This Boston flash mob has just gone viral. Enjoy.

mfa xmas

Obliged to accept that Pierre Boulez is too infirm to fly over for a February celebration of his music, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra has come up with a novel solution. Rather than replace big gun with one of equal calibre, they have picked three sharpshooters from a new generation. Press release below.

boulez swr

CHICAGO— With great regret, Pierre Boulez, the Helen Regenstein Conductor Emeritus of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, has informed the CSO that that he will not be able to come to Chicago to conduct in February 2014 due to health issues. With three young conductors hand-picked by Maestro Boulez to substitute for him, the CSO will proceed with the planned programs—during two subscription weeks, beginning on February 20 and ending onMarch 1, 2014—as a celebration of Boulez’s innovative musicianship and mentorship.

“Pierre Boulez is one of the great revolutionaries in the history of music,” said Riccardo Muti, the CSO’s music director. “It is important to honor Maestro Boulez as a living master, and to ensure that his ideas are communicated to the next generation.”

“Pierre Boulez has served as an inspiration to the musicians of our age not only through his career as a composer and conductor, but with his visionary ideas about the design and presentation of concert programs,” said Martha Gilmer, Vice President for Artistic Planning and Audience Development for the CSO (The Richard and Mary L. Gray Chair).

These two programs, which Boulez originally conceived while in Chicago in 2012, highlight not only large orchestral scores, such as Debussy’s Jeux, but also take the audience on a journey through select miniatures by Igor Stravinsky for various-sized chamber ensembles. According to Gilmer, Boulez has devised specific directions for how each program should be choreographed, and has pre-recorded his own thoughts and insights into the music.

Gilmer said that Boulez had invited three young conductors to join him in Chicago during his residency, to work with him as he prepared the programs. They are CSO Solti Conducting Apprentice Matthew Aucoin, Marcelo Lehningerand Cristian Macelaru. With Boulez now unable to travel to Chicago, the young conductors will substitute for him in the two programs.

“Video projections of Boulez’s insights into the creative concept for each concert program, as well as his thoughts on individual works of music, will be an integral part of the programs,” said Gilmer. “So while Pierre Boulez is not able to come to Chicago, the spirit and soul of what he imagined these weeks to be will be very much present.”

“Even without Pierre Boulez on the podium, the CSO is committed to honoring his approach and responding to the challenge that he has given to us to always imagine new ways to present music and connect with audiences,” addedDeborah F. Rutter, president of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association. “These programs are two perfect examples of how we do this.”

Congratulations to Sarah Ioannides , new chief conductor of the Tacoma Symphony. She was picked from a field of 120 candidates. More here.

sarah ioannides

 

Charlotte Moorman was a cellist who made her name by taking off her clothes in the interest of avant-garde music. She was most closely associated with John Cage and with the Korean composer Nam June Paik. In one work, she invited the audience to cut her clothes off, snip by snip.

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Eager to be ahead of her time, Charlotte was altogether a Sixties person, a phenomenon not to be repeated.

When she died in 1991, we thought we had seen the last of her. But such as the wonder of social media that admirers and academics have created a Facebook site in her memory. Enjoy.

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Laia Martin, a young pianist, found herself in the world’s headlines this year when a neighbour persuaded police to prosecute her for noise pollution, an offence that carries a maximum seven-year jail term. Laia, 28, was acquitted on all charges and retreated to her piano studio, away from the unwanted limelight. But when Slipped Disc reached out to her, she agreed to give an exclusive account of her ordeal. From what she tells us, it will take her family years to recover from the financial damage of this malicious and unnecessary prosecution.

Here’s Laia story in her own words:

 

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I started playing the piano at six years old. I asked my mum to go. All my life I said I wanted to be pianist, nothing more, but I don’t know why. Love for music was always with me. I was lucky as a child that the director, Josep Vinyet, of a very well-known festival was our neighbour and I could listen to a lot of concerts there and know  musicians…

I studied first in my village with Salvador de Montellà and Diana González. After high school, I studied at the Manresa Conservatory of Music with Carles Julià, with whom I felt it possible that music would be my life. After taking a Bachelor Degree at the Liceu Conservatory of Music in Barcelona with Stanislav Pochekin for the last two years, I have been a student of pianist Oxana Yablonskaya. I’m working to go to some competitions in Italy and I have some concerts in Spain.

When I got the first letter from the town hall that we were reported by our neighbour I was already studying out of my village. So, we replied to the report, and I found a piano in a concert hall to play when I had to be in my village.

We faced not only legal costs. We spent an incredible amount of money during all of this situation, soundproofing the flat, paying the rent of one house for two and a half years, and building a new house. We know that studying music is very expensive, and my working class family had to add all these costs. So, it has been a very huge effort for my family economically.

I have to be thankful for our lawyer, Marc Molins Raich, and our acoustic engineer, Bartomeu Rosselló Boeres.  Asking for me and my parents to go to jail was much harder. I was very young, I couldn’t understand what was happening because we tried everything, but it never was enough and recognized. So we spent too much energy trying to get somebody to listen and believe us without any result and feeling misunderstood and defenceless. Through all this we became  mentally stronger.

 

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It all seems so contradictory. Because of music I was stuck in this process, but at the same time thanks to music it was easier to manage. Loving and believing in what you are doing is the strongest feeling that can move us, and I had to fight for music.

I’m not conscious of having been the centre of something, because I avoided reading or watching almost everything. But all the time I felt responsible for all the musicians, because I knew the whole time what my case could mean for all of us. I don’t know if I changed. I think, better said, I grew up. I learned and I felt many things during the week of the trial, in very different ways. The most important is that I felt new hope for people with all the support and affection they showed me, that I want to be really thankful from here on.

When it was over, I only thought about playing the piano; I couldn’t wait. I will remember for forever that feeling I had. My sound changed, I was free. I’m surprised how it changed, like magic, and how I could feel it. Now I’m very anxious for the first concert, which I will play on the 21st of December in Barcelona.

I love chamber music. To share music on the stage is the most beautiful feeling. Now I have the chance to be a member of two duos. One is Follia Duo with the recorder player Rosa Camps with whom I have played before. We are getting together this year to play the program “Follia! Baroque in the 20th Century.” The other group is the recently formed duo with the well-known Spanish violinist Jordán Tejedor with whom I will perform programs from Spanish and French composers of the 19th and the 20th Century, as well as the Sonata nº 1 op. 80 by Sergey Prokofiev.

Also I’m very excited about the solo concert program I’m working on that contains pieces related to the region I am from: Poetic Waltzes by Enrique Granados and the suite “Cerdanya” by Déodat de Séverac. I feel the need to perform these pieces at this moment, and I think it is the best way to express all the emotions I have inside. It will be so special to perform this program as well, because I have included the Polonaise-Fantaisie op. 61 by Frédéric Chopin, which my teacher Oxana Yablonskaya says is a battle with a happy end, just like my story.

 

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Josef Reif went for a drink with colleagues in a wine bar after finishing at the opera on Wednesday night. He put the instrument at his feet in a silver-gray Samsonite backpack that looks rather like a laptop bag. When he looked down, the bag was gone. Auf Deutsch here.

The horn, valued at $8,000, is registered with a serial number and is a Vienna-style instrument, easily recognised. Reif has alerted all stores in the city. It is probably unsaleable in the locality. Keep an eye out for it online. Josef is in great distress.

josef Reif

Live from Munich on Saturday night: Verdi’s Forza with hot tenor. Make a date of it.

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On Saturday, December 28, the Bayerische Staatsoper will be presenting the season’s third transmission on STAATSOPER.TV. This time, Giuseppe Verdi’s La forza del destino will be streamed live and free from Munich. Martin Kušej’s new production will be featuring two singers in great demand: Munich born tenor Jonas Kaufmann will sing Don Alvaro in his role debut. Anja Harteros, who in 2009 and 2013 opened the Munich Opera Festival alongside Mr. Kaufmann (Lohengrin and Il trovatore), will sing Donna Leonora (role debut). The Bayerische Staatsorchester will be led by Maestro Asher Fisch.

The live audiovisual broadcast will start at 6 p.m. (CET) at www.staatsoper.de/tv. The service is free of charge to viewers.

His name is Alexander Sorokow and he has been playing in the Vienna radio orchestra. He is obviously very good. But the Vienna Phil is under scrutiny for violating national and international equality laws by discriminating against women and minorities in selecting new members.

Every male appointment it makes is in defiance of those laws. At some point, the orchestra will have to be called to account before a court of justice.

 

vienna phil

Llandaff Cathedral in Wales has terminated seven adult choristers, effective tomorrow, in order to save money. The assistant organist has also been sacked. More than 1,000 supporters have signed a petition but the Church of Wales is turning a deaf ear. Trying to hire herald angels for free, no doubt.

Read here.

llandaff choir

They can’t keep the Bolshoi out of the bad news.

Last night at 10.30, mezzo-soprano  Elena Manistina was in a car on Maly Tishinsky Lane waiting to go home when a pair of robbers smashed the side window and grabbed her bag. It contained her passport, cash and credit cards to a value of 150,000 rubles. She was left shocked but physically unharmed, according to first reports.

Вручение государственных наград деятелям культуры России