At eight-thirty this morning the Paris-based conductor George Pehlivanian was getting the day on its feet when the phone rang. ‘You’re conducting tonight in Madrid,’ said his agent. ‘And two of the pieces are world premieres. Go straight to rehearsal. Do not pass go.’

Sergio Alapont had called in sick to the Spanish National Orchestra and they were pretty frantic.

George, an unflappable man, flew in to work on Mozart Piano concerto 21 and Mozart Symphony 40, on the second half of the programme. The top half was Turkish composer and pianist Fazil Say playing his own piano concerto, followed by his third symphony for George to conduct.

Should be an interesting concert tonight. Good luck, George!

pehlivanian

Ian Campbell, who this week announced the closure of San Diego Opera, has been explaining the generosity of his compensation.

The local ABC affiliate found that Campbell earned around $508,000 in 2012, on the high side for the boss of a failing arts ensemble. “It is significant, there’s no question,” Campbell said. “But I do two jobs — I’m artistic director and general director.”

Campbell’s wife Ann, also on the payroll, earned $282,345 in 2012. Nice work.

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The late conductor chose his partners with care. The only major label for which he never recorded was Warner. But Warner now owns the former EMI Classics and is shamelessly rebranding Herbie as it own. Look.karajan rebranded

From an interview posted by Beijing’s  National Centre for the Performing Arts.

gergiev china

 

Gergiev: I think China develops faster than any other country in the world. It’s a new opera stage.

Q: How do you think co-production will give some positive effects to the opera market both in Russia and China?

A: There is a big interest in the world and in Russia toward China. Anything we do together here resonates in Russia. …I think they will know or maybe they’ve already known that we are now in China. This is for sure. But if we plan a visit of a company from here and perform new Chinese opera, this will be very seriously. Because in general the public doesn’t know many contemporary names, such as composers. Tchaikovsky is still dominant. If the living Chinese composer and newest opera would be brought to St. Petersburg, especially for White Night Festival, this will be a very special and unique event, and it will stand out as something where a lot of curiosity will be demonstrated toward this event because people will see something totally unknown. But we perform new opera in Russia, very recently we performed 7 new operas.

Now we commission as well. So I think it’s a natural process. Mariinsky is an opera company, ballet company, the orchestra and the chorus, and we are playing on three stages. We have a historical building, a new opera house and a new concert hall. So it is possible to compare. NCPA is a complex and Mariinsky is a complex. We have Mariinsky I, Mariinsky II, Mariinsky III, It’s how people know these different venues. And we have 4 chamber music halls. So we have 7 venues. We have more than a thousand performances in one year. So it’s a big operation and of course we can invite Chinese artists, also young artists that they can perform in chamber music halls, not in a big auditorium, but young pianists, young singers, cellists, violinists, young composers, chamber ensembles. There are many many opportunities and we will excise all these opportunities. We are talking now about a whole cooperation.

Q: Besides Onegin, do we have some more other plans?

A: I’m interested in leading composers from China and their plans and new commissioned operas. We perform many contemporary operas. We had performances of the music of Tan Dun and Bright Sheng. But we want new other composers coming from China because I know Tan Dun and Bright Sheng from my experience in the United States. I think we will develop now more intensive exchanges because Mariinsky opened a new opera house. So technically, these houses are easily comparable, technically, with a big stage and big technical power.

Q: Your name is Gergiev whose pronunciation is similar to Jiefu in Chinese, meaning brother-in-law. So Chinese people call you Jiefu and regard you as a family member.

A: I have two sisters. I’m not going to change my name. So if it sounds not too bad in Chinese, I’m very happy. It is true I have two sisters. So I can be called brother-in-law. And I myself have two brothers-in-law.

Q: You always seem in a very serious face. But now you are smiling. We can all see that but we are wondering when you will be particularly happy?

A: I’m happy when I see or hear good performance. Being happy or serious is not two different things. But I can also be happy with a few things. One of them is Mariinsky now is I think reaching, if not the highest but very, very high point of the historical line which already goes 230 years. … And I’m sure that among our most important friends and colleagues, very quickly, NCPA will become one of our most important partners. It only took five or six years; it’s very quick. With Metropolitan, I have worked for nearly 25 years. Five days ago, we were in La Scala. We have worked nearly 25 years together. But here it’s only five or six years; it’s very quick.

It is widely assumed in the media that the departure of Minnesota Orchestra President Michael Henson paves the way for the return of Osmo Vänskä as music director. Not so. Here are a number of reasons we are hearing from within the MO and across the music industry as to why this might not be such a great idea:

osmo vanska motorbike

 

 

1 Before the lockout, the orchestra was divided over Osmo. He had a  number of very close friends among the players. Others said they’d had enough and called for him to go. The lockout enforced an outward show of solidarity from the musicians. If Osmo came back as MD, the old cracks would reopen. Best to have him back as principal guest.

2 Several wealthy and powerful board members are angry – no, furious – at Osmo’s alignment with the players during the lockout and at his demand for Henson’s dismissal when it was over. They will give him a cold welcome and a hard time if he comes back.

3 The orch is not what it was. More than a dozen key players have gone to better jobs elsewhere. Better for newcomers to face a fresh face in the rostrum.

4 Osmo is not what he was. He has been in Minnesota since 2003. Now 61, he’s starting to wear the air of elder statesmen and is getting good engagements with bigger orchestras. He’d be well advised to trade on past MO laurels than to start again from scratch.

5 Sentiment aside, Osmo has acted well during the dispute. He can now do better for himself elsewhere.

6 Osmo was a cheap hire in 2003, with past jobs in Finland, Iceland and Scotland. He’s higher maintenance now.

7 ‘The public love Osmo’? True. He recharged the orch’s batteries more than anyone since, perhaps, Stanislaw Skrowacewski in the 60s. But the public is punchdrunk from the prolonged lockout and will be ready to warm to someone new.

8 There are lots of brilliant young sticks around.

9 Every single part of the damaged organisation needs to get over its past.

10 Osmo’s withdrawal would draw a thick black line beneath the recent talent drain and allow an opening for renewal.

 

Serhey Layevsky, President of the Ukrainian National Committee of the International Council of Museums (ICOM) has published an open letter ‘to my despised and no longer colleagues’ in Russia, who signed the letter supporting Putin’s venture into Crimea. His targets include the directors of the Glinka and Tchaikovsky museums. ‘I merely want to get you thinking about how you have become complicit in crimes against humanity…’ he writes. Full letter here (with Google translate).

 

tchaik piano

 

 

Sample:

Recently, the Russian Minister of Culture said that the Russians have one extra chromosome . Of course, he knows best, it explains a lot . All the fault of Ukraine in terms of Putin and his entourage is that Ukrainians want to be free in their country and no longer want to live in your community where Russian rudeness rules.

         I have nothing to ask. I want merely to get you thinking about that now have become complicit in crimes against humanity. I want you to think about how you will look into the eyes of mothers whose children tomorrow will kill my brothers and sisters. I want you to think about what you say to those mothers , whose children after tomorrow will return with Ukraine in the coffins.

In the third programme in my Radio 3 series, we look at the cultural action of Jews with western music after the Napoleonic empancipation.

Until the late 1820s, no Jew penetrated the musical mainstream. When Jews finally broke through, there was a driving incentive to change the civilisation that had excluded them for so many centuries. An Israeli composer argues: Wagner was right – the Jews are different.

And then there was business. Jews constituted a considerable part of the new concert and opera audience in Vienna, Berlin and Paris. They became music publishers, impresarios, agents. They founded a large part of the music business.

Later, in America, they invented popular music.

 

 

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Want to know how? Was it necessarily so?

It’s all in Music and the Jews, this Sunday, 6.45 pm on BBC Radio 3 and online. Link here.

The second programme is reviewed here.

Stage union members took over the Opéra Garnier yesterday as part of a long-running dispute over changes to pension entitlements. The occupation was, happily, peaceful.

paris garnier

If ever you want a sign of how out of touch the music biz can be, catch this upcoming Billboard award where the Italian pop-and-wouldbe-opera singer is categorised in antediluvian record shop terms.

Or do they think Andrea Bocelli sings in the language of the unreformed Church and ancient Rome?

 

Andrea-Bocelli home

A contemporary human tragedy from upstate New York. Danielle Conner-Willowglade, 30, admitted stealing instruments for several months and disposing of them at pawnshops. She was arrested in possession of a tuba. Her boyfriend was also charged. Full story here.

tuba

She hasn’t set foot on the road since 1979. And we haven’t got a day older.

Nice to see you back, Kate. But whatever happened to your record label?

Kate_Bush_Hammersmith

The isolated president of the Minnesota Orchestra will leave in August, it was announced last night. His picture in the Star Tribune shows a man worn and weary by two years of incessant conflict in a situation that was not of his making. It is hard not to feel a twitch of sympathy.

 

michael henson goes

Henson after. photo: Jerry Holt, Star-Tribune

Henson, then manager of the Bournemouth Orchestra in England, was signed in 2007 on a mission to renovate the hall and rationalise the finances after excessive spending by his predecessor. He raised $50 million for the first cause and fell heavily  to that conflict. He managed to alienate  not only the musicians but the media, the community and the wider industry in which he served. At times he seemed barely in control of the musician-free organisation he supposedly ran. He was accused of lying to the State Congress. His handling of the conflict will be taught for years in college as a negative object lesson in arts management.

His departure, however, is not the end of Minnesota’s woes, not even the beginning of the end. The local newspaper believes it could pave the way for the return of Osmo Vänskä as music director, but that is far from a foregone conclusion. Whether Vänskä’s return is in the orchestra’s best interests, or his own, is now a matter for more thoughtful reflection.

 

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Henson before