin a shade warmer and more throaty than Johnson’s brilliant first. The respective violin sections followed their tonal leads, and the full string orchestra played with animation and transparency.
Some musicologists rate tone color as incidental or irrelevant in Bach. Conductor Mark Russell Smith and the symphony players disregarded that highly debatable bit of wisdom in the suite, playing up coloristic contrasts between high and low strings and between strings and trumpets to consistently fine effect.
The symphony's strings gave a warm and well-balanced, if occasionally intonationally shaky, account of Heitor Villa-Lobos’ "Bachianas brasileiras" No. 9, the last of the Brazilian composer’s homages to Bach and one of the most rhythmically striking of the set.
A 15-piece ensemble made good-humored and generally fluent work of Arnold Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony No. 1, Op. 9, a prismatic condensation of late-romantic motifs and rhetorical gestures that often sounds like a less than affectionate parody of a Richard Strauss tone poem – "Ein Heldenleben" for marionettes, maybe.
The program repeats at 7 p.m. May 10 at the Chicago Building, St. Paul’s College, in Lawrenceville, and 3 p.m. May 11 at Blackwell Auditorium, Randolph-Macon College, in Ashland. Tickets: $20-$38. Details: (804) 788-1212; http://www.richmondsymphony.com/
