Package offer from that high-class establishment, the Imperial Hotel, Vienna:
Maestro in the Making, Hotel Imperial (Vienna, Austria)

Ivory tinklers can channel their inner Mozart (or at least try) during this two-night Maestro in the Making package at Vienna’s Hotel Imperial.

Music lovers join forces with a Viennese composer to create their own piece of music before it’s played and recorded onto a CD.

For an additional fee, the piece can be performed by the Vienna Philharmonic.

Hotel Imperial; +43 (1) 501 100; from $32,000 for two people

 

Hotel Imperial

The body of Brian Webb, a New Zealander who conducted the Vermont Philharmonic since 1976, has been found half a mile out at sea after his wife reported him missing. Brian, 65, had spent the night out on his sailboat. He was an experienced sailor and a faculty member of Union Institute and University.

 

brian webb

 

The Bayreuth exile, now running the Beethoven Festival in Bonn, has been sounding off about the problem with festivals. Much of what she says can be applied equally to the Met, or to any other large cultural institution in the early 21st century.

Here’s the quote:

nike wagner

 

All festivals today are striving desperately for a USP. This might be a composer, a musical genre, a landscape, a building, a location. At the same time, no festival organizer can escape the levelling effect of the cultural industry on the one hand and public austerity policies on the other. Without Celebrity Artists the houses remain empty, but most stars offer routine (repertoire), as part of a tour. We don’t engage those artists, or else we threaten them with a quota and red pencils.

Still, there are ways. What I’m saying is, you have to try to stand out by strict dramaturgy of programmes, you try to smuggle something rare and unknown into the familiar repertoire, and you stay alert to social and contemporary trends. Without imagination and courage, nothing works. But without endurance and fund-raising energy, there’s nothing, either. 

 

Alle Festivals heute streben verzweifelt nach dem “Alleinstellungsmerkmal”. Das kann ein Komponist sein, eine Musikrichtung, eine Landschaft, ein Bauwerk, eine Location. Zugleich entkommt kein Veranstalter den Gleichmachereien, wie sie durch die Kulturindustrie einerseits und die Folgen öffentlicher Sparpolitik andererseits gegeben sind. Ohne “Promi-Künstler” bleiben die Häuser leer, Promi-Künstler aber liefern häufig Routine, sind halt auf Tournee. Engagieren wir sie nicht, drohen “Quote” und Rotstift. Dennoch gibt es Wege, und ich bleibe dabei: Man versuche, durch stringente Programm-Dramaturgie aufzufallen, man versuche, Raritäten und Unbekanntes in das gewohnte Repertoire einzuschmuggeln, man bleibe sich unserer Gesellschaft und Gegenwart bewusst. Ohne Phantasie und Mut geht da nichts. Aber ohne Ausdauer und Schwung beim Einwerben von Geldern auch nicht …

 

Mezzo Jamie Barton, popular winner of BBC’s Cardiff Singer of the World, is a late jump-in for San Francisco’s Norma.

Daveda Karanas has withdrawn in mid-rehearsals ‘for personal reasons’. Jamie will sing Adalgisa from September 5 opposite Sondra Radvanovsky’s Norma.

jamie barton

 

Property Shark has drawn up a list of 20 cities that have the most cultural amenities* for head of population.

The highest has to be New York, right? Wrong.

New York City comes 13th.

Los Angeles, then?

Wrong again. LA checks in at #17.

Chicago?

Forget it. Number 20.

So where then, where?

Check here.

 

seattle

* defined as ‘museums, libraries, theaters, parks, stadiums’

Ilya Demutsky, whose opera on the Pussy Riot protesters won an award in Italy last year, has been physically attacked in St Petersburg after being lured to a public location for a supposed television interview.

Dumtsky claims his latest opera, about a paedophile hunter who resembles a Russian nationalist, has been cancelled by several venues and threats have been made against his life. Read here (in English).

ilya demutsky2

 

In an eight-month stay in Paris in 1737-8, Georg Philipp Telemann changed his style, his mood, the very character of his music.

What on earth was going on in his life?

A selection of Telemann’s Paris music is my Album of the Week on sinfinimusic.com.

Georg_Philipp_Telemann

 

Our man in the stalls reports:

Bernstein’s Kaddish Symphony faced large swathes of empty seats. The attendance at Guglielmo Tell was slightly increased but still very far from full. Four principals were replaced at short notice without explanation. Seats are available at all prices for Gergiev’s Les Troyens with another unexplained replacement – Mlada Khudoley (pictured) for Ekaterina Gubanova.

 

mlada khudoley

For lack of creative ideas at Warner Classics, this is how they spend office time.
CallasNormaSP069

Fleur Pellerin, born Kim Jong-suk in South Korea and adopted at the age of one, is the first French Cabinet member of Asian extractions.

Last night, she was named culture minister with a brief to overturn some of the policies of her combative predecessor, Aurélie Fillippetti.

Fleur is quite a fighter, a game for a challenge.

On TV, she went head to head with a popster. Watch.

fleur-pellerin

Jules Eskin took time out earlier this year to deal with a bout of cancer.

But after 50 years he is not giving up his seat in the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He’s back playing at Tanglewood, breaking in a new music director. Full story here.

jules eskin

Yehezkel Braun, a leading composer of choral and orchestral music, has died at the age of 92.

He was a product of the German cultural hothouse that was Breslau (now Wroclaw) and immersed himself unfashionably in Gregorian chant, achieving music of translucent beauty.

Some of his songs achieved near-pop status on national radio.

yehezkel braun

Piano sonata, 2006: