The Society of Friends of the Festival submitted the annual gift yesterday. It’s three million Euros, up from 2.6 last year.
They plan to raise 20m over the next five years.
That may sound a lot to you and me, but it’s less than the ROH Covent Garden is given in a single year.
The Czech government has called back all instruments loaned out by the National Museum in Prague for fear they might be seized when played abroad.
Two members of the Talich Quartet (below) have been ordered to return a Stradivarius violin and Grancino cello. Leo Cepicky of the Wihan Quartet has handed back his Amati, reports Strad magazine.
The panic measure follows the Austrian government’s seizure of to Czech-owned paintings from Vienna’s Belvedere Gallery as security against a $500 million Czech government debt to a blood plasma company.
It’s a bizarre situation. If a government defaults on a debt, its credit ought to be worthless. But this debt is still being contested through the courts. Until the matter is settled, two fine quartets will be hampered by playing on less than top instruments.
In the August issue of The Strad, out now, I question the saleroom aura attached to fine instruments that are often past their play-by date. A notable case was the Lady Blunt that went last month for $14.2 million after half a century of disuse.
Why pay such fortunes? Is it prestige, investment, or perhaps something else?
Here’s a sample:
Why are people are prepared to pay record sums time after time for the Lady Blunt, which is practically unplayable after years of disuse, when 20,000 Euros would buy an instrument made last month in a German workshop with a blend of ancient craft and modern technology that ensure it sounds like Cremona, almost? The premium people pay for a Vieuxtemps or a Lady Blunt is less for high performance than for emotional transference…
Any further thoughts?
There’s nowt so trendy (or derivative) as art.
The moment the Royal Opera hired Kaspar Holten as its new chief, others went sniffing out Denmark as a possible talent stream.
This morning BBC National Orchestra of Wales announced Thomas Sondegard as principal conductor. He’s 41, presently working at Norwegian Radio. No other known form.
Who’s next? Not one of the alleged cokeheads from Denmark’s Royal Ballet, I hope.
Here‘s a viola player’s view.
Sad news: the 7th Earl of Harewood, cousin of the Queen and former administrator of the Royal Opera House and English National Opera, died today aged 88, on the family estate near Leeds.
George Harewood learned every available fact about opera from books that he read while a prisoner of war in Germany. He co-founded Opera magazine and wirked with David Webster at Covent Garden before being appointed first general director and then chairman of English National Opera, a company he dominated from the 1970s to the 1990s.
He was progressive in his appointments – always favouring bright young things – and conservative in his tastes. He pushed ENO into the Coliseum, a house too large for its audience, and grumbled away at dissonant modernities. More than one good composer suffered from his blind spots and his refusal to rethink a decision.
But he was the least huffy of aristocrats, always agreeable and accessible, ‘George’ to everyone, happy to occupy a garret of an office, which is where I first met him. He lived in Maida Vale, not Mayfair. His memoirs are full of fun and hard times with Callas (here‘s video interview) and Britten.
And, when all is said and done, he was the first blueblood in the present century to look upon opera without nostalgia, as a lively, living art form.
Requiescat in pace, George.
MY APOLOGIES IF YOU CAN’T SEE THE PICTURES. IT’S A SONY FAULT. THEY’RE WORKING ON IT…
Here’s the cover of his new e-media kit, just in
(photo: Detlef Schneider)
Sorry, it’s just half the banner… the rest, too big to fit in this frame, says: Liszt, my piano hero…
And here’s the cover
But the playing’s sensational.
Meanwhile, here’s a jaundiced one from Xinhua
and a blow-up from AP
If that doesn’t make the Sony blighters hurry up….. there’s more to come
Check this out on youtube.
The celebrants are 12 cellists of the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra.
Three years ago, on the 60th anniversary of Britain’s free-treatment health system, I wrote an essay on its role in my birth and my mother’s death, and how the system ultimately saved my life. You can read a short extract here (please do not pay for the full article).
Today, I am informed that the article has appeared in China… an advance publication for a book of my journalism that will come out there at the end of this month.
Here it is, in the Shanghai Review of Books.
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The sad, early death of Yakov Kreizberg four months ago continues to draw tributes from all over the world. The latest is from the city of Vienna which has decided to award the Russian-America conductor the rare privilege of a grave of honour in the Zentralfriedhof. Kreizberg was born Jewish. No-one seems to have noticed that the burial will take place on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.
Here’s the announcement sent out to family and friends:
Dear Friends,
Our beloved Yakov will receive an honorary burial from the city of Vienna on October 8th, 2011 at 1 pm in the Zentralfriedhof. He will be buried in the cemetery where Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and many others rest in peace. We will start with a small ceremony in a nearby hall where music and musicians will perform. There will be a few speeches and words of love. Then we will proceed to lay his urn to rest in a section where honorary Austrian citizens are buried. There under the moon, stars and heavens people will be able to pay respect to this artistic and wonderous man. He is very much here in spirit, and I believe that the soul lives on in other mysterious realms and that we all meet again. Although I know many of you cannot make the long trip, the burial is open to the public and we would very much enjoy seeing any of you who could come, or who are in the area.
Amy Kreizberg
Trouble here among the tutus.
Rumours of widespread cocaine abuse have wafted for more than a year around the Danish Royal Ballet, whose director is Nicholas Hübbe, once a star of New York City Ballet.
photo: Paul Kolnick
Photo: Finn Frandsen / Polfoto
The company commissioned an independent investigation from the National Centre for Competence. More than half the RB dancers were interviewed.
The results, leaked to the Jyllands-Posten newspaper, are shocking – not just for confirming the original allegations but for exposing a climate of mistrust and managerial laxity. More than 20 dancers said they are looking to get out.
And the Royal Ballet’s response? “It is true that we have had an outside consultant employed by the Royal Ballet. He – no longer associated with the theater – has written an internal report with a series of allegations of drug abuse and cooperation problems.These are unsubstantiated and cannot be verified.”
So that’s all right then.
Local jokers are suggesting that Danish Royal Opera is planning a sympathy fund-raiser of Shostakovich’s opera, The Nose.
Here‘s the report.
Manuel Galban, guitarist of the Buena Vista Social Club, is dead at 80.
He was the dancer she fled to when post-War England grew too austere, and he gave the great ballerina indelible lessons in love.
Roland Petit, whose death was announced today, aged 87, was a 1949 refuge for Fonteyn from domestic fame and insular taste. He was only her second lover, after the composer/conductor Constant Lambert, and he transformed her outward appearance during their affaire.
He dressed her at Maison Dior and persuaded her to get a nose job. ‘In Margot’s life, I was just the right person who, at the right time, opened the door,’ he said, far too modestly (I quote him in my book, Covent Garden: The Untold Story, p, 117). Months later, she took America by storm.
Petit created 176 choreographies and left a memoir, J’ai dansé sur les flots. He was a quiet giant of his genre.
See here for dance video.
Petit (r), with Nureyev and Fonteyn (Scala Archives)
