Maulina steps cautiously into the Wagner zone.
There are few signs of progress in the Minnesota Orchestra crisis. Yesterday, the orchestra management announced what it described as a new offer; this proposal turned out to be more or less the same as one the players had rejected some weeks before. Drew McManus is skeptical of the latest management move. [Update: Michael Cooper has a nuanced report in the Times.]… Anne Midgette takes note of the prominence of women in Washington DC's classical-music scene; meanwhile, Vasily Petrenko has made repulsively sexist comments on the subject of female conductors. (He has since ventured a not very coherent apology.) … The Banff International String Quartet Competition is moving into its final rounds — large quantities of streaming audio and video are available on the Banff website…. David Weininger previews the new-music season in Boston…. A starry array of new-music specialists — Steven Schick, the Calder Quartet, Claire Chase, Roomful of Teeth — will assemble for the Carlsbad Music Festival, Sept. 20-22…. Resonant Bodies, a new festival of contemporary vocal music, opens in Brooklyn on Sept. 5…. Trinity Wall Street's monumental Britten series begins on Sept. 5 with a lunchtime concert of the Sinfonietta, Nocturne, and Phaedra; Nicholas Phan and Virginia Warnken are the soloists. Here's a calendar of Trinity's Britten offerings — notice the special Phan event on Sept. 21. The tenor will also be singing Britten in Chicago, as part of the Collaborative Works Festival in mid-September.