We hear that the musicians of the Atlanta Symphony are going into session with the federal mediator tomorrow, after which both sides are under oath to keep their mouths shut. That should be easier for the musicians than for the heads of the Woodruff Arts Center who, in unguarded interviews, have cast doubts on the sanity of the musicians and the probity of their supporters.
If Atlanta is ever to recover its equilibrium, a week of Trappist vows is what’s required.
Hundreds gathered this afternoon at Copenhagen’s main railway station to protest the Danish Radio’s decision to abolish the Danish Radio Chamber Orchestra. The demo was led by members of the Copenhagen Philharmonic and ended with the singing of the national anthem.
There were further demos on the streets of the city, one of them led by national treasure Michala Petri.
We’re expecting video shortly.
Meanwhile, here are first pics.
(c) Mahan Esfahani
In a rare act of total transparency, the Rina Sala Gallo piano competition in Monza has revealed the marks given by every member of the jury to every contestant. The publication was provoked by a jury walkout on the part of the French pianist Pascal Rogé, who claimed the result was being rigged by Italians in favour of their compatriots.
M. Rogé, it appears, may have been unaware of this competition’s rule that exceptionally high or low marks given by one judge to particular candidates would be discounted. Be that as it may, the spread of marks is interesting – especially those given to some who did not make the semi-finals. You can read the markings here.
M Rogé’s remarks on the competition have provoked international discussion. However, if the unintended result is an opening up of competitions to ensure honesty and accountability then the Rina Sala Gallo will have done the tainted competition industry a great service.
This should be the benchmark by which future competitions are run.
The Competition today issued the following press release:
Rogé toasts to his own voting errors.
French pianist’s own marks determine the victory of the pianists he wanted to exclude, and accuses his colleagues of fraud.
With regard to Pascal Rogé’s statements on his Facebook page, subsequently published on SlippedDisc, the analysis of the jurors’ marks reported in attachment and explained below, shows that Mr. Rogé’s votes were prevalently maximum (10.00) or very close to the lowest (3.00 in the 1st & 2nd Rounds – 6.00 in the 3rd Round) marks.
Regarding the total number (46) of votes in all three rounds, he gave the highest mark 14 times and the lowest mark 21 times. However, the official rules of the competition, which every juror received via e-mail, state clearly that the lowest and highest marks, in the first three rounds of the competition, would have been invalidated. This is also stated clearly on the competition’s website: www.concorsosalagallo.it
As a result, the final outcome, which was based on the combined average of all three rounds marks, turned out to be entirely opposite to what Mr. Rogé wanted and expected. He thus managed, in the Third Round, to invalidate the votes he gave to Yano Yuta (10.00) and Yejin Noh (10.00), whereas his vote to Atsuko Kinoshita (8.50), the candidate whose performance of Schubert and Debussy he denigrated on his Facebook page to all those who had access to it, actually facilitated her admission into the Final. Similarly, his intention to exclude Pascalucci and Bortoluzzi, the Italians he accused to be “favoured” by the “mafia”, by giving them the lowest marks, produced the diametrically opposite effect. As a consequence, Maestro Rogé preferred to turn the tables and promptly leaving the competition, discredit the work of his colleagues, who quite to the contrary, acted in accordance with the rules that they had accepted and signed.
For these reasons, the Rina Sala Gallo Association requires Maestro Rogé to issue an immediate written apology for failing to fulfill the duties that his position required, i.e. to respect the rules, and for having abandoned the jury – unilaterally terminating the contract he had signed – divulging false and misleading information, and discrediting the Competition, which will now proceed with a legal claim for damages.
Monza, Oct. 6th 2014
I published the first review in the Wall Street Journal this weekend of a groundbreaking biography of Charlotte Moorman, energising icon of the musical avantgarde. Half a century after her blazing provocations, Charlotte appears in Joan Rothfuss’s book as a seminal – even necessary figure. Read my review here.
Extract: During “Originale,” Moorman took off her dress and played “startlingly nude,” as Ms. Rothfuss puts it. In “Human Cello,” by Paik, she drew a bow across the composer’s naked torso, gripped between her legs. She played “The Swan” by Saint-Saëns in see-through cellophane and “Véxations” by Satie with breasts bobbing over the keyboard. In Yoko Ono’s “Cut Piece,” she sat impassive on the floor while audience members cut off her clothes. These were heady, crazy events, harbingers of a new concept of public performance.
From a correspondent at the Philharmonie:
Cameron Carpenter opened the organ season of the Berlin Philharmonie for the third year in a row under the title of “organist in residence”. The hall was nearly full for his all Bach program. At the end of the first work on the second half (Bach’s Fantasia and Fugue in C Minor BWV 537), a very loud note continued to sound in the Philharmonie’s Schuke organ (ostensibly newly refurbished), causing Carpenter to leave the stage after accepting the applause. Nearly a fifteen minute period ensued during which various hall technicians tried to repair the organ, and after the instrument was turned off then back on the sound continued. Some patrons were seen running from the auditorium with hands over ears. Finally an announcement was made that the problem was unrepairable, and that Carpenter would continue on the piano rather than end the concert. The Steinway D was brought up on the stage elevator and Carpenter appeared, beginning with Chopin’s Etude in C# Minor (Op. 10, No. 4) and continuing with selections from JS Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier (I believe the D Major from Book II), a work by Medtner (I didn’t catch which one, about four minutes long in a minor key), Grainger’s “Handel in the Strand”, an improvisation in jazz style on Gershwin’s ‘Embraceable You’, and finally the Bach-Busoni Chaconne, to wild reception. Encores at the piano included (I think) Rachmaninoff’s arrangement of Bach’s Sinfonia from Cantata 29, and a jazz rendering of “Bist Du bei Mir’.
Yuri Lyubimov, one of the formative directors of Russian theatre and opera, died today in Moscow.
Born in the year of the Bolshevik revolution, he took charge of a moribund Moscow theatre in 1964, renaming it the Taganka. He staged 66 productions there both before being exiled by the Soviet regime in 1984, and after his return.
Abroad, he staged opera at La Scala, Paris and Covent Garden where, after a rivetting Jenufa, he was commissioned to stage a Ring cycle. As he was living in Israel at the time and seemed unwilling to read Wagner’s drama from start to finish, the project aborted after an unhappy Rheingold and a reported falling out with the music director, Bernard Haitink. The rest of the cycle was undertaken unoriginally by Goetz Friedrich.
Douglas Hertz, chairman of the Woodruff Arts Center that has engineered the lockout of musicians of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, has given a frank, self-exposing interview to the local newspaper. As they say in the ASO, it aint real til it’s Hertz. Sample quotes:
On public support for the musicians: “I disagree that the public has sided with the musicians. I think the artists’ friends have sided with the artists. But I think the corporate community and the philanthropic community understands, like any businessperson would, we’re not going to make an investment in a business that keeps losing money.”
On charges that Woodruff wants to diminish the ASO: “It’s frustrating, because the whole allegation, whether it’s by musicians or supporters of musicians, or journalists who want to take the musicians’ side — I’m using ‘journalists’ pretty loosely … for them to allege that the WAC doesn’t want a fantastic symphony orchestra, or the governing board doesn’t want to take care of the musicians, is so far off base if they looked at the facts.”
“It makes you wonder, you know,” Hertz said, “are we supporting a bunch of crazy people.”
On music director Robert Spano’s support for the musicians:“Again, we’re criticized for not wanting a great symphony, right? But we signed Robert to a five-year contract (that’s just beginning) with a raise. And Robert’s getting paid. And we signed (principal guest conductor) Donald Runnicles to a three-year contract. He’s getting paid. So don’t criticize WAC management or the WAC governing board for not wanting to put our money where our mouth is. Maybe Robert’s feeling a little bit guilty because he’s getting paid and the musicians aren’t. But he could be a big help in solving this.”
The young violinist Yury Revich, who is partially colour blind, has made a short, sweet film about sensory disabilities.
Do watch.
press release:
London Mozart Players appoints Simon Blendis as Leader
We are delighted to announce the appointment of Simon Blendis as joint Leader of the London Mozart Players. Simon will take up the position in October 2014 and share this highly prestigious role with Marieke Blankestijn, who has led the orchestra since 2011.
Simon has an international reputation as a soloist, orchestral leader and chamber musician, and has been a member of the award-winning Schubert Ensemble since 1995. He has made numerous, widely acclaimed solo and chamber ensemble recordings and appeared regularly at Europe’s major concert venues. He is in regular demand as guest leader with many of the UK’s major orchestras and has shared the position of ‘First Concertmaster’ with the Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa in Japan since 1999.
Saturday night’s concert of the St Louis Symphony Orchestra was targeted by protesters against the police killing of a young black man in Missouri.
Two audience members in the middle aisle on the main floor began singing an old civil rights tune, “Which Side are You on?” They soon were joined, in harmony, by other protesters, who stood at seats in various locations on the main floor and in the balcony.
They were applauded by some members of the audience, and of the orchestra. The protest was peaceful and brief.
Full report here.
This is exceptional footage from 1931, when Willem Mengelberg agreed to have his orchestra filmed in Paris – on condition that they replicated the exact setting they enjoyed in Amsterdam.
Mengelberg gives a short speech before the concert – unimpressively for so powerful a personality. The playing is extraordinary.
The film is stored on a new Mengelberg archive site here.
The French pianist Pascal Rogé accused the Italians on the Monza jury of rigging the results. Now the outcome is known, here is a response from one of the Italian jurors, Roberto Prosseda:
I read the statement that Pascal Rogé published on Slipped Disc about the Monza International Piano Competition and the various comments. Since I was sitting on the same jury, and my name has been tarnished by his declarations, I am here giving my point of view on what happened. Being one of only two (not three as he writes) Italian jurors, I am, of course, deeply offended by the equating “Italians” with “Mafia”, as Mr. Rogé presents it in his statement and I am quite surprised that many comments on Slipped Disc are supporting this idea, without knowing what is going on, without knowing Mr. Rogé’s marks or other jurors’ marks, and without having heard the competitors.
I did not have the pleasure to talk with Mr. Rogé at all during the whole competition. The rules of the Monza Competition, which every juror had to accept, including Mr. Rogé, do not allow jurors to share thoughts about the competitors during the competition, to avoid any influence on the freedom and independence of judgement of each member of the jury, and to keep a serene atmosphere for the competitors. So, the declarations that Mr. Rogé wrote about his judgement of the competitors before the end of the competition were against the rules that he had to follow and were a bad influence on the three finalists who read them before their final stage.
Since Mr. Rogé did not know my judgements, I am surprised that he could write anything regarding them and particularly something so outrageous, alluding to possible connections between the two Italian jurors (me and Mr. Risaliti) and the Mafia. Talking about “mafia” and “dishonesty” just basing this accusation on personal tastes and suppositions, without knowing “who is doing what”, is not something that I can approve of, and does not give much strength to Mr. Rogé’s reliability.
On the fact, written in a comment that I read in Slipped Disc, that Mr. Rogé is “not only the sole trustworthy judge on that jury, but probably the only true and qualified professional musician (one who is still actively and constantly concertizing)”, well, it is enough to google the jurors’s names (including Mr. Rogé) to check the real situation.
As in any piano competition, the final result is an average of each juror’s marks. So it is absolutely normal that the results do not correspond to the point of view of a single jury member. In the case of Monza competition, the three finalists were not exactly the ones that I would have liked, as it will be possible to see soon from the jurors’ marks that will be published on the website of the competition: http://www.concorsosalagallo.
It is quite astonishing to notice that the marks of Mr. Rogé himself for the six semifinalists contradict his own statement. He included among his top three favorites the Japanese girl, Atsuko Kitoshima, that he himself in his slipped disc statement described with this words (which I strongly disapprove): “[she] played today the most boring, tedious and dull Schubert B-flat Sonata I have ever heard in my life, not to mention some poor Debussy Preludes without any french touch”.
Why did Mr. Rogé want this competitor among the three finalists, if he did not like her? Maybe the answer itself is in Mr. Rogé statement. Also, according with the evaluation rule that Mr. Rogé approved, the highest and lowest marks for each competitor are excluded from the average calculation, and Mr. Rogé very often voted the highest or the lowest mark, self-excluding himself from the judgement 38 times out of 47, and making his highest marks (10/10) for his two favorites competitors being excluded from the average calculation.
More in general, having accepted to sit on a jury, any juror also accepts the democratic system of making the mathematical average of the marks, and I cannot think that everybody who has different points of view is a “mafioso” or is acting in a dishonest way. The fact that the marks of each juror will be published is a sign of transparency and honesty, which still very few piano competitions apply.
I believe that in a civil society every citizen should accept the rules of the system where he agrees to take part. If an artist does not accept the system of a piano competition, he should not sit on its jury. Now, I see that Mr. Rogé is very busy in judging in piano competitions around the world and will be the President of the next Geneva Piano Competition, so he is probably not against this system, that he well knows.
We can discuss about the utility of piano competitions, we can agree that sometimes the best artists are not the ones who get the first prize, but, on the other side, a piano competition is still a good opportunity for young and still unknown artists to be known by a wider audience and by international musicians. While I do no expect any excuse from Mr. Rogé in my regards, I wish, at least, that Mr. Rogé will want to help his favourite competitors to start the career that they deserve.
Roberto Prosseda
