PR message:
Pentatone are proud to announce the engagement of an uprising talent, rock-star cellist Johannes Moser as one of our exclusive artists. The collaboration launches on 1 September 2015 the release of DVORAK & LALO Cello Concertos with conductor Jakub Hrusa and the Prague Philharmonia.
Small question: if he’s a rock star, what’s he doing on a boutique classical label?
Andrea Bambace has published a picture of almost mythical power and importance.
It shows Johannes Brahms with three others, shortly after the funeral of Clara Schumann, his eternal beloved.
The poignant point of the picture is that Brahms all but missed Clara’s funeral.
Clara died, after a prolonged illness, on May 20, 1896. According to Richard Specht’s 1928 biography of Brahms, drawn from people who knew the composer well, Brahms ‘was quite unprepared for the news… What is worse, it reached him a day late. His landlady in Vienna had left the telegram unopened and forwarded it to him by letter.’
Brahms caught the first train from Bad Ischl to Frankfurt, fell asleep and woke up found himself travelling in the wrong direction after missing a connection. He arrived ‘half-dead in Frankfurt, only to learn that the funeral was not taking place there, but at Bonn, Clara having expressed a wish to rest at Robert Schumann’s side.’
When he reached the cemetery in Bonn, ‘bathed in perspiration, he found that he was too late for the service at the chapel; he met the funeral procession on is way to the grave… But he could not bear to remain among the mourners: he took refuge behind a bush and let his tears flow at the side of his friend, Rudolf von der Leyen.’
This may be the moment we are seeing here.
On his return to Bad Ischl, friends remarked that his face had turned yellow. Brahms died of liver cancerelevn months later.
The picture itself tells much of this story.
Discover more here.
An unexploded Second World War bomb was discovered this morning in Bermondsey, causing traffic chaos south of the river. Tower Bridge has been shut.
The device is located at Grange Walk, SE1.
Such things still happen.
UPDATE 1300: Police say it’s a 1,000 lb bomb at Grange Walk. Officer reckons situation unlikely to be resolved today.
UPDATE 1800: As sun sets can confirm Abbey Street and all streets to south between Enid Street and Tower Bridge Road remain shut
Georgia Institute of Technology has announced it is increasing its arts programs. Already, more than half the students play a musical instrument. Here’s why.
He thought Zurich was going to be an easy gig.
The French conductor Alain Altinoglu was booked to conduct a contemporary opera by Christian Jost at the Zurich Opera on Saturday night. With a fairly relaxed schedule, he thought nothing of adding a little chamber music recital on Sunday morning with a few friends from the opera orchestra.
In mid-recital, he was asked to step in for Mahler 6th on Sunday night as Mikko Franck had fallen sick.
No time for rest, reflection or rehearsal. Just a quick run-through of the tricky bits in the afternoon.
At 7.30pm, unnanounced on the website, Alain was back on the podium, driving Mahler 6 without Satnav. It went pretty well, we hear.
‘La vie est cool,’ he messaged this morning.
Wonder what he’s doing tonight.
UPDATE: Oops… Gergiev just beat him.
The Deutsche Oper has announced plans to pack away Götz Friedrich’s claustrophobic Ring cycle, dating from 1984, and replace it with a new vision by the Norwegian Stefan Herheim, opening in 2020.
The Friedrich Ring was memorably set in a tunnel, a metaphor for Cold War tensions and terrors in the divided city.
If the Tories get in, we may all be reduced to playing for pennies. The Mayor of London is keen to make it easier.
Press release below.
Mayor unveils plan to boost busking and street performance across London and beyond
· Busk in London scheme, backed by Westminster, Network Rail, TfL and Ticketmaster, will make it easier to busk in the capital
· London’s first Busking Code of Conduct unveiled, common sense rules, devised by performers, councils, businesses and the police
· London teams up with cities around the country for first ever National Busking Day in July
· Mayor also calling on London musicians aged 11-25 to sign up for this year’s Gigs busking competition
Following last year’s #BackBusking campaign, which was set up to investigate the problems faced by buskers performing around the city, the Mayor’s Busk in London scheme is now up and running. It aims to make busking and street performance much easier in the capital and includes London’s first Busking Code of Conduct, a set of common sense rules, devised by performers, councils, businesses and the police. The Mayor has also unveiled plans for the inauguralNational Busking Day, which will see street musicians performing in cities around the country in July.
The Mayor of London Boris Johnson said: ‘Our Gigs busking competition has over the last seven years provided fantastic opportunities for hundreds of young musicians to develop their skills and confidence playing to audiences on the streets of London and at other locations around the capital.
‘Busking adds to the capital’s joie de vivre, but in spite of its popularity, buskers have sometimes encountered problems when plying their trade. Some have even been put off. Working with our partners, we are putting a scythe through the acres of unnecessary bureaucracy to make it easier to entertain on our city’s streets. We want to make London the busking capital of the world!’
Members of the Swiss Ukraine Association picketed Anna Netrebko at the Zurich Opera, where she appeared as Donizetti’s Anna Bolena. Leaflets were handed out to passersby proclaiming that taxpayers’ money should not be squandered on what they called an ‘ambassador of hatred’.
Netrebko, who has backed President Putin’s military assault on Ukraine, is reported to be earning 80,000 Swiss francs over four performances.
Unnoticed by the demonstrators, her conductor at the Zurich Opera is the Ukrainian, Andriy Yurkevych.
photo: Tom Kawara
Enjoy.
h/t: Joe Goetz
A bus carrying some members of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra home from a concert in Vienna came off the road today near the Austrian village of Mistelbach.
Three people are reported to have suffered serious injuries. Twelve have been detained in hospital.
Most of the orchestra had caught a flight from Vienna to their next concert in Poland. Those on the bus were not required for that engagement.
Report here (in Czech) and here (in German).
UPDATE 2200 CET: All players but two have been released from hospital and are on their way home. The two casualties with serious injuries are now in stable condition.
Critics at the parish-pump have published a wish-list of music directors for the New York Philharmonic. Slipped Disc responds with a list of the ones the orchestra needs to avoid.
1 The been-there, done-that
2 The all-American hopeful
3 The political hot potato
4 The specialist’s modernist
5 The early bird
6 The Finn end
7 The one who’ll turn them down
Beyond this list and the Times’s, there are six candidates of outstanding suitability, none of whom has yet been mentioned. Some have yet to audition in New York. We’ll discuss their prospects in due course.
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Our operavore contributor Shawn E. Milnes has been writing about the ghastly Totentanz that is being staged in New York around the remains of what was once City Opera. Two rival groups have gone to court over the corpse, with a union leader shooting off from the sides. The latest farce was a tribute gala concert to the late conductor Julius Rudel, who must be turning in Valhalla.
Read Shawn here.
