Menahem Pressler got his break by winning a 1946 Debussy Competition in San Francisco.
For his 90th birthday, the Ebène Quartet sprang him a surprise performance of the Andantino movement. Just watch the expressions on Menahem’s face.
Menahem Pressler got his break by winning a 1946 Debussy Competition in San Francisco.
For his 90th birthday, the Ebène Quartet sprang him a surprise performance of the Andantino movement. Just watch the expressions on Menahem’s face.
The UK agency Hazard Chase has signed young conductor Maxime Tortelier to its roster.
Maxime is the son of the former BBC conductor Yan-Pascal, whose father was the splendid French cellist, Paul Tortelier.
A student of Colin Metters at the Royal Academy, Maxime is currently the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra’s Leverhulme Young Conductor in Association. Here’s what got him the contract.
Dominic Argento has a major, ultimate premiere in his home town. Read here.
The French crooner Enrico Macias, 74, has been hit by judges in a Luxembourg court with a bill for 30 million Euros, payable to the executors of an Icelandic bank that went bust in 2008. Macias and his late wife had taken a 35-million Euro loan in 2007 to build a villa on St Tropez. The bank went belly-up. Macias countersued the dead bank for 43 million, but the judges threw out his case. Report here in French. It’s complicated, and it looks like Enrico will be going back on the road – like Leonard Cohen – to boot up his pension.
This is Serena Wang, whose debut disc will appear next month of Channel Classics. Read nothing more until you’ve watched this:
So we asked Jared Sacks of Channel Classics Records how he found her. Here’s the full story:
Peter’s got a new set of good-luck beads.
Peter Callender, author of a shoal of his songs over four decades, has died at the age of 74.
His biggest sellers (co-written with Mitch Murray) include The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde, Turn On The Sun (for Nana Mouskouri) and I Did What I Did for Maria for Tony Christie.
I’ve just been notified that my sold-out session at Jewish Book Week in London this Sunday has been moved too a much larger hall within King’s Place and tickets are once more available – either by the website (tickets a very reasonable £6.50) or at the door.
I shall be talking to Michael Haas, producer of Decca’s Entartete Musik series and author of Forbidden Music, and Raphael Yerushalmy, author of an exquisite novella on the 1939 Salzburg Festival, Saving Mozart. Lots to discuss.
Link here. Do come.
The board’s meeting today. It’s faced with a binary choice: rehire Osmo Vänskä as music director and fire the president, Michael Henson, or carry on with Lockout King Henson and go search for another conductor to join a strife-torn org.
We know which way our vote would go. That’s right: Henson should go.
More here.
We hear that Robert Quinney is to succeed Edward Higginbottom as Director of Music and Organist of New College, Oxford, one of the key music posts in the Anglican world. New College Choir is a prolific recording outlet with more than 100 albums. Quinney (pictured) is presently director of music at Peterborough Cathedral and at Oundle School.
We have sad news of the passing of Anna Reynolds, who sang Fricka at Bayreuth from 1970 to 1976 and recorded solo roles with Bernstein, Karl Richter and Maazel, among others. She was 83.
Born in Canterbury in 1931, Anna met the American tenor Jean Cox at Bayreuth and married him, living together in Germany until his death.
May she rest in peace.
The Finnish conductor submits to the ticklish Nick Cannelakis spoof interview site.
Sample questions:
– Is Osmo short for anything?
– You don’t want a job?
– In America, the unemployment is very high right now.
Osmo: I resigned because…
Great fun.