The world’s newest concert showcase has run into trouble.

Opened at the end of August, Helsinki’s Musikktaalo was everything the Finns have dreamed of since independence – a space where Sibelius can finally breathe. But word reaches me that both chief executives, Kenneth Katter and Helena Hiilvirta have resigned or been fired.

Insiders tell me that the problem arose from a spiralling graph of running costs. The house is apparently understaffed on the maintenance side and the operators are refusing to release more funds to support its smooth running.

Katter, a technocrat, was brought in to assist the visionary Hiilvirta (above) who, as intendant of the Finnish radio orchestra, had been driving the project from its inception. It was Helena who attracted the Vienna Philharmonic and other blue-chip orchestras to visit Finland for the first time on the promise of a marvellous acoustic. I hope they don’t arrive to find the doors locked for want off staff.

 

A musician in Exeter claims to have found a critical error in the current edition of the published score of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. Marion Wood says one timpani part is missing in The Glorification of the Chosen One section, and what ought to be ping-pong between two timps is mostly played nowadays as a monologue. It has been that way, she says, since the present score was printed in 1967.

The publisher, Boosey & Hawkes, has promised to look into it.

The research shouldn’t take them long. There are two recordings of the work by Stravinsky himself and at least three by Pierre Monteux, who conducted the uproarious first performance in Paris in May 1913.  

Ms Wood will perform the Rite the correct way next Thursday.

 

Valentina Lisitsa has just tweeted me that she’s got a Paris date at last, on the strength of her youtube fame.

It’s at the Bouffes du Nord on Monday, and she’s standing in for Simone Dinnerstein – apparently ‘for healthy reasons’.

The flier also urges you to discover this ‘ukranian native american pianist’

So that will be Chief Many-Fingered Lisitsa?

Previously, says, Val, she has only ever played in private Parisian homes.

 

A laconic leader of Austropop, famed for such morose reflections as The Big Black Bird (listen here), Ludwig Hirsch has taken his own life at the age of 65. He was being treated at  the Wilhelmina Hispital, reportedly for lung cancer, when he jumped from a window to his death.

‘Ludwig Hirsch was part of the Austrian soul,’ said Culture Minister Claudia Schmied. He was one of few living performers to see his face on a national postage stamp. His appeal crossed three generations. RIP.

Here’s an obituary, in the Irish Times, for an Austrian fellow-satirist, Georg Kreisler, who died in the same week.

The European Union has announced a 1.8 billion Euros ($2.4 billion) funding programme for arts and culture, starting in 2014.

Titled Creative Europe, it marks a 35 percent increase in EU support for ailing cultural industries. Here’s the first report on Irish TV and another on Artsinfo. It is the biggest arts initiative by far in the history of the EU.

The bad news is that half of it will be spent on film, which ought to be commercially self-sufficient. But the other half is expected to reach more than quarter of a million artists across the continent. Androulla Vassiliou, the EU Commissioner for Education, Culture, Multilingualism, and Youth, said in a statement: “This investment will help tens of thousands… to reach new audiences in Europe and beyond; without this support, it would be difficult or impossible for them to break into new markets.”

 ((Vassiliou, picured with Michel Platini)

 

The statement came a few hours after the German Culture Minister Bernd Neumann announced a 5.1 percent increase in state ‘investment’  in the arts. Subsidy, he said, belonged to the past. This was a stake in the nation’s future.

Could this mark a turning point in political attitudes?

Several German-language obituries point out that the great soprano Sena Jurinac, who has died aged 90, spent a formative summer in Salzburg in 1943 with the elderly Anna von Mildenburg, who was Gustav Mahler’s protégée and love object, as well as his mighty Isolde at the Vienna Opera.

Sena, who described herself as a ‘k-und-k mixture’, was the daughter of a Viennese mother and Croatian father who lived in the small Bosnian town of Travnik. She was 22 and had sung Mimi in La Boheme at the Zagreb Opera when she won a scholarship place on Mildenburg’s summer course at the Salzburg Mozarteum. That led, in turn, to her being signed by Karl Böhm for the Vienna Opera and, while she never got to sing there before Goebbels shut it down, she resumed in Vienna in 1946 and went on to sing 46 roles in 1200 performances.

She never sung much Mahler – I think there is only one recording – but she became a vital link in his Vienna tradition. Here is a picture of the young Sena with Mildenburg, published in Franz Willnauer’s book of Mahler-Mildenburg letters.

and here’s another from the resourceful Mahler researcher, Michael Bosworth

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It’s not a subsidy, Culture Minister Bernd Neumann told the Bundestag today, ‘it’s a significant investment in the future of our society.’

And all parties, left to right, cheered him on. The increase amounts to a 5.1 percent boost in the national arts budget.

Here’s a Deutschland Radio report (in German).

LATE EXTRA: European Union follows with apparently coordinated boost. See here.

Croatian by birth, and one of the golden post-War voices at the Vienna Opera, she passed away at 90.

A classic interpreter of Mozart and Strauss, she made the premiere recording of the Four Last Songs (for EMI, in Stockholm, Fritz Busch conducting) after Kirsten Flagstad sang the first performance at the Royal Albert Hall.  Here’s her version of Im Abendrot.

RIP.

An email from Spain informs me of the death of Montserrat Figueras, wife of Jordi Savall and voice of their influential early music ensemble, Hespèrion XXI, which they founded in Switzerland in 1974.

She and the group were pioneers in exploring the multicultural foundations of medieval and renaissance music in Europe. Of late, they issued lavish recordings of Mediterranean music. Her daughter Arianna and son Feran also performed with the ensemble.

Earlier this year, Montserrat became one of only 29 people to receive the Cross of San Jordi from the government of her native Calaonia. She will be sorely missed. The letter announcing her death follows below. The funeral is on Friday.

MONTSERRAT FIGUERAS décorée de la Croix de Sant Jordi par la Generalitat de Catalunya

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dear friends,

With deep sadness we are writing to inform you that after a year struggling, our loved Montserrat left us last night. Her voice, her humanity and her spiritual brightness will be with us forever.
Those who would like to say farewell to her, will be wellcomed today at our home in Bellaterra (Av. Balmes, 4) from 16 to 21 h and tomorrow from 10 to 15 h.
The funeral will be on friday at 10. We will confirm the place by tomorrow morning.

Thank you for your comfort.

Jordi, Arianna and Ferran

 

Here is a video clip of her singing Dal mio Permesso in Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo.

Georg Kreisler, an Austrian emgré who worked in Hollywood with Charlie Chaplin before returning to castigate post-War Vienna in his cabaret songs, has died in Salzburg, aged 89. He was often compared to Tom Lehrer.

Here’s a youtube clip of kreisler.

After five years’ rest which many thought was retirement, Kyung-wha Chung has given a comeback recital in her home town, Seoul.

Kyung-wha, who is 63, told the Korea Herald that she had been suffering from a finger injury and mourning the loss of her mother and sister.

In addition to a solo recital, she is also reforming the trio she shared with her brother Myung-whun (piano) and sister Myung-wha (cello).

And it’s not just her family and country that are getting excited. Classical record labels are targeting South Korea as their biggest growth area. There’s at least one suit, I hear, who is waiting for Kyung-wha with an open-ended contract.