The Brahms Institute of Lübeck reports an important find.

In a job lot of 20 boxes of musicalia bequeathed by a deceased music tracher, it has found an original letter by Beethoven. It is dated 1823 and mailed to Paris, addressed to a Herr Stockhausen.

As usual, Beethoven complains about his health and living conditions. He does not, sadly, offer analysis or criticism of Gruppen.

Results are in for the 10th operetta conducting competition in Leipzig, and the result is a bit of a shock.

The winner is Joongbae Jee, a young man from Seoul who is based in Mannheim. He’s clearly going places now.

Scott Rose has dug up for us a little-seen youtube video of Charles Aznavour appearing on the Nana Mouskouri in one of his darkest songs, Hier encore (Yesterday, when I was young). Aznavour is a master of his art. But just watch that piano man.

And here, below, is the more conventional accompaniment.

And here he is again with a Mozart-style accompaniment for Nana in ‘Plaisir d’amour’.

Oh, and here’s how not to sing it:

Some 24 hours after we broke the sad news on Slipped Disc, the Bulgarian Ministry of Culture has confirmed the death of Alexis Weissenberg, aged 82.

The announcement is being carried by the Associated Press and will be across the media within the hour.

UPDATE: Here’s the item on BBC News.

There has been a street war going on in BetShemesh, near Jerusalem, where ultra-Orthodox men have tried to ban the other half of the human race from public view. Then, on Friday, this happened (hat-tip to thejc.com).

Ahead of the April centenary of the sinking of the Titanic, a Lancashire composer has written a concerto in memory of Wallace Hartley, the violinist who led the ship’s orchestra as it went down. Peter Young comes from the same region as Hartley. Hear an extract here.

Hartley, according to his local newspaper, was a lifelong teetotaller. How he got into an orchestra may never be known.

There is a competition to name the concerto. The winner gets two free tickets to the premiere.

You’ve got to hand it to The Sun. Nobody beats their headlines and picture captions.

Good to see someone was moved by Katherine’s performance.

Enjoy here.

The family of Alexis Weissenberg confirmed his death this morning to a colleague of mine in Madrid.

There are several gaps in the great pianist’s life that may start to be clarified as the world takes stock of his achievement. The first is between 1957 and 1966 when, after a successful international career, Alexis disappeared from the world’s concert halls. He was living in Paris at the time, teaching, reading and finding his inner voice.

In a book-length conversation with Gustl Breuer (details below), Alexis explained that he hated the way music became a business and an athletic contest. In self-exile, he began to explore the visual aspect of his art. A film he made in 1966 of Stravinsky’s Petrushka caught the eye of Herbert von Karajan, who was thinking along the same lines. ‘That was the beginning of the end of my peaceful years,’ he said.

William Steinberg, who had taken an interest in Weissenberg from the outset, shared a superagent with Karajan – Ronald Wilford. Once he heard the Alexis was back in action, filming the Tchaikovsky first piano concerto in Berlin, Steinberg urged Wilford to bring him on tour to the US. Karajan followed up with the Rachmaninov C minor concerto (video).

Did he regret the empty decade? Alexis was asked. ‘Not in the slightest,’ he replied.

Later, he moved from Paris to the relative tranquility of Madrid, where he married and had two daughters. As Rodrigo Carrizo Couto points out in his obituary in El Pais today, little is known of his life in Spain.

In the last 15 years he virtually stopped playing, until Martha Argerich, who found him living in Lugano, brought him back at her Festival.

Like all great musical legends, Alexis Weissenberg died with his enigma intact.

Here’s a wonderful pic of the young Alexis with his teacher, Pantcho Vladigerov.

Heiner Goebbels, director of the Ruhr Triennale, has let slip that he plans to open his festival in August with Europera 1 & 2 by John Cage.

Unstaged in Europe since the 1987 Frankfurt premiere the pieces involve a blindfolded soprano and a mezzo in rabbits’ ears (Playboy, anyone?). There are three further operas in the sequence.

Cage, born September 5, 1912, would have turned 100 this summer.

photo: Cage, by Betty Freeman ((c) Lebrecht Music & Arts)

In what may be approaching the final act for New York’s desperate City Opera, the management have announced that members of the orchestra and chorus will be barred from the premises on Monday after their failure to agree a new wage deal on Saturday night.

So City Opera is from this week a company without orchestra or chorus, let alone any money to carry on because a careless board has blown the endowment.

What kind of opera company is that? A dead parrot.

Laurence Dale, director of the Evian Festival, orchestral conductor and a former tenor, has written at our request a short appreciation of Alexis Weissenberg, who died today, aged 82. Laurence sang with Alexis on several occasions and formed a deep friendship. Alexis was a private man, rarely seen or heard in public media. Laurence’s memoir presents him as he was, and as he will be remembered.

Listening to a recording of Alexis Weissenberg, one discovers nearly everything of the man, even though he was a very private man. Few articles and stories about him are out there in the media. But, risking a cliché, the man was his music.
His life was as rich as any film script…. being of Jewish origins in Bulgaria in the 1940’s evokes already some of the aspects one can imagine.
His experiences of the inhumane made him all the more, an extraordinary human being.

Celebrissime pianist, but also composer, before being confronted by destabilising illnesses, he dominated the musical work as one of the greatest pianists of all time and collaborator with the greatest musicians of his time. His phenomenal technique and precision of articulation were characteristic of the man in private. His every gesture was precise; how he sat, how he indicated something which attracted his attention, the manner in which he looked at a painting, how he articulated those thoughts …He reflected on everything… with profound perception but always with a pertinent humour.

To understand the human being, watch the end of the video of his performance of the Rach 2 with Karajan. Alexis plays with expansive, huge broad phrases with amazing detail of articulation and rubati which seem almost impossible, but always in total concord and harmony with his partners. The impeccable trill, the subtle nuances of colour as his turns another phrase in a surprising direction…

Karajan never looks at his musicians, whilst conducting with intensely muscular gestures. With the final chords, Karajan turns to his soloist and dear friend, smiling as broadly as Alexis’ phrases. His expression conveys the pleasure of the unity in interpretation of two monolithic musicians.
If Alexis smiles with a sense of satisfaction there is also a hint of self-mockery… he recognizes his achievement but at the same time remembers his origins, his experiences and the fragility of humanity. A fragility which was to overcome him at a far too early age.

Only today have I been reminded that Alexis’ last public appearance was accompanying me in a rendition of Schubert’s An die Musik at the Salle Gaveau in 2001. It was a moment of lucidity, an inevitable farewell to the scene, a benefit concert for an Autism association that he wanted to help in his typically generous way. The rehearsal time was wonderful, rich in minute observation. The performance somewhat chaotic. However, it had a force ; emotional, restrained, elegant, profound and unequivocal, as was Alexis.

Family friends are reporting that Alexis Weissenberg died this morning, aged 82.

There has been no official confirmation yet from his two daughters. Bulgarian born, to Jewish parents, Weissenberg was based for much of his career in Paris and is remembered most widely for the Rachmaninov and Tchaikovsky concertos he recorded with Herbert von Karajan.

Watch video here of the opening of the Rachmaninov C minor concerto with Karajan and Berlin. read a friend’s tribute here.

And here’s a close-up of his extraordinary virtuosity: