Alexander Belinsky, veteran theatre and TV director, head of the Saint Petersburg Theatre of Musical Comedy from 1995 til 2002, has died at the age of 85. He was an associate professor at the Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatoire.
A newcomer won the best score Oscar for Gravity. Steve Price, who got a first in music at Cambridge University, has just two movies to his credit, both in the past year – The World’s End and Gravity. Price, 36, will be in high demand when he wakes up. Interview and samples below.
The Lady in Number 6, Malcolm Clarke’s film about the pianist Alice Herz-Sommer who died ten days ago aged 110, has won the Oscar for best documentary short.
An independent investigation into sexual misconduct by a music professor at the University of Connecticut claims that the college authorities refused to take action on the accusations for more than 10 years.
Professor Robert Miller, 66, director of the music school, has been accused of misconduct with students; he was suspended from the university in June, but has not been charged with any crime. The dean of the music department, David Woods, is under fire for failing to take action sooner. He has been demoted from the post of dean, but continues to draw a $238,000 salary. Both men were told on Thursday that they face dismissal.
The Brits have been beating above their weight at the Nestlé and Salzburg Festival Young Conductors Award. In 2012 Jamie Phillips was runner-up; he is now assistant conductor of the Halle. In 2013 it was Ben Gernon, now assistant conductor at the Los ngeles Philharmonic. This year we had high hopes for Leo McFall, who studied at the Sibelius Academy and is conducting at Meiningen in Germany.
The judges decided otherwise. The winner, announced tonight, is Maxine Pascal, 28 (centre), a student of François-Xavier Roth in Paris. Press release follows.
Salzburg Festival Press Release, March 2, 2014
Nestlé and Salzburg Festival Young Conductors Award 2014
The 2014 Winner is Maxime Pascal
At the 2014 Award Concert Weekend held at the Felsenreitschule, the 28-year-old Maxime Pascal from France convinced the jury chaired by Ingo Metzmacher by conducting a concert of Camerata Salzburg with soloist Ramón Ortega Quero.
“The concerts of the three finalists Maxime Pascal, Leo McFall and Victor Aviat all had a very high level. After extensive deliberation, the jury has decided unanimously in favour of young Maxime Pascal. His great musicality and his special rapport with the orchestra convinced us,” the Chairman of the Jury, Ingo Metzmacher, said when the 2014 winner was announced.
“I am very impressed to receive such a prize in such an important place, and I love the Salzburg audience“, this year’s winner, Maxime Pascal, said.
The competition for the “Nestlé and Salzburg Festival Young Conductors Award” was held for the fifth time this year. There were 82 applicants. The prize carries a cash value of € 15,000 and is awarded annually to a young conductor up to the age of 35. In addition, the winner conducts the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra in a Festival concert at the Felsenreitschule on August 17, 2014 at 11:00 am.
The career development of the winners in previous years – Ben Gernon (2013), Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla (2012), Ainārs Rubikis (2011) and David Afkham (2010) – demonstrates the international relevance of this award.
Nestlé’s President of the Board, Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, said: “In its fifth year, the ‘Nestlé and Salzburg Festival Young Conductors Award’ proves once again how meaningful it is to offer young conductors the chance to present their abilities within the framework of such a renowned festival as the Salzburg Festival. We are delighted to support the careers of these young talents through this initiative, unique throughout the world, and to introduce them to a broader public through the Award.”
“Discovering and supporting young talents is among the most fascinating and most rewarding tasks of any cultural institution. The entire Award Concert Weekend was characterised by the extremely high musicality of the three candidates. We are very happy that Maxime Pascal will conduct the Prize Winner’s Concert with the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra as part of the Salzburg Festival on August 17,”said Artistic Director Alexander Pereira.
“After five years, the ‚Nestlé and Salzburg Festival Young Conductors Award’ is among the most important awards worldwide, enabling young conductors to launch an international career. It is great to see the winners so far make their way in the world. I am convinced that Maxime Pascal too will use the Festival as a springboard,” Helga Rabl-Stadler, President of the Salzburg Festival, added.
Biography: Maxime Pascal
Aged 28, the Frenchman Maxime Pascal studied conducting with François-Xavier Roth at the Conservatoire National Superieur de Musique et de Danse inParis. In 2011 he won the Simone and Cino del Duca Prize of the Academie des Beaux-Arts. Since 2008 he has been music director of the orchestra Le Balcon and the Impromptu Orchestra, appearing at major festivals such as the IRCAM Festival, the Berlioz Festival and the Paris Summer Festival. He has gathered international experience in Belgium, for example, where he conducted the Brussels Philharmonic Orchestra, and at the Australian BIFEM Festival in Melbourne. In 2012 he participated in a master class with George Benjamin as part of the International Ensemble Modern Academy; in 2013 this was followed by the Stockhausen Summer Course, where he performed a Stockhausen concert with his Le Balcon ensemble. In January 2014 Maxime Pascal was responsible for a production of Benjamin Britten’s opera The Rape of Lucretia with the Orchestre National de Lille at the L’Athénée Théâtre Louis-Jouvet in Paris.
The great film director Alain Resnais has died, aged 91.
Of his 50 films, many will best remember Last year in Marienbad (1961). Many of his films were based on literary novels. he was married for 17 years to the daughter of André Malraux, Florence, who was also his asisstant director.
Riccardo Muti has taken advantage of a free day at Rome Opera to visit the Naples Conservatorio, where he studied 50 years ago and was first taught how to hold a baton.
The school named one of its rooms after the maestro.
photo (c) Newfotosud – Alessandro Garofalo
Piotr Beczala has dropped out of Tales of Hoffman in Vienna, the month after next. It would have been his role debut.
What made him decide so late that he couldn’t sing the role? Same question to Anna Netrebko.
Great singers get put under great pressure to undertake new roles. They don’t agree lightly. When they do, they should make sure they know what they’re about to sing before signing on any dotted line. Or they’ll miss payments on the car…
pictured: Mr Beczala with his XK150S , 1958, and wife, Kassia.
UPDATE:
Piotr has posted this message on his Fb site:
Liebe Wiener Freunde und Fans,
Wie Sie schon wahrscheinlich wissen, habe mich entschieden den Hoffmann nicht in mein Repertuar aufzunehmen und bin dankbar Dominique Meyer meine Entscheidung zu akzeptieren.
Um so mehr freue mich auf die bevorstehende 3 Faust Vorstellungen auch wenn Anna Netrebko die Marguerite nicht in Ihr Repertuar aufnimmt ,
diese Entscheidung künstlerischer Art ist ebenfalls zu respektieren…
Sonya Yoncheva , meine Wiener “Juliette ” wird sicher wunderbar sein!
Somit können Sie die Information die in Startseite von Neuem Merker über meine Faust ( Debüt !?!) absage völlig ignorieren!
Wir sehen uns in Wien
Dear Viennese friends and fans,
As you probably know, I have decided not to include the Hoffmann in my repertoire and am grateful to Dominique Meyer (Vienna Opera director) for accepting my decision.
It means I can look forward even more to the upcoming three Faust performances even if Anna Netrebko is not singing Marguerite, which she has just dropped from her repertoire.
One has to respect these artistic decisions.
Sonya Yoncheva, my Viennese “Juliette” will certainly be wonderful!
You can use this information and totally ignore Der Neue Merker’s report of my withdrawal.
See you soon in Vienna
A Salzburg court has sentenced the former Easter festival director Michael De Witte and former technical director Klaus Kretschmer to just over three years in jail for a series of embezzlements. Both were ordered to make substantial repayments.
Neither is likely to serve time. De Witte is out of the country and Kretschmer is in frail health.
Details here.
Background to the case here.
pictured: De Witte with Eliette von Karajan, who had no knowledge of the alleged scam.
There is no easy way to describe Leif Segerstam.
Several times larger than life, with beard and appetites to match, he has written 261 symphonies (at the latest count) and, when not guest conducting around Europe, is music director at Malmo Opera.
He turns 70 on March 2. Not that anyone would know it.
The English soprano Una Barry has allowed us to share her reflections on the death of her much-loved teacher, Anna Reynolds.
Anna never sent Christmas cards from Germany but always made a point of ringing us all up at Christmas, and last Christmas was no exception, and when I promised somehow I would get to see her this year. It was always much nicer and more personal than a card. She was fun and we never failed over the years to had a good laugh with her. The last time I spoke to Anna was towards the end of January before I went to Turkey to tell her that I was going to be singing in Salzburg at the end of May, and had added on a couple of extra days to the flight home from Munich so I could get to see her at last. Alas, it was not meant to be.
Anna taught me a lot when I studied with her in Germany in three or four weekly bursts a year from 2002 to 2004. She made it affordable and worthwhile, and we were able to stay in her huge house as part of the deal – a converted barn! She has got me singing far more opera, albeit too late in life, but still it was a good development and she made me work. It was only the ever changing circumstances at home in London that made it more difficult for me to go to Germany to study singing with her and Jean. It was always fun going over there and on my last trip to see her in July 2009, she generously gave me the treat of going to Bayreuth to see Götterdammerung where I remember our own Andrew Shaw sang everyone off the stage!
Anna met the American tenor, Jean Cox, whilst singing Wagner at Bayreuth. She married Jean and moved permanently to Germany, giving up her career so that she could be there for him and for his career, which she felt by then was far more important and high profile than hers. She kept her little house in Fulham all those years, and so they used to come to London for a few weeks once or twice a year, and always came to us for a meal in Bow when over, driving all the way from South Germany in a four-wheel drive full of stuff! Jean was then diagnosed with Parkinsons. He was very poorly even in 2009 but still at home when I was there visiting them. He died only last June at the age of 90, and she certainly was there for him right up to the end, giving up most of her teaching to care for him with the help of other professional carers coming into the house. He was then admitted to a home for some months, where Anna would visit him daily with the help of friends and neighbours doing the daily 30-mile round trip she too had given up driving by then.
After Jean’s death, Anna started doing a bit of teaching again. Her memory was failing her a bit, which she admitted to herself and which we sort of noticed, but then there was nothing wrong with her ears as a teacher, or her mind in conversation, or her fine piano playing, or her opinion on some of the singers around today, particularly the ‘commercial celebrity singers’! It was also obvious to us that she missed Jean enormously. Many of us used to ring her up more often for a chat from then on, which she loved. It seemed to us that life became difficult living in such an enormous house on her own at the age of 82 or 83, which was somewhat in the middle of nowhere, but was great for so many years when it was full to bursting with students and a place from where they used to run courses and small-scale operas long before I ever met them.
Tomorrow’s Mirror newspaper reports that a senior civil servant, Clifford Hindley, approved government grants of £70,000 to the Paedophile Information Exchange, a fringe group that promoted the legalisation of sex with children in the 1970s. Hindley was assistant secretary of state at the Home Office until 1983. His name, as the approver of the grant, was leaked to a Labour MP, Tom Watson.
Hindley, who is believed no longer to be alive, wrote widely-quoted essays on Britten’s operas for both Cambridge and Oxford university publications. The musicologist Ian Pace says that ‘some of Hindley’s writings on Britten show a strong interest in pederastic elements.’
Hindley is named by an investigative journalist as a friend of the composer’s. However, he does not appear in the index of any Britten biography or in the composer’s extensive published correspondence. The official’s association with a famous person must be treated with caution.
