The latest withdrawal from the BBC Proms is Sir Colin Davis, officially on health grounds. My understanding is that he has asked to be released from engagements during a period of family mourning.

His absence, coming so soon after the deaths of Sir Charles Mackerras, who was down for two Proms, and Anthony Rolfe Johnson casts a pall on an otherwise glorious musical summer – a reminder of our fragility and mortality. Sombre times, indeed.

BBC press release:

Matthias Bamert to replace Sir Colin Davis at BBC Proms

 

Monday 9 August, Prom 32, 7.00pm

 

Sir Colin Davis has announced his withdrawal from all his European Union Youth Orchestra engagements on health grounds, with extreme regrets.

He was due to conduct the EUYO at the BBC Proms on Monday 9 August.

 

The concert will now be conducted by Matthias Bamert who has appeared regularly at the Proms since his debut in 1985. The programme remains unchanged: Tchaikovsky’s Fantasy Overture Romeo and Juliet, Janácek’s Taras Bulba and Berlioz’s Harold in Italy.

 

The viola soloist in the Berlioz is Maxim Rysanov who returns to the Proms on the Last Night in 2010.

 

The Proms continue until 11 September 2010, and full up-to-date information on the season is available at bbc.co.uk/proms.

Proms concerts are live on BBC Radio 3

 

The latest withdrawal from the BBC Proms is Sir Colin Davis, officially on health grounds. My understanding is that he has asked to be released from engagements during a period of family mourning.

His absence, coming so soon after the deaths of Sir Charles Mackerras, who was down for two Proms, and Anthony Rolfe Johnson casts a pall on an otherwise glorious musical summer – a reminder of our fragility and mortality. Sombre times, indeed.

BBC press release:

Matthias Bamert to replace Sir Colin Davis at BBC Proms

 

Monday 9 August, Prom 32, 7.00pm

 

Sir Colin Davis has announced his withdrawal from all his European Union Youth Orchestra engagements on health grounds, with extreme regrets.

He was due to conduct the EUYO at the BBC Proms on Monday 9 August.

 

The concert will now be conducted by Matthias Bamert who has appeared regularly at the Proms since his debut in 1985. The programme remains unchanged: Tchaikovsky’s Fantasy Overture Romeo and Juliet, Janácek’s Taras Bulba and Berlioz’s Harold in Italy.

 

The viola soloist in the Berlioz is Maxim Rysanov who returns to the Proms on the Last Night in 2010.

 

The Proms continue until 11 September 2010, and full up-to-date information on the season is available at bbc.co.uk/proms.

Proms concerts are live on BBC Radio 3

 

That fine singer Anthony Rolfe Johnson died yesterday, aged 69. He had been suffering for a while from a degenerative condition. Former colleagues were first to post the sad news.

Johnson appeared all over the world in Bach and Handel oratorios and Mozart operas. He was a memorable Peter Grimes and he sang Aschenbach powerfully in Death in Venice at the Metropolitan Opera, New York. In Brussels, where he was a popular Pelleas, he created the role of Polixenes in Phililippe Boesman’s version of A Winter’s Tale.

Coming so soon after the lamented death of Philip Langridge, it marks the start of the passing of a golden generation of English singers. Sic transit gloria mundi.

That fine singer Anthony Rolfe Johnson died yesterday, aged 69. He had been suffering for a while from a degenerative condition. Former colleagues were first to post the sad news.

Johnson appeared all over the world in Bach and Handel oratorios and Mozart operas. He was a memorable Peter Grimes and he sang Aschenbach powerfully in Death in Venice at the Metropolitan Opera, New York. In Brussels, where he was a popular Pelleas, he created the role of Polixenes in Phililippe Boesman’s version of A Winter’s Tale.

Coming so soon after the lamented death of Philip Langridge, it marks the start of the passing of a golden generation of English singers. Sic transit gloria mundi.

To lose one vice president, as Oscar Wilde so aptly put it, may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose two looks like carelessness.

Three months after parting company with A& R chief Stephen Johns, EMI Classics today sailed ahead without Graham Southern, V-P Catalogue, who looks after backlist releases, including such current triumphs as the phenomenal Mahler box.

Graham, I understand, left of his own volition, a pretty brave thing to do in these tricky times. He told friends he was unable to put up with management-speak from the hedge-trimmers who run the company.

Here’s the internal memo from his boss, announcing his departure:

Dear Classics colleagues,


I’d like to announce that Graham Southern, Vice President Catalogue for EMI Classics, will be leaving EMI.   Graham will remain in the role through the next 3 months as we transition to replacement. 
 
 I’d like to take this opportunity to thank him on behalf of EMI  Classics for his many years of dedicated service to the company, to its artists and its worldleading catalogue of great recordings.   Graham will be missed and we wish him well in his next endeavours.

 
With thanks,

Eric Dingman

To lose one vice president, as Oscar Wilde so aptly put it, may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose two looks like carelessness.

Three months after parting company with A& R chief Stephen Johns, EMI Classics today sailed ahead without Graham Southern, V-P Catalogue, who looks after backlist releases, including such current triumphs as the phenomenal Mahler box.

Graham, I understand, left of his own volition, a pretty brave thing to do in these tricky times. He told friends he was unable to put up with management-speak from the hedge-trimmers who run the company.

Here’s the internal memo from his boss, announcing his departure:

Dear Classics colleagues,


I’d like to announce that Graham Southern, Vice President Catalogue for EMI Classics, will be leaving EMI.   Graham will remain in the role through the next 3 months as we transition to replacement. 
 
 I’d like to take this opportunity to thank him on behalf of EMI  Classics for his many years of dedicated service to the company, to its artists and its worldleading catalogue of great recordings.   Graham will be missed and we wish him well in his next endeavours.

 
With thanks,

Eric Dingman

The conductor Riccardo Chailly, in the first of this year’s series of The Lebrecht Interview on BBC Radio 3, was slightly needled when I suggested he lacked the stomach for a fight, and perhaps the ultimate edge of ambition.

Chailly, 57, is music director of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. He was supposed to be director of the city opera as well, but he backed out when a new production chief was installed. Previously, he walked away from the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam after 15 years.

He has not ruled at La Scala, where his father was once artistic director, and he has never headed a US orchestra, despite early triumphs in Chicago. But his eyes lit up when I pressed the point and he specified that he was in talks with ‘one of the great American musical institutions’. Ronald Wilford, the CAMI boss, is now his personal agent and an announcement on Chailly in America can be expected before the leaves change hue.

No need to speculate which orchestra is in his sights. It’s the one whose chief conductor is prone to most cancellations.

No need, either, to doubt his aptitude. Chailly is, technically and imaginatively, one of the foremost living conductors. If I had to choose someone to conduct for my life, he would be first in the frame.

Still in his 50s, and slimmed down after a heart scare, Chailly is full of energy and ideas, fluent in English and wonderfully refreshing in his very lack of career calculation. I have always rated him above his noisier contemporaries. A winter job on the East Coast would be just the ticket to establish Riccardo Chailly where he has long belonged – at the very top.

You can hear The Lebrecht Interview tonight on Radio 3. See here for more information.

The conductor Riccardo Chailly, in the first of this year’s series of The Lebrecht Interview on BBC Radio 3, was slightly needled when I suggested he lacked the stomach for a fight, and perhaps the ultimate edge of ambition.

Chailly, 57, is music director of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. He was supposed to be director of the city opera as well, but he backed out when a new production chief was installed. Previously, he walked away from the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam after 15 years.

He has not ruled at La Scala, where his father was once artistic director, and he has never headed a US orchestra, despite early triumphs in Chicago. But his eyes lit up when I pressed the point and he specified that he was in talks with ‘one of the great American musical institutions’. Ronald Wilford, the CAMI boss, is now his personal agent and an announcement on Chailly in America can be expected before the leaves change hue.

No need to speculate which orchestra is in his sights. It’s the one whose chief conductor is prone to most cancellations.

No need, either, to doubt his aptitude. Chailly is, technically and imaginatively, one of the foremost living conductors. If I had to choose someone to conduct for my life, he would be first in the frame.

Still in his 50s, and slimmed down after a heart scare, Chailly is full of energy and ideas, fluent in English and wonderfully refreshing in his very lack of career calculation. I have always rated him above his noisier contemporaries. A winter job on the East Coast would be just the ticket to establish Riccardo Chailly where he has long belonged – at the very top.

You can hear The Lebrecht Interview tonight on Radio 3. See here for more information.

Zarin Mehta, executive director of the New York Philharmonic, was paid $1 million last year, down from $2.6m the year before. No reflection on his efforts and achievement. The previous sum included ‘deferred compensation’ – which suggests he has been stacking up his bonuses over several years.

Apart from Deborah Borda in Los Angeles, who also runs the Hollywood Bowl, Zarin Mehta is the highest paid orchestral executive in America and, hence, the world.

A million bucks seems an awful lot of money for managing a band. What has Zarin Mehta done before? Managed another band in Montreal and the festival in Ravinia. Before that, he was an accountant.

In the August issue of The Strad magazine, out now, I discuss the skill sets required to run an orchestra and wonder why more musicians don’t step up to the plate. It’s a well-paid job with a good pension plan and it brings in many times what most players, who study for years to perfect their craft, can dream of earning. Rocket science, it ain’t. Job security is great: very few orchestral managers ever get the sack. I know some who cling to the job for 25 years and more, never taking a risk or venturing an original idea.  

So why aren’t there more candidates for the role? And why aren’t Philharmonic musicians telling their board that when Mr Mehta, 72, hangs up his abacus, the next boss should be picked from the strings?

Read more in The Strad.

Zarin Mehta, executive director of the New York Philharmonic, was paid $1 million last year, down from $2.6m the year before. No reflection on his efforts and achievement. The previous sum included ‘deferred compensation’ – which suggests he has been stacking up his bonuses over several years.

Apart from Deborah Borda in Los Angeles, who also runs the Hollywood Bowl, Zarin Mehta is the highest paid orchestral executive in America and, hence, the world.

A million bucks seems an awful lot of money for managing a band. What has Zarin Mehta done before? Managed another band in Montreal and the festival in Ravinia. Before that, he was an accountant.

In the August issue of The Strad magazine, out now, I discuss the skill sets required to run an orchestra and wonder why more musicians don’t step up to the plate. It’s a well-paid job with a good pension plan and it brings in many times what most players, who study for years to perfect their craft, can dream of earning. Rocket science, it ain’t. Job security is great: very few orchestral managers ever get the sack. I know some who cling to the job for 25 years and more, never taking a risk or venturing an original idea.  

So why aren’t there more candidates for the role? And why aren’t Philharmonic musicians telling their board that when Mr Mehta, 72, hangs up his abacus, the next boss should be picked from the strings?

Read more in The Strad.

The Russian-French film by Radu Mihaileanu has received a sniffy ride from British critics, none more disdainful than the Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw, who dismissed it as ‘cheesy Europudding’ and clung to its icy French starlet, Mélanie Laurent, as his lifebelt in an ocean of schmaltz.

My own impression was heading down much the same alley once I saw a pair of hands that attempted to simulate conducting and a rom-com plot that left no cliché unturned. The story of a Bolshoi conductor, demoted to office cleaner because he refused to fire Jews and then exacting revenge by taking a fake Bolshoi orchestra to Paris, seemed too slight and contrived to sustain a full two hours.

But once past the early clichés, the film delivers an acrid commentary on a totalitarian system that turned into a gangster state, and on the way western nations collaborate with Russian robber barons. The oligarchs on screen sent a chill up my spine and I gave silent thanks that I do not work for a newspaper that is owned, as two British dailies are, by an unrepentant KGB man.

And when the demoted conductor, the sombrely defeatist Aleksei Guskov, gets to work over vodka with the icy French violinist, there was a real rush of emotion which, underpinned by the Tchaikovsky violin concerto, put a serious spike in my Kleenex shares. Mlle Laurent, as the violinist, is equally convincing: she was coached by the excellent Sarah Nemtanu. 

The film, for all its vagaries, is more than just another rom-com. It tells a kind of truth, depicting classical music as it often can be – brutal, callous, humiliating, conciliatory, political and, just when you are ready to walk out on it, uplifting in the most unexpected ways. See what you think. Here’s how I described it on Front Row last night

It goes on UK release this week. 

The Russian-French film by Radu Mihaileanu has received a sniffy ride from British critics, none more disdainful than the Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw, who dismissed it as ‘cheesy Europudding’ and clung to its icy French starlet, Mélanie Laurent, as his lifebelt in an ocean of schmaltz.

My own impression was heading down much the same alley once I saw a pair of hands that attempted to simulate conducting and a rom-com plot that left no cliché unturned. The story of a Bolshoi conductor, demoted to office cleaner because he refused to fire Jews and then exacting revenge by taking a fake Bolshoi orchestra to Paris, seemed too slight and contrived to sustain a full two hours.

But once past the early clichés, the film delivers an acrid commentary on a totalitarian system that turned into a gangster state, and on the way western nations collaborate with Russian robber barons. The oligarchs on screen sent a chill up my spine and I gave silent thanks that I do not work for a newspaper that is owned, as two British dailies are, by an unrepentant KGB man.

And when the demoted conductor, the sombrely defeatist Aleksei Guskov, gets to work over vodka with the icy French violinist, there was a real rush of emotion which, underpinned by the Tchaikovsky violin concerto, put a serious spike in my Kleenex shares. Mlle Laurent, as the violinist, is equally convincing: she was coached by the excellent Sarah Nemtanu. 

The film, for all its vagaries, is more than just another rom-com. It tells a kind of truth, depicting classical music as it often can be – brutal, callous, humiliating, conciliatory, political and, just when you are ready to walk out on it, uplifting in the most unexpected ways. See what you think. Here’s how I described it on Front Row last night

It goes on UK release this week.