The soaring mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato was turned down at twelve opera house auditions in quick succession. How did you cope? I asked. Her reply is one of the most balanced and rational self-assessments I have ever heard from anyone in creative life.

You can catch it tonight on The Lebrecht Interview, at 9.45pm on BBC Radio 3, and streamed online all week long.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00t74vr

There’s more about Joyce in an op-ed I wrote this weekend for the Sunday Telegraph on shaming miscreant classical stars.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/7945408/Rolando-Villazon-should-learn-from-the-classical-heroes.html

The soaring mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato was turned down at twelve opera house auditions in quick succession. How did you cope? I asked. Her reply is one of the most balanced and rational self-assessments I have ever heard from anyone in creative life.

You can catch it tonight on The Lebrecht Interview, at 9.45pm on BBC Radio 3, and streamed online all week long.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00t74vr

There’s more about Joyce in an op-ed I wrote this weekend for the Sunday Telegraph on shaming miscreant classical stars.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/7945408/Rolando-Villazon-should-learn-from-the-classical-heroes.html

For reasons we need not examine here, my wife and I occupied the Royal Box at Covent Garden for the opening night of the Bolshoi run of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin. Since the Royal Family were in Balmoral, we occupied it on our own, and very comfortable it was.

The angle of vision is slightly limited – you don’t see right of stage – but you overlook the orchestra pit and can hear just how much of the fifth and sixth symphonies is anticipated in the opera score. The Bolshoi orchestra has a fabulous woodwind section, and its strings sound in pretty good form. Dmitri Jurowski, Vladimir’s brother, conducted.

The production is four-square Russian with minor variants. Lensky doesn’t get shot in a duel; he dies in a firearms wrestling accident with Onegin. Although the duel is meant to be in winter, everyone wears summer suits; and the entire action takes place around a large dinner table. All very Stanislavskian.

Few of the singers are known outside Russia. Tatyana Monogarova seemed to be playing Ophelia rather than Tatyana in the first two acts, but woke up in the third. Onegin was Mariusz Kwiecin, a sweet-voiced Pole. Alexei Dolgov as Lensky was the one who could act and the best musical moment came from Anatoly Kotscherga as Gremin.

It’s a classic Bolshoi show, on for another week. I’d recommend it to the Royal Family if they get back early from their hols, and I can assure them we left the box as we found it.

For reasons we need not examine here, my wife and I occupied the Royal Box at Covent Garden for the opening night of the Bolshoi run of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin. Since the Royal Family were in Balmoral, we occupied it on our own, and very comfortable it was.

The angle of vision is slightly limited – you don’t see right of stage – but you overlook the orchestra pit and can hear just how much of the fifth and sixth symphonies is anticipated in the opera score. The Bolshoi orchestra has a fabulous woodwind section, and its strings sound in pretty good form. Dmitri Jurowski, Vladimir’s brother, conducted.

The production is four-square Russian with minor variants. Lensky doesn’t get shot in a duel; he dies in a firearms wrestling accident with Onegin. Although the duel is meant to be in winter, everyone wears summer suits; and the entire action takes place around a large dinner table. All very Stanislavskian.

Few of the singers are known outside Russia. Tatyana Monogarova seemed to be playing Ophelia rather than Tatyana in the first two acts, but woke up in the third. Onegin was Mariusz Kwiecin, a sweet-voiced Pole. Alexei Dolgov as Lensky was the one who could act and the best musical moment came from Anatoly Kotscherga as Gremin.

It’s a classic Bolshoi show, on for another week. I’d recommend it to the Royal Family if they get back early from their hols, and I can assure them we left the box as we found it.

 

It’s getting worse, year by year. American orchestras, whose players once went off to shoot bear or pool in the Adirondacks, now oblige staff to report to work ever earlier in August to rehearse the Aix-Proms-Lucerne-Salzburg-Lübeck festival programme. Pallid and jet-lagged, the musicians return to open the home season with as much enthusiasm as an England goalkeeper facing a penalty kick.

 

Festivals have become an etiolating factor in our lives, stealing our precious summers, weakening marriages, depriving children of parents at leisure, eating away at fantasy and freedom with the scant reward of late-night microwaved meals and far too much to drink. The festival transaction has got out of hand.

 

— From the Lebrecht Conversation in the September issue of The Strad, out now.

Discuss below. Especially if you are a player, or a festival manager.

Waiting for someone in the lobby of English National Opera, I let my eye roam idly over the list of private donors who heped towards the restoration of the glorious Coliseum.

There, in the middle, was a ‘Mrs Doris Lessing’ (she collaborated on an opera some years back with Mr Philip Glass) and there, just below, were ‘Sir Charles and Lady Mackerras’.

Now that’s noble, I thought.

Charlie, as I recalled when he died last month, had a wretched time as music director of ENO in the 1970s. The orchestra didn’t respect him, the singers were unfriendly and the management were too busy fighting fires on other fronts to give him much support. It may have been one of the most miserable times in his life.

Yet when the company was in dire need two decades later, who steps up to the plate with a cheque but Sir Charles and Lady Mackerras. That’s the mark of a decent man, a really good person.  

From time to time, on a Lebrecht Interview, the person in the opposite seat reveals unsuspected depths of ambition, frustration and regret.

With Sir Roger Norrington, tonight’s subject, we were chatting in his Berkshire gazebo about his former life as an academic publisher and out-of-office-hours singer, when he burst out with the assertion that, has he persisted with the singing, he could have gone as far as any of his contemporaries, as far as the leading English tenor, Philip Langridge.

‘Are you sure?’ I pressed (I hope this makes it to the broadcast cut). ‘Sure,’ said Norro.

Among other subjects we covered were his privileged intellectual upbringing in Oxford, his wartime boyhood in Canada, his enterpreneurial zeal – ever setting up and winding down his own ensembles – and his late-onset immersion in Mahler, about which he has interesting – and, for me, persuasive opinions.

The Lebrecht Interview is on BBC Radio 3 tonight at 9pm and streamed all week online.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00t6vht

The BBC has just let it be known that Neil Sedaka will join the Last Night of the Proms in an extra-mural capacity – that is to say, singing for the outdoor crowds in Hyde Park with other denizens of Memory Lane, including Kiri Te Kanawa, Jose Carreras and Brian May.

And who said popular music is strictly for the kids?

Press release follows:

BBC PROMS IN THE PARK

Saturday 11 September 2010, Hyde Park, London

Stellar line-up also includes internationally acclaimed opera stars Dame Kiri Te Kanawa and José Carreras

Sir Terry Wogan presents with the BBC Concert Orchestra conducted by Martin Yates

Neil Sedaka is to perform at this year’s BBC Proms in the Park in Hyde Park – the annual Last Night of the Proms extravaganza broadcast live on BBC Radio 2. Now in its 15th year, BBC Proms in the Park has become Britain’s largest outdoor classical music event and is once again expected to attract around 40,000 music-lovers to join the fun and the magic of the nationwide Last Night of the Proms celebrations.

With a career that spans over five decades, singer-songwriter and pianist Neil Sedaka has recorded, written and produced a glittering catalogue of Rock ‘n’ Roll hits. Having amassed 20 US top 40 hits, an Ivor Novello Award and a coveted star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Neil has remained a household name through the years with hits including ‘Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen’, ‘Stupid Cupid’  and ‘Breaking Up is Hard to Do’. Neil’s work as a song-writer has seen him pen hits for artists including The Carpenters, Elvis Presley and of course Tony Christie, with ‘Is This the Way to Amarillo’ recently revived by the comedian Peter Kay to become the UK’s best-selling single of 2005.

Of his BBC Proms in the Park appearance, Neil says:

‘I am honoured to be invited to perform at BBC Proms in the Park and delighted to be sharing the stage with such illustrious company. England has always been a second home to me. For all my fans who have remained so loyal and supportive through the years, I will be singing many of my hits. I have been told this is one of the world’s largest classical music audiences and, as a former student of Classical music, I am thrilled to be a part of such a wonderful evening.’

Neil continues to record extensively as well as performing and touring across the globe throughout 2010. His life and music have become a source of inspiration-the musical comedy ‘Breaking Up is Hard to Do’, premiered in 2005, was based on the songs of Neil Sedaka, while the producers Bill Kenwright and Laurie Mansfield premiered their biographical musical, ‘Laughter in the Rain – The Neil Sedaka Story’ at the Churchill Theatre, London, in March 2010.

Neil Sedaka completes a star-studded line-up that includes the award-winning soprano Dame Kiri Te Kanawa (who will perform with the winner of the Radio 2 Kiri Prize, the station’s opera initiative) and the return of one third of the world-famous Three Tenors, José Carreras. Also confirmed to perform are West End and Broadway star Kerry Ellis and legendary Queen guitarist Brian May, as well as the BBC Concert Orchestra under the baton of Martin Yates.

The event culminates in a live video link-up with the Royal Albert Hall and a nationwide sing-along to the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic You’ll Never Walk Alone as well as the Last Night of the Proms favourites Land of Hope and Glory and Jerusalem. As ever, crowds are encouraged to bring picnics and flags, to sing along and enjoy the music and firework finale.

Acclaimed Abba tribute band Björn Again, Nell Bryden, Serpentine Fire and the cast of the renowned West End musical Jersey Boys start the entertainment in the afternoon’s warm-up events, hosted by BBC Radio 2 presenter Ken Bruce. This year’s Proms in the Park follows the success of last year’s event, which featured Barry Manilow, Katherine Jenkins and Garðar Thór Cortes.

Proms in the Park fans across the UK are able to tune in to the concert live on BBC Radio 2, by pressing the red button during the Last Night of the Proms on BBC TV, or by catching up on BBC iPlayer for seven days after the event. 

Now an integral part of the UK’s musical calendar, BBC Proms in the Park in Hyde Park celebrates its 15th anniversary in 2010 and is once again hosted by Sir Terry Wogan. The event is one of five major Last Night of the Proms celebrations staged across the UK by the BBC on Saturday 11 September. The others will be held in County Down, Dundee, Swansea and Salford, bringing the magic of the Last Night of the Proms to many thousands of music-lovers around the UK.

Audiences can also join the Last Night of the Proms celebrations via one of the BBC Big Screens around the country – and there are more than ever in 2010, in Birmingham (Victoria Square), Bradford (Centenary Square), Bristol (Millennium Square), Cardiff (The Hayes), Derby (Market Place), Dover (Market Square), Edinburgh (Festival Square), Leeds (Millennium Square), Leicester (Humberstone Gate), Liverpool (Clayton Square), Manchester (Exchange Square), Middlesbrough (Centre Square), Norwich (Chapelfield Plain), Plymouth (Armada Way), Portsmouth (Guildhall Square), Swindon (Wharf Green), Waltham Forest (Walthamstow Town Square) and Woolwich (General Gordon Place).

bbc.co.uk/proms/2010/promsinthepark

bbc.co.uk/bigscreens

Ends

Listings information

BBC Proms in the Park, Hyde Park, London

BBC Concert Orchestra conducted by Martin Yates.

Hosted by Sir Terry Wogan

Line-up: Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, José Carreras, Neil Sedaka, Brian May, Kerry Ellis

Pre-broadcast entertainment hosted by Ken Bruce

Line-up: Björn Again, Nell Bryden, the cast of Jersey Boys, Serpentine Fire

Gates open 4.00pm; entertainment on stage from 5.30pm. Tickets: £30 (under-3s free) Telephone booking: See Tickets on 0844 412 4630 (a transaction fee of £2.00, plus a booking fee of £1.25 per ticket applies) and from the Royal Albert Hall on 0845 401 5040 (a transaction fee of 2% of the total value, plus £2.10 per ticket applies) or online at bbc.co.uk/proms (transaction fees vary, see website for details).

The BBC has just let it be known that Neil Sedaka will join the Last Night of the Proms in an extra-mural capacity – that is to say, singing for the outdoor crowds in Hyde Park with other denizens of Memory Lane, including Kiri Te Kanawa, Jose Carreras and Brian May.

And who said popular music is strictly for the kids?

Press release follows:

BBC PROMS IN THE PARK

Saturday 11 September 2010, Hyde Park, London

Stellar line-up also includes internationally acclaimed opera stars Dame Kiri Te Kanawa and José Carreras

Sir Terry Wogan presents with the BBC Concert Orchestra conducted by Martin Yates

Neil Sedaka is to perform at this year’s BBC Proms in the Park in Hyde Park – the annual Last Night of the Proms extravaganza broadcast live on BBC Radio 2. Now in its 15th year, BBC Proms in the Park has become Britain’s largest outdoor classical music event and is once again expected to attract around 40,000 music-lovers to join the fun and the magic of the nationwide Last Night of the Proms celebrations.

With a career that spans over five decades, singer-songwriter and pianist Neil Sedaka has recorded, written and produced a glittering catalogue of Rock ‘n’ Roll hits. Having amassed 20 US top 40 hits, an Ivor Novello Award and a coveted star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Neil has remained a household name through the years with hits including ‘Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen’, ‘Stupid Cupid’  and ‘Breaking Up is Hard to Do’. Neil’s work as a song-writer has seen him pen hits for artists including The Carpenters, Elvis Presley and of course Tony Christie, with ‘Is This the Way to Amarillo’ recently revived by the comedian Peter Kay to become the UK’s best-selling single of 2005.

Of his BBC Proms in the Park appearance, Neil says:

‘I am honoured to be invited to perform at BBC Proms in the Park and delighted to be sharing the stage with such illustrious company. England has always been a second home to me. For all my fans who have remained so loyal and supportive through the years, I will be singing many of my hits. I have been told this is one of the world’s largest classical music audiences and, as a former student of Classical music, I am thrilled to be a part of such a wonderful evening.’

Neil continues to record extensively as well as performing and touring across the globe throughout 2010. His life and music have become a source of inspiration-the musical comedy ‘Breaking Up is Hard to Do’, premiered in 2005, was based on the songs of Neil Sedaka, while the producers Bill Kenwright and Laurie Mansfield premiered their biographical musical, ‘Laughter in the Rain – The Neil Sedaka Story’ at the Churchill Theatre, London, in March 2010.

Neil Sedaka completes a star-studded line-up that includes the award-winning soprano Dame Kiri Te Kanawa (who will perform with the winner of the Radio 2 Kiri Prize, the station’s opera initiative) and the return of one third of the world-famous Three Tenors, José Carreras. Also confirmed to perform are West End and Broadway star Kerry Ellis and legendary Queen guitarist Brian May, as well as the BBC Concert Orchestra under the baton of Martin Yates.

The event culminates in a live video link-up with the Royal Albert Hall and a nationwide sing-along to the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic You’ll Never Walk Alone as well as the Last Night of the Proms favourites Land of Hope and Glory and Jerusalem. As ever, crowds are encouraged to bring picnics and flags, to sing along and enjoy the music and firework finale.

Acclaimed Abba tribute band Björn Again, Nell Bryden, Serpentine Fire and the cast of the renowned West End musical Jersey Boys start the entertainment in the afternoon’s warm-up events, hosted by BBC Radio 2 presenter Ken Bruce. This year’s Proms in the Park follows the success of last year’s event, which featured Barry Manilow, Katherine Jenkins and Garðar Thór Cortes.

Proms in the Park fans across the UK are able to tune in to the concert live on BBC Radio 2, by pressing the red button during the Last Night of the Proms on BBC TV, or by catching up on BBC iPlayer for seven days after the event. 

Now an integral part of the UK’s musical calendar, BBC Proms in the Park in Hyde Park celebrates its 15th anniversary in 2010 and is once again hosted by Sir Terry Wogan. The event is one of five major Last Night of the Proms celebrations staged across the UK by the BBC on Saturday 11 September. The others will be held in County Down, Dundee, Swansea and Salford, bringing the magic of the Last Night of the Proms to many thousands of music-lovers around the UK.

Audiences can also join the Last Night of the Proms celebrations via one of the BBC Big Screens around the country – and there are more than ever in 2010, in Birmingham (Victoria Square), Bradford (Centenary Square), Bristol (Millennium Square), Cardiff (The Hayes), Derby (Market Place), Dover (Market Square), Edinburgh (Festival Square), Leeds (Millennium Square), Leicester (Humberstone Gate), Liverpool (Clayton Square), Manchester (Exchange Square), Middlesbrough (Centre Square), Norwich (Chapelfield Plain), Plymouth (Armada Way), Portsmouth (Guildhall Square), Swindon (Wharf Green), Waltham Forest (Walthamstow Town Square) and Woolwich (General Gordon Place).

bbc.co.uk/proms/2010/promsinthepark

bbc.co.uk/bigscreens

Ends

Listings information

BBC Proms in the Park, Hyde Park, London

BBC Concert Orchestra conducted by Martin Yates.

Hosted by Sir Terry Wogan

Line-up: Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, José Carreras, Neil Sedaka, Brian May, Kerry Ellis

Pre-broadcast entertainment hosted by Ken Bruce

Line-up: Björn Again, Nell Bryden, the cast of Jersey Boys, Serpentine Fire

Gates open 4.00pm; entertainment on stage from 5.30pm. Tickets: £30 (under-3s free) Telephone booking: See Tickets on 0844 412 4630 (a transaction fee of £2.00, plus a booking fee of £1.25 per ticket applies) and from the Royal Albert Hall on 0845 401 5040 (a transaction fee of 2% of the total value, plus £2.10 per ticket applies) or online at bbc.co.uk/proms (transaction fees vary, see website for details).

Bryn Terfel’s annual summer festival on the Faenol estate at Bangor in Wales has been cancelled for the second year running due to poor ticket sales – and this, despite £250,000 of public money given to the singer last month by the Welsh Assembly.

The grant provoked widespread resentment, coming at a time when every arts organisation in the country is having to cut budgets.

A dejected Terfel told BBC Wales: ‘We have looked at the situation in great detail and from every possible angle. We have found no other workable solution.’ The only event to survive is a concert by the aging Irish boy band, Westlife.

Neither the grant nor the festival yielded much public benefit. Both may now be written off as the singer’s vanity fair.

 

 

Bryn Terfel’s annual summer festival on the Faenol estate at Bangor in Wales has been cancelled for the second year running due to poor ticket sales – and this, despite £250,000 of public money given to the singer last month by the Welsh Assembly.

The grant provoked widespread resentment, coming at a time when every arts organisation in the country is having to cut budgets.

A dejected Terfel told BBC Wales: ‘We have looked at the situation in great detail and from every possible angle. We have found no other workable solution.’ The only event to survive is a concert by the aging Irish boy band, Westlife.

Neither the grant nor the festival yielded much public benefit. Both may now be written off as the singer’s vanity fair.

 

 

Performing two Mahler symphonies back to back promised to be more an athletic feat than an aesthetic one. By scheduling them at the BBC Proms in the same week as he conducted Salome at the Verbier Festival, Valery Gergiev seemed to be registering early for the triathlon in the 2012 London Olympic Games. A packed house awaited a record-breaking effort.

The fourth symphony was semi-coherent. Gergiev took the opening sleighbells at an artificial plod, promising a few surprises on the bends. But none of his effects seemed particularly interesting, or relevant to what Mahler had in mind. The redeeming facts were the rivetting solos of concertmaster Rainer Küchl, better known as leader of the Vienna Philharmonic, and the soaring, vibrato-free sololiquy of Swedish soprano Camilla Tilling in the finale, a clarity and innocence that seemed perfectly in tune with the composer’s intention. 

The World Orchestra for Peace, decorated for its efforts with a UNESCO title, is made of up of principal players from many of the great ensembles, playing without fee. In the fourth symphony, they lacked character and traction.

All changed after the break, when Gergiev led an authoritative account of the fifth symphony which proclaimed its urgency in the opening trumpet call from the Maryinsky’s Timur Martinov and proceeded, briskly and without sentimental indulgence, through the shifting moods of a composer at the turning point in his life. The ending of the third movement sounded emphatically Jewish and the Adagietto was taut with rigour. There was no slackening in the finale, where conductors often come unstuck, and the concluding silence seemed eternal.

This was, beyond doubt, one of the great performances of recent years, and some of the playing was sensational. Unfair as it is to single out a few, I have to mention the horn solos of Gail Williams (Wyoming), the harp playing of Valerie Aldrich-Smith (BBC National Orchestra of Wales), the three trombones – Randall Hawes (Detroit), Pierre Volders (Rotterdam) and Douglas Wright (Minnesota), the Chicago clarinet Larry Combs and every single one of the string players who played as if they had been together all their lives.

Two Mahlers in one night is probably too much for any conductor or audience, but this Fifth will resound long and warmly in my memory bank.