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Not the orchestra (pace the publicity headline). The ballet segment in the New Year’s Day concert is being kitted out in L0ndon. More pics here.

The collaboration was engineered by Andreas Kronthaler, the designer’s Austrian husband and creative director. He said: ”I feel honoured that we were asked to design the costumes for the New Year’s concert ballet, as it holds such tradition for me. I grew up watching [it] every year, and it’s become part of my Christmas memories.”

UPDATE: Due to a huge exclusive breaking on the last day of the year, we have been obliged to rework the rankings.

At number 10, Barbra Streisand sang for Shimon Peres (and the video got wiped out).

At 9, he moved us all to tears.

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In at 8, she died singing Verdi’s Requiem, RIP.

At 7, racism and sexism alleged in a Viennese orchestra.

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At 6, the Berlin Phil tries to trip its concertmaster.

At 5, US airport security ‘snapped my cello bow’.

At number 4, two concertmasters are executed in North Korea.

And now the three biggest stories by some margin (drum roll):

At 3, JFK Customs seize and destroy instruments.

At number two, My Haydn got stopped by a cellphone.

And number one, with 142,771 unique hits: Nobel medicine winner says: I owe it all to my bassoon teacher.

 

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Well, who’d have guessed?

Two tabloids have broken the embargo on the New Year’s Honours list to report that the sometimes wobbly Welsh warbler will receive an OBE, in recognition of her support for the armed forces.

The Sun, a noted authority on the arts, designates her ‘a fine ambassador for the arts’.

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There’s a Deutsche Welle report on Wagner in Castro’s paradise last month…. you can watch it here. Some lovely scenes of director Andreas Baesler teaching the Caribbean cast and chorus to pronounce Wagnerian German.

Eduardo Diaz conducted. Johana Simon and Yuri Hernandez sang the main roles. It was the first time Wagner has been staged in Cuba.

The production is now heading for Germany.

 

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When the last Dutch Government went looking for human sacrifices in an onslaught on the arts, top of its agenda for abolition was the National Touring Opera (Reiseoper), a company that takes opera to low-lying parts unreached by other arts.

A campaign was mounted and the company was, at the last gasp, saved.

This morning we learn that its production of Tristan und Isolde, which opened in September, has been voted Opera of the Year by the Dutch opera magazine.

Tristan en IsoldeNationale Reisopera fotografie Marrco Borggreve

 

Photo: Marco Borggreve / Nationale Reisopera

The cast included Claudia Iten, Anne-Marie Owens, Robert Künzli and Yorck Felix Speer. The director was Jakob Peters-Messer and the conductor Antony Hermus.

Reiseoper chief Nicolas Mansfield tells Slipped Disc:

‘I am extremely proud of everyone who kept believing in the Reisopera, especially our beloved audiences.The cuts to our subsidy of 60% have been overcome with sheer determination by everbody involved, and a heartfelt belief that opera is worth fighting for’

From an interview with Reuters on Met screenings:

‘It makes our casting easier because we are competing with the other top opera houses for top stars and opera stars know if they come and sing at the Met it’s kind of one stop shopping because they can perform on the stage of the Met and be seen by an audience of 300,000 to 350,000 people … There are subscriptions being sold in the Arctic Circle in Tromso, Norway, to see the Met and the same is true in Buenos Aires or Mexico City or St. Petersburg.’

Hubris? What do singers make of this marketing strategy?

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Chris Thile has reached #2 in US classical sales on Nonesuch.

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Avi Avital is about to have a huge launch on DG.

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Classical music needs new voices. In 2014, the big noise could well be the mandolin.

Reviewing Musorgksy and his Circle by Stephen Walsh for the Wall Street Journal this weekend, I was struck by how many times the author referred – and positively deferred – to the dominant American musicologist, Richard Taruskin. I counted no fewer than 26 times and I referred to it in the review as ‘a kind of hat-tipping that verges on obsequiousness’.

Taruskin, professor of musicology at the University of California, Berkeley, is a contentious figure whose ascent, like Vladimir Putin’s, owes much to invisible networks of collegial relationships. His power, like Putin’s, rests upon the payment of tributes – of the kind delivered by Walsh in his otherwise engaging narrative.

Such obeisances inhibit free speech and original research. What will it take for an American Khodorkovsky to demonstrate that this emperor, too, has no clothes?

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A newly discovered letter in Leipzig suggests that the great composer excelled at taking time off work, delegating his duties to juniors.

The letter, by a former boy chorister at the Thomaskirche, Gottfried Benjamin Fleckeisen, claims that he and other students used to fill in for the master in his increasingly frequent absences. Fleckeisen, who was applying for Bach’s job after his death, said he had led and conducted performances in church for ‘two whole years’, apparently 1744-46.

Bach is usually seen as a diligent and hardworking public employee. But town council minutes refer to him as ‘unindustrious’ and some scholars are now suggesting that he suffered burnout from the endless performance of church service and the constant requirement for new oratorios on Biblical themes. Read a summary of the latest scholarship here.

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photos  (c) Lebrecht Music&Arts

About to undergo his second round of chemotherapy, the ever-combative opera chief has given a frank account of his illness, his future and his place in the world. The interview, with a Belgian magazine, De Theaterkrant, is in Flemish/Dutch. Sample quotes:

gerard mortier

 

– If  I were a family man , I would respond differently to this disease . Now it’s mainly my spiritual children I’m concerned for, opera people like Serge Dorny , Bernard Foccroulle Viktor Schoner…

– The lack of musical knowledge in many opera houses is shocking. Not just directors, also conductors. Look at Herbert von Karajan coaching a singer who sings Wotan: every word he knew by heart.

–  Many directors have no place to be in an opera house. They know nothing about music but come along with a nice idea for starters . Set the Wagner Ring in a ski resort: not so difficult . But what next?

– Too many directors belong to the Wikipedia generation….

Go tell ’em, Gerard!

Even by Sony standards the hype is far-fetched. A feature on Teodor Currentzis in a newspaper that abolished arts reviews, refers to the conductor as ‘provocative, young’ (he’s 41). We are also told that he is described (where? by whom? let’s assume the press release) as the “Nick Cave of classical”.

Erm, this is Nick Cave (pictured). Where is the other guy?

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The Polish conductor Antoni Wit was a close friend of the film composer, who died yesterday aged 81. He tells a good story, with an excellent imitation of his late friend (in Polish, with English subtitles).

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