Vladislav Kazenin, chairman of the Russian Composers Union, died today, aged 78. In the footsteps of Tikhon Khrennikov, Kazenin enjoyed an apparatchik career under the Soviet system and beyond.
He was successively executive secretary of the Ural Branch of the Composers’ Union of the RSFSR (1966), executive secretary of the Moscow composer organization (1973) and secretary of the Composers’ Union of the RSFSR. In 1987, he was appointed Deputy Minister of Culture of the USSR, serving until 1990. Since then, he has headed the Union of Composers of Russia.
photo: RIA Novosti, Sergei Piatakov/Lebrecht Music&Arts
Libby Larsen’s sci-fi opera A Wrinkle in Time has been pulled by Fort Worth Opera because it cannot raise the cash in time for next year’s fest.
More here.
Elina Garanca, who had her second baby last month, has told the Vienna Opera that she won’t after all be singing in April’s Rosenkavalier. Sophie Koch has been called in to sub.
The hit show, with a $6m per episode budget, skimps on music. It plays computer-generated sound of a solo instrument, no live musician involved.
Violinist and entrepreneur Lara St John does the maths:
To hire a solo cellist in L.A. for a three-hour recording session would cost you 1.5 to 2 times scale (scale being approximately $236). So, let’s say the session would have cost, at the highest rate, $472. That would break down to, over the ten episodes of Season One, about $48 per episode. There would also be residuals payable to the cellist for the DVD release of that season – about the same amount.
I can only conclude, that, although you spent a reported $6 million to $10 million per episode, you were too tight to add fifty bucks to achieve musical integrity. Instead of an exciting, genuine, red-blooded cello solo, you went with an insipid simpering milquetoast midi version
Read more of Lara here.
Fun Sunday. The lively Chinese pianist has just tweeted a pic of this officious-looking notice at London’s Barbican Centre:
Rebecca Bogart, a California pianist who has battled with cancer since 2006, is preparing for a prizewinner’s appearance at Carnegie Hall. Here‘s her press release:
Paul Jacobs, Grammy-winning head of the organ department at Juilliard, is playing upwind from us today with the San Francisco Symphony. Paul has been talking to Elijah Ho about the social effects of the progressive disappearance of music criticism in print media, especially in the USA:
I think the decline of the role of music critics is indicative of a general cultural trend: the ability, or desire, to listen critically. This is the unavoidable result of a culture that does not emphasize a proper music education or its vast history…Consequently, everything has been reduced to a matter of personal opinion, where all positions are equally valid, without any critical thinking, crucial listening, drawing distinctions, etc. – I mean, these are the building blocks of the Western tradition going back to the Greeks!
More here.
Last night, members of the Milwaukee’s finest attended a thanksgiving symphony concert in honour of their recovery of concertmaster Frank Almond’s stolen Stradivarius. Frank played a solo and the officers were enraptured.
Picture shows Detective Shaun W. about to receive his first free lesson beneath a sign whose irony is richly intended.
We regret to report the death of René Trémine, co-founder of the Tahra label with his wife, Myriam Scherchen.
Together, over 20 years, they issued or reissued more than 700 CDs with such artists as Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, Claudio Arrau, Alfred Cortot, Vlado Perlemuter, Youra Guller (photo), Monique Haas, Yvonne Lefébure, Wilhelm Backhaus, Paul Badura-Skoda, Emil Gilels, Walter Gieseking and Dinu Lipatti.
We have been informed that Pieter Nuytten, the Rotterdam Phil principal bassoon (pictured), has won an audition for the same post in the Berlin Radio symphony orchestra, and that Herman van Kogelenberg has become principal flute at the Munich Philharmonic, shortly ahead of the principal cellist.
To lose one principal is unfortunate. To lose three at once looks like a worrying trend.
UPDATE: More troubling, an excellent first clarinet player left the Rotterdam Phil to join the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra after one season. Over the past two years a principal 2nd violin, principal viola and a principal cellist retired from the orch, but these vacancies have not (we are told) been advertised for audition.
Christopher Bouwman , principal oboe of Palau des les Arts Valencia won today #1 oboe position at Orchestre de la Suisse Romande. He upgrades from a Spanish salary to a Swiss bank.
The excellent principal cellist of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Floris Mijnders, is upgrading to the Munich Phil. Presumably to work with Rotterdam old boy Valery Gergiev.