The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, has launched a new strategy on music education, in and out of schools. The low-cost initiative, announced today on London’s South Bank, puts cash into new links between local authorities and grass roots music making.
Two months before a general election, the arts are low in the pecking order and music is bottom of the pile. So it’s good to applaud one politician at least who takes time out of the daily cut and thrust and puts a little song into the people’s hearts.
Read fuller reports here and here.
It has been a busy winter, with artists rushing from one team to another searching for stability. The headline moves were Lang Lang and Dudamel. Here are some more:
Artist From To
Lang Lang DG Sony
The Dude A/Holt VW Mgement
Edward Gardner IMG Artists A/Holt
Andreas Scholl H/Mundi Decca
Alexandre Tharaud H/Mundi Virgin Classics
Elizabeth Watts Sony H/Mundi
Kazushi Ono IMG Artists VW Mgement
Simone Dinnerstein Telarc Sony
Yundi Li DG EMI
Aled Jones Novello
Jean-Guihen Queyras Opus-3 Artists
Gerald Barry OUP Schott
Ingrid Fliter H/Parrott Intermusica
Jan Vogler IMG Artists
Feel free to send in any more you may know about.
As the concert world digests Gustavo Dudamel’s big career move, broken exclusively here, managers are reflecting on the covert pressures the conductor has faced since his agent and friend Mark Newbanks walked out of Askonas Holt four months ago.
During that time, Newbanks was on silent gardening leave and Holt were wheeling out the big guns of Simon Rattle and others to persuade the dude to stay with the big firm. For a young conductor to resist well-meant advice from the leaders of his profession takes a good deal of guts and self-confidence.
But that was not the only source of pressure. The Dude’s record label, Deutsche Grammophon, operates a talent agency of its own – run by defectors from IMG Artists. Over the past four months, Dudamel will have received hints and winks that his record career would be best served if he transferred his lucrative concert commissions to his record stable.
To his credit, he resisted all such blandishments and moved with a man he trusted to an agency he had probably never heard of before.
Van Walsum Management moved switfly today to capitalise on the Dudamel coup, announcing that it has signed up Kazushi Ono, chief conductor at Lyon Opera – captured from IMG Artists. Ono is becoming quite a player on European opera scene. The battle for batons is heating up nicely. Watch this space for more.
Sad news from France that Bernard Coutaz has died. Founder of Harmonia Mundi, more than 50 years ago, he started out by driving a 2CV with recording equipment around the great church organs of France. What began as a hobbyist marque became France’s leading independent record distributor and a classical label of international scope and consequence, employing 330 people worldwide.
Hundreds of artists owe their careers to Coutaz, from the countertenors Alfred Deller and Andreas Scholl to the conductors William Christie and Rene Jacobs. He had impeccable taste and great strength of character, stoutly resisting the degenerative trends of crossover and teenie artists. He was also a book publisher in France, briefly mine.
Bernard Coutaz is the last of the founder-pioneers of classical recording, described in my history of the industry. He is survived by his wife, Eva, and a huge recorded legacy.
Also passed into the hall of fame is Wyn Morris, conductor of the first Mahler cycle made in Britain. Once dubbed ‘the Celtic Furtwängler’, Morris was a voluble, tactile musician who could never stay out of trouble for very long. His gift suffered from an insatiable thirst and he was forever getting fired by orchestras and reaching for lawyers.
He used to ring me every other year with a scheme that was going to change the face of music and revive his career. Inevitably, nothing ever changed and what remains of Wyn – a jolly companion at lunch – is a curate’s egg of a Mahler cyle and a few Bruckner releases, which I much preferred. The Telegraph has first obit of the day.
One of the worst-kept secrets in the conducting world is out this morning with a press release confirming that Gustavo Dudamel has dumped his mentors.
Here’s the full story. Late last year, Dudamel’s agent Mark Newbanks became unsettled with his lack of personal advancement at Askonas Holt, an old-fashioned British agency, and arranged to join his former colleague Stephen Wright, who had bought out Van Walsum Management.
The pin-stripes at Holt went into damage-limitation, imposing vows of silence on all and sundry and wheeling out Dudamel’s closest advisers – led by Sir Simon Rattle – to persuade the young whizzkid to stay with the stable that launched him. The Dude, music director at the Los Angeles Phil and in demand the world over, is worth some $300,000 to his management over the next 3-4 contract years, say insiders. That’s big money in classical music, and big worries for Askonas Holt.
Rattle did his best at bending the Dude’s ear, and so did other Holt trusties, badgering the young conductor to stay put. But the Dude is a man of personal loyalties and Mark Newbanks is both close to his own age and a good buddy. This morning, Askonas Holt admitted defeat and announced ‘a significant change at the company’ with the loss of its fastes rising star.
Dudamel moves to Van Walsum from today and the Rattle shop is left licking its wounds. Askonas Holt publishes in its press release a list of ‘legendary figures’ and ‘fantastic … young conductors’ whom it maintains under contract. But the Dude’s move is seismic, signifiying a generational shift in power in classical management.
Wright, who started out himself at Askonas Holt, has scores to settle with former allies and an expansion plans in mind. His new business partner is Costa Pilavachi, former head of Decca and EMI Classics. The wind of change is picking up.
One of the worst-kept secrets in the conducting world is out this morning with a press release confirming that Gustavo Dudamel has dumped his mentors.
Here’s the full story. Late last year, Dudamel’s agent Mark Newbanks became unsettled with his lack of personal advancement at Holt Askonas, an old-fashioned British agency, and arranged to join his former colleague Stephen Wright, who had bought out Van Walsum Management.
The pin-stripes at Holt Askonas went into damage-limitation, imposing vows of silence on all and sundry and wheeling out Dudamel’s closest advisers – led by Sir Simon Rattle – to persuade the young whizzkid to stay with the stable that launched him. The Dude, music director at the Los Angeles Phil and in demand the world over, is worth some $300,000 to his management over the next 3-4 contract years, say insiders. That’s big money in classical music, and big worries for Askonas Holt.
Rattle did his best at bending the Dude’s ear, and so did other Holt trusties, badgering the young conductor to stay put. But the Dude is a man of personal loyalties and Mark Newbanks is both close to his own age and a good buddy. This morning, Askonas Holt admitted defeat and announced ‘a significant change at the company’ with the loss of its fastes rising star.
Dudamel moves to Van Walsum from today and the Rattle shop is left licking its wounds. Askonas Holt publishes a list of ‘lengenday figures’ and ‘fantastic … young conductors’ whom it maintains under contract. But the Dude’s move is seismic, signifiying a shift in power in classical management.
Wright, who started out himself at Askonas Holt, has scores to settle with former allies and an expansion plans in mind. His new business partner is Costa Pilavachi, former head of Decca and EMI Classics. The wind of change is picking up.
