This is an astonishing project: recordings of the waterways that run beneath the great city, made available by a click on the map. Every sound is explained in a few words. Try it right here. 

Heinz Holliger, the Swiss composer, has lost his wife Ursula, at the age of 76.

An outstanding harpist, Ursula Holliger played on many recordings for Philips, DG, Claves and Novalis. She performed the European premiere of Elliott Carter’s harp concerto, Mosaic, and with her husband gave the world premiere of Harrison Birtwistle’s 26 Orpheus Elegies for Oboe and Harp with Countertenor at the 2004 Lucerne Festival.

Here are the highlights of the classical awards before the institutional PRs get at them.

The big winner was American composer Maria Schneider, who collected three Grammys for “Winter Morning Walks”. The set was recorded by Dawn Upshaw with the Australian Chamber Orchestra and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra.

The Minnesota Orchestra won the Grammy for best orchestral recording with Sibelius’ 1st and 4th symphonies, conducted by Osmo Vänskä on the BIS label. Credit to the musicians, none to the company that tried to starve them for 15 months. Now’s the time for the musicians to demand a rebranding to distance themselves from the lockout. Back to the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra? Great tradition.

Osmo Vänskä commented: “I am absolutely thrilled that this recording of Sibelius Symphonies 1 and 4 – works so close to my heart – has been honoured with a Grammy. I am immensely happy and proud to have been able to achieve this in partnership with my dear and devoted friends at BIS and with the wonderful musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra. It is the greatest honour to be given such an award by our peers – and my sincere thanks go to The Recording Academy for this wonderful recognition.”

Other classical wins: Thomas Ades for best opera recording with The Tempest at the Met.

Roomful of Teeth and Brady Wells won best chamber music performance.

Producer of the year, classical: David Frost

Best choral performance: “Pärt: Adam’s Lament,” Tõnu Kaljuste, conductor

Best classical instrumental solo: “Corigliano: Conjurer – Concerto For Percussionist and String Orchestra,” featuring Evelyn Glennie and the Albany Symphony Orchestra

Best classical compendium: “Hindemith: Violinkonzert; Symphonic Metamorphosis; Konzertmusik,” Christoph Eschenbach, conductor

Best score soundtrack for visual media: “Skyfall,” Thomas Newman, composer

The announcement says it all: ‘Lang Lang and the one, the only…. Metallica!’

Big splash of Tchaik b-flat, then into the band. Somewehre in the middle, the pianist was allowed another riff. Was anyone watching, listening to, Lang Lang?

screen-grab: Rolling Stone

A performance of Beethoven’s Eroica by the Scala orchestra and Daniel Barenboim will be streamed on the opera house’s website from 6pm Milan time today, 5pm London, noon New York. Since the website is hopelessly disorganised, you may be better off finding it live on Youtube.

Magdalena Kožená has announced on Czech television that she’s pregnant. The baby is due in June.

The couple have two sons, born in 2005 and 2008. Rattle, 59, has two grown-up sons from his first marriage to Elise Ross.

The Quator Ysaÿe is breaking up after 30 years.

Trained by members of the Amadeus (Martin Lovett) and the LaSalle (Walter Levin) quartets and named after the great Belgian composer Eugène Ysaÿe, the French group have been among the world’s leading string quartets, playing both core and contemporary repertoire. They recorded for Decca, Philips, Aeon and their own label. They gave their final concert was in Paris on Friday.

Viola player Miguel de Silva, a founding member, told Le Monde: ‘I am very proud of what we did,’ listing the great cycles and world premieres of their epoch: « Je suis très fier de ce que l’on a fait : on a joué les 69 quatuors de Haydn, tout Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schumann, sans parler des créations que nous avons suscitées – Boucourechliev, Dusapin, Tanguy, Krawczyk, Escaich, Cerha… »

The group’s final line-up was: Yovan Markovitch, Miguel Da Silva, Guillaume Sutre and Luc-Marie Aguéra.

The Scotsman, Edinburgh-based newspaper of Caldeonian nationhood, has decided to stop reviewing classical, jazz and world music recordings.

The editorial decision seems a tad odd at a time when Scots musicians are rising high in all three genres, but print newspapers these days can barely afford to pay for a cup of Horlicks let alone a record review. The result: in the run-up to the independence referendum, Scotsman readers have no way of knowing what their musicians are up to.

One Scottish jazzman, Tommy Smith, has published an online protest. James MacMillan and Nicola Benedetti – let’s be hearing it from you.

The Minister of Education and Culture in Andalusia, Luciano Alonso, has voiced outrage at the fees paid to Pedro Halffter, music director of the Royal Seville symphony orchestra. ‘I disagree with his salary, which is excessive. No one in the public sector of Andalusia should earn more than the president,’ said Alonso. The regional president is paid a salary of 69,000 Euros. The maestro makes 250,000 Euros.

Halffter, who also heads the philharmonic orchestra of the Canary Islands, has a contract in Seville that ends this summer. It seems unlikely to be renewed.

The President of Cornell University, David J. Skorton, has endorsed the growing recognition of the importance of arts and music in the making of young scientists. In tune with Nobel Prizewinner Thomas Südhof’s declaration last week that ‘training in the arts prepares a growing child just as well for a scientific or technical career as [does] training in STEM subjects, if not better,’ Skorton – head of a university with campuses at Ithatca and Qatar – writes the following in Scientific American:

… to be truly effective, …what we really need is a much broader humanistic education for scientists (and nonscientists), beginning in K–12 education and continuing through the undergraduate/graduate and professional years. It is through the study of art, music, literature, history and other humanities and social sciences that we gain a greater understanding of the human condition than biological or physical science alone can provide.

UPDATE: Dr Skorton (below) practises what he preaches (h/t Dianne Winsor):

The  Teatro comunale in Ferrara will be known from today as the Teatro Claudio Abbado.

The meastro, who died last week, conducted 41 concerts in the town, including an emotional benefit concert in 2012 dedicated to the theatre’s restoration after damage by earthquake.

John Ranald Stainer, former registrar of the Royal College of Music who has died aged 98, was the grandson of Sir John Stainer, composer of The Crucifixion. That much we knew.

But diligent family research by his local newspaper, the Shropshire Star, reveals that two of his grandchildren are outstanding members of the music community. Edward Dusinberre leads the Takacs String Quartet and Dickon Stainer is president of Decca.

Here’s John, playing the piano a few days before his death.

And here‘s a link to his RCM profile.