YO-YO MA LEADS SONY AMATEURS TO CARNEGIE HALL

Cellist Yo-Yo Ma will join the Sony Corporation’s Tokyo-based amateur orchestra in a Carnegie Hall concert on October 14, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The concert will be the group’s debut performance outside of Japan.

The 23-year-old ensemble, whose 108 members are Sony employees and family members of employees, will be led by Daniel Harding, principal guest conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra.

The concert program will feature Mr. Ma, a Sony BMG recording artist, as the soloist in a performance of Dvorák’s Concerto for Cello and Orchestra in B minor, Op. 104. The orchestra will also perform Berlioz’s “Le Corsaire” Overture, Op. 21, and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5 in E minor, Op. 64.

“Bringing the Sony Orchestra to New York to perform on the main stage at Carnegie Hall has been a 10-year dream of mine,” company Chairman Howard Stringer said in a statement.

The concert will benefit three New York cultural groups: the Harlem School of the Arts, Midori & Friends, and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s Arts Education Program.

Staff Reporter of the Sun

KEY TO MECCA’S KAABA SELLS FOR $18M

A late-12th-century iron key to the Kaaba in Mecca sold for $18.1 million with fees, about 20 times its estimated price, at Sotheby’s in London yesterday.

The key to Islam’s most holy pilgrimage site had been estimated to sell for between $790,000 and $1.19 million. It was sold to an English-speaking agent in the room, who refused to give his name or that of his client. The hammer price, without the auction house premium, was $16.2 million.

Sotheby’s said the sale raised a total of $42.5 million with fees, which was a record for an Islamic art sale by the auction house. Two-thirds of the 392 lots were sold.

Similar auctions of Islamic and Indian art by Christie’s International and Bonhams this week will also test demand from collectors as credit losses mount. Islamic and Indian art, with their historical and cultural connections, are traditionally regarded as a combined-sale category by international auction houses.

A 14th-century gold and enamel belt buckle from Moorish Spain sold for $1.95 million, after commission, to a telephone bidder. It had been estimated to fetch more than $1.19 million.

According to Sotheby’s catalog, the 4-inch-long buckle was one of only four recorded pieces of enameled gold surviving from Spain when Andalusia was ruled by the Arabs.

Bloomberg News

LEAVING LAS VEGAS — NEXT STOP, VILNIUS

Zaha Hadid has won an architectural competition for a proposed new Guggenheim Hermitage Museum in Vilnius, Lithuania. The competition is part of a feasibility study that the city of Vilnius commissioned from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and the State Hermitage Museum, to examine the potential economic and cultural impact of building a museum in the capital. The proposed museum would be furnished with exhibitions from the collections of the Guggenheim Foundation and the Hermitage. The existence of the study doesn’t necessarily mean that the museum will end up being built. In the past, the Guggenheim Foundation has conducted similar studies in Guadalajara, Mexico; Rio de Janeiro, and Taichung, Taiwan.

On the same day that they announced the selection of Ms. Hadid’s design, the Guggenheim Foundation and the Hermitage effectively acknowledged the failure of another joint venture, the Guggenheim Hermitage Museum at the Venetian Resort-Hotel-Casino in Las Vegas. The institutions announced that the Las Vegas branch will close on May 11. In seven years, it had a total of 1.1 million visitors.

Staff Reporter of the Sun