The ailing conductor, stricken with Parkinson’s Disease, will receive the Order of Merit of the state of Saxony today.
They have chosen the most important functionary at the annual awards ceremony, after the King of Sweden.
The man who will conduct this year’s Nobel Prize concert on December 8 is Andris Nelsons, incoming Boston Symphony music director. His wife, Kristine Opolais, will sing the Letter Scene from Eugene Onegin. Hakan Hardenberger will play Rolf Martinsson’s trumpet concerto and the concert will conclude with Beethoven’s seventh symphony.
Kaaija Saariaho’s second opera, L’amour de loin, had a triumphant premiere in the 2000 Salzburg Festival.
She has gone back to Salzburg with its successor, Emilie, but outside the festival and in the off-piste Landestheater. Emilie, a monodrama on the life of Voltaire’s lover, was first seen in Lyon in 2010.
It opens on Saturday, with the Scottish mezzo Allison Cook in the title role. Toi-toi.
SALZBURGER LANDESTHEATER: PREMIERE “EMILIE” VON KAIJA SAARIAHO – 24.5.
die finnische Komponistin Kaija Saariaho ist in Salzburg keine Unbekannte, wurde doch ihr Erstlingswerk „L’amour de loin“ bei seiner Uraufführung im Jahr 2000 bei den Salzburger Festspielen zur gefeierten Sensation. In ihrer dritten Oper „Emilie“ zeichnet sie ein sensibles Psychogramm einer außergewöhnlichen Frau, der französischen Physikerin, Philosophin und Anhängerin der frühen Aufklärung Émilie du Châtelet.
In der männerdominierten Welt des 18. Jahrhunderts schaffte es Émilie, sich eine international beachtete wissenschaftliche Reputation aufzubauen. Zeitlebens verband sie auch eine intensive Freundschaft mit Voltaire, mit dem sie anfangs auch eine Affäre hatte. Während der Übersetzungstätigkeit von Newtons „Mathematischem Prinzip“ brachte sie ein Mädchen zur Welt, verstarb aber eine Woche nach der Geburt im Jahr 1749.
Saariaho zählt zu einer prominenten Gruppe von finnischen Komponisten und wurde mit zahlreichen Preisen ausgezeichnet. Die Regisseurin Agnessa Nefjodov erarbeitete mit Eva Musil in Salzburg bereits „Fräulein Julie“ und zeigte mit der Uraufführung der Oper „18 Tage…..“ von Hossam Mahmoud gemeinsam mit ihrer Ausstatterin einen eindrucksvollen Einstieg ins Musiktheater. Am Landestheater wird die „Emilie“ von der schottischen Mezzo-Sopranistin Allison Cook gesungen, zu deren jüngsten Erfolgen unter anderem ein gefeiertes Debüt an der Mailänder Scala als Marquise de Merteuil in der Weltpremiere von Luca Fancesconis „Quartett“ sowie ihre Darstellung der Blossom am Royal Opera House Covent Garden in der Uraufführung von Marc Anthony Turnages „Anna Nicole“ gehören. Musikdirektor Leo Hussain steht am Pult des Mozarteumorchesters Salzburg.
Inszenierung Agnessa Nefjodov, Musikalische Leitung: Leo Hussain, Ausstattung: Eva Musil
Mit Allison Cook
Premiere 24.05.14, 19.00 Uhr, Landestheater
Ennio Morricone, composer laureate of the spaghetti western, has called off the three US dates of a world tour and may cancel the rest, Variety reports, due to ‘health concerns’.
Morricone, 85, is suffering from the effects of a back injury.
A restored print of Fistful of Dollars, one of his masterpieces, is being shown at the Cannes Film Festival to mark its 50th anniversary.
Zoe Keating, the fusion cellist with a global career and 1.2 million Twitter followers, has announced that she is taking time out to be with her husband, Jeff, who has an aggressive cancer. We send them both our prayers and best wishes. Here is Zoe’s announcement.
Dear Listeners,
My husband Jeff has been sick with a mysterious illness for several months. It’s not so mysterious any more. My man, my best friend, my partner-in-crime for 16 years has cancer. All. Fucking. Over. Lungs, brain, liver, bones.
We’re at the hospital. He is a warrior. We are fighting it.
I have to be strong and present for Jeff and for our son and I might be away from music and social media for a while.
Please, don’t send any condolences. Send strength and love and positive healing vibes, prayers, chants…all of it.
And since my new album will remain unfinished for a while longer, if you want to help us in ways other than good vibes, you could buy some of my music. Listen to it, give it to a friend and think of us.
I wish good health for you and your loved ones.
Z
A cellphone went off and there was a barrage of coughing during the Berlin Philharmonic’s memorial concert for its past music director. An eyewitness report:
A very large and international group from a convention in Berlin thoroughly disturbed tonight’s Philharmonic concert in memory of Claudio Abbado. A non-ceasing barrage of coughs and cell phone sounds accompanied all the music making – with one cell phone ringing just as the last note of the Mozart violin concerto’s second movement was completing. The receiver, sitting on the second row, got up and left the hall to answer the call while Frank Peter Zimmermann and Daishin Kashimoto exchanged confounded glances. The first half of the concert was without conductor, with a rose placed on the podium to commemorate Mr. Abbado, and it took so long to get the audience quiet that a member of the viola section was forced to stand and call for silence. Intendant Martin Hoffman made an announcement in English before the second half, sternly saying “We are glad to have such a large international audience tonight – but it is definitely irritating to have cell phones, cameras and coughing going the whole time. If we can limit the coughing and beeping, I’m sure we can have a nice concert this evening, thank you. Now please enjoy this 65 minute Bruckner symphony.”
Programme note:
The Berliner Philharmoniker pay tribute to Claudio Abbado with deep love and gratitude and dedicate these concerts to his memory. In remembrance of this painful loss, Frank Peter Zimmermann will play Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Violin Concerto in G major without conductor during the first half of the concert. Also the opening piece, the incidental music from Franz Schubert’s Rosamunde will be performed without conductor. Chief conductor Sir Simon Rattle will conduct the Symphony No. 7 in E major by Anton Bruckner during the second part of the programme.
Martin James Bartlett, 17, won the final of a low-key, under-promoted contest with a fine performance of Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.
The losing finalists were percussionist Elliott Gaston-Ross (15) and recorder player Sophie Westbrooke (15).
The Italian tenor’s torch song ‘Con te partiro’ fits – well, almost fits – the words of the Jewish wedding ceremony. And the chief rabbi doesn’t seem to mind.
But we do. Oh, how we do.
Watch.
Try the original:
Over recent weeks we have received a trickle of complaints from musicians about their luggage getting lost by Air Berlin and a complete failure by the airline – part-owned by Etihad – to acknowledge responsibility or make compensation.
It seems this trickle was the prelude to a flood of such stories, brought together here.
Share, if you have a personal nightmare.
David Conway reports for Slipped Disc from the unique Museum of Toilet History in tower no. 5 of the 19th-century Kiev Fortress.
In Kiev one must go with the flow – thus a chain of circumstances left me flushed, but relieved.
The most famous toilet in musical history is doubtless the one on which Max Reger wrote to a critic “I am sitting in the smallest room of the house. I have your review before me. Soon it will be behind me.”
Alas this moving event is not recorded at the museum. It does however contain a good run of cloacal artefacts from ancient history to the present day. The guide at the museum takes you at a brisk motion in Russian (though she also has a dribble of French) from Mohenjo-daro to the present day.
I was delighted to see full credit paid to the British pioneers of the lavatory, including Cumming (inventor of the S-bend and flush), Bramah and the immortal Thomas Crapper. The modest entry fee of 20 hryvnia (10 p) includes use of contemporary facilities if required. In all, a satisfying outing.
First she pulled out of a date in the Tatar Republic. Then out of Lucerne. Now she’s cancelled Paris and Barcelona.
Statement follows:
The laryngotracheitis that caused Anna Netrebko to postpone her concert in Kazan scheduled for May 12 has unexpectedly developed into a more acute respiratory infection with high fever, prompting her doctor in Vienna to order her to remain on vocal rest through May 27. Unfortunately, this means she will not be able to perform her upcoming concerts at the Kultur- und Kongresszentrum Luzern (May 18), Barcelona’s Palau de la Música Catalana (May 21), and Paris’s Théâtre des Champs-Élysées (May 24). The Paris concert has been rescheduled for July 12, 2014, and the Barcelona concert on December 17, 2014. The Lucerne performance sadly cannot be rescheduled; however, Anna looks forward to returning to the Kultur- und Kongresszentrum for a performance of Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta on June 15, 2015. Anna regrets whatever inconvenience this may cause.
The inscrutable Furtwängler in 1950. Can anyone name the players? Or the ramrod audience?
Here’s the composer conducting, in 1944. No closeups of the (Vienna) players or, significantly, any audience.
h/t Allan Evans