They’re called The Really Terrible Orchestra of Westchester, and they have much to feel terrible about. Their youngest violinist, Maya Leggatt, was pushed under a train in an apparently motiveless crime. Watch here.
An attempt by two board members and two musicians to end the 13-month lockout ended on Friday with no progress on either side. The board members proposed a ‘reconciliation task force’, having previously shot down the mediation efforts of Senator George Mitchell. The musicians said the talks were going nowhere.
Outsiders now regard the Minnesota Orchestra as deceased. It may well take a new organisation to restore music to the stricken Midwest.
Get lucky. Get no closer to them than this.
This is the new image of the dumber-than-dumb doll, refashioned for upwardly mobile children in East Asia. But why a violin? And who is the choking hazard warning aimed at? See here.
Will be announced on Monday (see below). Word is, he’s been renewed again as music director.
The Orchestre symphonique de Montréal invites the media to a news
conference where it will make an important announcement.
The event will take place on MONDAY, NOVEMBER 11, at 11:30 a.m. in the
Foyer Allegro of the Maison symphonique de Montréal; the entrance is
at 1600 Saint-Urbain Street.
DATEBOOK
WHAT: News conference – Important announcement by the OSM
WHO: • Lucien Bouchard, chair, board of directors
• Marie-José Nadeau, vice-chair, board of directors
• Maestro Kent Nagano, music director
WHEN: Monday, November 11, 11:30 a.m.
Walter Arlen has been talking to the Financial Times:
“The Vienna of 1938 was an incredible place to be – so many composers, artists, writers, philosophers. What if Kristallnacht had never happened? We know of the gifted Jewish composers interned in Theresienstadt [the “artistic” concentration camp] – like Ullmann and Schulhoff – and the revival of operas by composers such as Schreker, Braunfels and Zemlinsky has shown us what might have been. Musical history would surely have been the richer.”
This is no less the case for Arlen himself. “I would have spent my life as a composer,” he says. “Would my music have been different? Surely yes – the music I have written is so heavily influenced by what happened to my family, the tragedies that befell me, the loss of everything in Austria that our family owned, stolen under the Nazis and never returned. If none of this had happened, I would have been a different person.
“I am not a religious Jew, my family were not religious Jews. But I feel that I am a representation of the Jewish spirit, whatever that might be. To me, it is honesty, rectitude, intellectual achievement. I had heard nothing of my music before these recording sessions brought it so wonderfully to life. Now I am 93 years old and I hope that finally my music will be noticed by the public before I die.”
Peter Salisbury is piano technician at London’s South Bank and one of the best tuners in the business. He started out as a player. What does he think of the professionals? Lovely new interview on the Yamaha site.
Steve Rubin, publisher at Henry Holt and, way back, a music writer on the New York Times in its glory days, is first with a review of an old flame at the Met. And, boy, does Steve know his singers:
The Met’s revival of its 2001 production of FRAU OHNE SCHATTEN last night proved once and for all that there’s life left in the old girl yet. It was an evening that harked back to the days when this house was able to cast a notoriously difficult and demanding opera with ease, provide great conducting and an eye-filling spectacle on stage.
I do not remember Herbert Wernicke’s production with affection, but I rather loved it this time around, and not only because it gave the Met’s technical facilities a healthy workout. FRAU has a pretentious, silly storyline, but Wernicke embraces it theatricality with abandon. Whether it’s his use of the Met’s fabulous on stage elevators or his spectacular, often blinding lighting, this guy is out to grab your attention.
I had never heard any of the singers, so it is exciting to report they are all terrific. The star of the show unquestionably is Christine Goerke, whose huge, powerful dramatic soprano embraced the Dyer’s Wife’s glorious music with ease. The German soprano Anne Schwanenwilms, made her Met debut as the Empress, and although she lacked the ethereal radiance of a Leonie Rysanek, when her voice was in full bloom it was beautiful. The other lady in the cast is the Nurse, unquestionably one of the most difficult parts in opera. Ildiko Komlosi acquitted herself admirably.
The guys were marvelous. Torsten Kerl is a genuine heldentenor, and when he sang the Emperor’s marvelous music in Act I, it was like going back to the days when strangulation was not the order of the day. Is there a nicer guy in opera than Barak? Johan Reuter was completely winning and sang with a honey-voiced baritone that may have been one size too small for the Met, but who cares? He was irresistible.
Vladimir Jurowski let the crackerjack Met Orchestra make a resplendent racket, and blessedly, for this version is uncut, his tempos were brisk. but he never lost sight of the fact that FRAU contains some of Strauss’ most beautiful music.
It was a thrilling evening.
(c) Steve Rubin/Slipped Disc
1 ‘I started out playing funerals’ says Anne-Sophie Mutter. Click here.
2 A Flute in a Million. Click here.
3 Sellout: David Bowie makes Louis Vuitton ad
4 What do we make of John Eliot Gardiner’s book on Bach? Click here.
5 John Singer Sargeant reaches Boston, just the kind of upper class he liked. Click here.
They’ve got rid of a classy chef and plan to make it ‘democratic’.
Guess the artists will be eating out in future.
And turkeys get to vote for Christmas.
Hypnotic.
We don’t do medical scares on this site, but there does appear to be a fungal condition known as ‘saxophone lung’. It’s an allergic reaction to inhaling germs in instruments that have not been properly cleaned. Early this year, an English player almost died of it. Read more here. Now start flossing.
