The music director of the Minnesota Orchestra has resigned. Here’s his statement. You read it here first. (We have been told he will say nothing more on the subject and is not available for interview.)

 

1 October 2013

 

 

Press statement from Osmo Vänskä 

 

 

Today I have given notice of my resignation as Music Director and Conductor for the Minnesota Orchestra Association, effective 1 October 2013.

 

It is a very sad day for me. Over ten years ago I was honoured to be invited to take up this position. I moved from Finland to the Twin Cities. At that time I made clear my belief that the Minnesota Orchestra could become one of the very greatest international ensembles. During the intervening years I have had the privilege of seeing that belief vindicated through the skill, hard work and commitment of this wonderful group of players and with the valued support of the Board of Directors, management and administration team, volunteers, as well as our exceptional community.

 

I send my deepest thanks to everyone involved for what we have achieved together and I wish the Minnesota Orchestra all the very best for its future.

 

Osmo Vänskä

Osmo-Vänskä-High-Res-5-credit-Ann-Marsden-199x300

UPDATE: See commentary here.

2nd UPDATE: Head of Composers Institute quits here.

Our Manhattan operavores,  Elizabeth Frayer and Shawn E Milnes, have been to see the Putin team play gay-free Tchaikovsky at the Met. They almost walked out. Read their review here.

onegin met

The composer Andrew Lloyd Webber has hinted on occasion that he might leave the country if a Labour government raised the tax rate for the super-rich. Well, I feel the same way.

Yesterday, the lyricist Don Black proposed that a statue should be erected in London West End to the most successful maker of stage musicals in modern times.

If it ever goes up, I shall shun the West End.

His lordship may be a genius at selling a show, but he has trashed down the genre to a series of musical clichés and pop tunes. What was once a halfway house between grand opera and lowbrow music-hall has become, in Lloyd Webber’s proficient hands, a brand for safe entertainment and stage technology that barely engages the brain.

If his bust goes up in my town, I’m outa here.

Don-Black-Andrew-Lloyd-Webber-Richard-Eyre-and-Christopher-Hampton-at-the-launch-of-Stephen-Ward-630x310

Photo: Don Black, Lloyd Webber, Richard Eyre, at launch of his next show, ‘Stephen Ward’. (c) The Stage

So who was it? In an essay in the new edition of Standpoint, I trace the beginnings of China’s musical awakening to a conductor called Li Delun, whose performance of Beethoven’s fifth symphony in Mach 1977 announced the end of Mao’s Cultural Revilution. You can read the essay here.

li delun

By unhappy coincidence, I learn today of the death, aged 89, of Li Jue, the conductor’s widow. They married in 1948 and are survived by a son and two daughters. These were the true pioneers of China’s awakening. (h/t Rudolph Tang).

John Hopkins, director of music at the ABC from the late 1960s, has died in Melbourne, aged 86.

A musician who got his way by gentle persuasion, he maintained the high standards he had learned as one of the youngest conductors at the BBC. He was assistant conductor at BBC Scotland immediately before Colin Davis, principal conductor at BBC Northern immediately before George Hurst.

john hopkins

Try as we might, we cannot think of one. Concert premieres, to be sure, but the world premiere of a new opera in the city of Mozart and Strauss? Never.

Well, stand by fora piece of history in the making.

My name is Iain Bell and I am a 33-year old classical composer. My opera ‘A Harlot’s Progress’ (based on the Hogarth series of etchings to a libretto by Peter Ackroyd) is due to receive its world premiere in Vienna’s Theater an der Wien on Sunday October 13th.  

In the final run-in to the first performance, Iain will be writig a daily blog on Slipped Disc, starting tomorrow.

Watch this space.

iain bell

photo: (c) Iain Bell/Slipped Disc.

Is that a rehearsal room, or my favourite café?

 

The Telegraph is the first English-language newspaper to publish an obituary of Hans Landesmann, the Vienna businessman who did his best to cleanse the Salzburg stables after the 30-year Herbert von Karajan regime.

We mention the publication for two reasons: it uses a unique picture (below) of two fine men on the ramparts conversing in Hungarian; and it notifies us of the death, a month earlier, of Elaine Landesmann, Hans’s gentle and charming life partner. May they rest in peace.

landesmann_2688156b

Hans Landesmann with György Ligeti, Salzburg, August 1993. photo (c) Marion Kalter/Lebrecht Music&Arts