Gustavo Dudamel is unwell and the Phil has gone scrambling for a dep. Paul Pelkonen has the story.

dudamel cd

 

As we reported yesterday, the outgoing Michael Kaiser has given his old pal the parting gift of a new contract.

“For the past four seasons, Maestro Eschenbach has elevated the stature of the National Symphony Orchestra and the Kennedy Center,” Kaiser said in a press statement. “I am pleased this relationship will continue for an additional two seasons.”

Were the musicians asked for a view? Of course not.

Anne Midgette in the Washington Post is determinedly sceptical. Kaiser ends his career on a faltering note.

eschy

Our social secretary reports that the tenor has wed his longtime companion, mother of his child, occasional singing partner, Veronica Berti.

Bocelli veronica

A self-declared ‘personal  friend’ of the Campbell couple who ran San Diego Opera into the ground has come up with a few interesting apologetics in a local media article.

Don Bauder argues that San Diego’s audience and finances followed a pattern of national decline (they didn’t), that Ian Campbell’s half-million salary was industry standard (not for a company this small), and that his wife Ann negotiated her own pay package (with whom, if not with her husband, the chief exec?).

There is more yet to come out of this mess.

total tickets sold

Here are some of the reasons Roger Wright may have considered in resigning as head of BBC Radio 3 and the BBC Proms in order to become chief executive at Aldeburgh:

1 He has headed the BBC’s classical  music output for 15, going on 16 years.  Fatigue can set in.

2 No BBC Controller has ever held any post for that long. Pressure may have started to build.

3 Another year of BBC rules, regulations, compliance, meetings with heads of this and that? Smell the sea.

4 Tough money times ahead at the BBC. Roger has cut deep. His successor will have to go deeper. Jump now while ahead.

5 Roger is 57, going on 58. The clock ticks.

6 Aldeburgh has a good fund-raising chairman in Simon Robey. He’s also chair of Covent Garden. BBC DG Tony Hall will have sung his praises to Roger.

7 No more Proms. He can take a proper family holiday in summer.

8 New music, always Roger’s big thing.

9 The Proms are universally loved. Aldeburgh is not. A  big, counter-intuitive challenge.

10 There isn’t one. Or, if there is, you’ll read it here first.

 

roger wright

 

In one of the more surprising moves of recent years, Roger Wright is to leave the BBC after 15 years as head of Radio 3 and the Proms to become chief executive at Aldeburgh, Benjamin Britten’s fortress by the sea.

Release here. And some of the real reasons here.

roger-wright

Recognise this Czech composer?

I thought not.

Heard a note of his music? No, I’m not surprised.

anton reicha

His name is Anton Reicha and his main claim to fame was as a Paris teacher of Berlioz and Liszt. But Reicha was also once Beethoven’s best friend. For seven years in Vienna Reicha dined with Beethoven once a week and composed instant responses to his early string quartets.

What do Reich’s works reveal? The missing link between early and middle-period Beethoven. Read on here.

Brian Galliford, who overcame a brutal battle with mouth cancer in the 1990s and went on to sing significant roles at Covent Garden, Glyndebourne and La Scala, has suffered a brain haemorrhage and is lying in a coma in a Lyon hospital. Please keep him in your thoughts and prayers. You may send good wishes to his Facebook page in the hope that he may read them on recovery.

Here is what we have been asked to post by Brian’s friend and ex-partner, Ric Schoens.

briangalliford

 

 

 

I have some terrible news for you all.

Brian has had a brain hemorrhage and is now in hospital in Lyon.

There is still a large amount of blood in his head that can’t be reached by the doctors. Because there is a lot of pressure in his head, for his own safety he is being kept in a coma. This can go on for weeks, maybe longer. When it is safe, the doctors are trying to wake him out of his coma. It is not known if he will be waking up. And if he will, it will be a process of days. And then it is not known if and what kind of damage it has done to his brain. And there is a possibility that he will not survive…

There are a lot of uncertainties at this moment. I am here now in Lyon, together with his parents and my friend Mirko. Brian’s parents fly home next Thursday; my friend Mirko and I will fly home next Saturday. I am the first contact for the hospital. If there is any news, they call me. Of course I will keep you all informed through Brian’s Facebook page, but only if there is any news.

For now, there are some close friends (including me) who are standing by to be with him if there is any change in Brian’s situation.

Please feel free to share your feelings and thoughts on his Facebook page. And if you can, pray or have your fingers crossed for his life, health and recovery.

Take care of yourselves,

 

Renée Fleming’s concert last night in Abu Dhabi was her first in the Arab world. It went well, we read.

Not sure about the arm-length black gloves, though. Must have been a cold wind in the Gulf.

renee fleming gloves

In Munich, he’s now the poster boy for Cool Britannia. Maestro Daniel Harding, flying in for a Mahler 6th, agreed to take part in a BR project on cardio-vascular health. One of those before and after tests.

His heart rate is fine, we’re told. The physician, two days later, is still hyperventilating.

 

daniel harding topless

 

Photo: Peter Meisel

This doesn’t happen often, so enjoy it while you can.

The Faz critic Eleonore Büning has been announced as winner of the Heidelberg Festival Prize. The judges cited her ‘substanziell und nachhaltig für die Vermittlung von klassischer Musik’ (substantial and sustainable service to the promotion of classical music).

Büning, 62, is also chair of the German record prize committee(Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik).

The prize money of 1o,000 Euros will barely buy a pair of Jimmy Choos for the award ceremony. But with serious music criticism being ever more marginalised in shrinking print media it is good to see that, somewhere, its value is recognised.

re:thinking tomorrow

The Odessa Philharmonic this weekend (apparently), conductor Hobart Earle.

 

odessa phil