George Burt, a Ligeti disciple who founded the Syzygy new music ensemble while teaching at Rice University as well as California’s Notes from an Underground series, has died of cancer at 85.
He composed six feature films, of which the two most successful were for Robert Altman – Secret Honor (1984) and Fool for Love (1985), starring Sam Shepard and Kim Basinger.
His book The Art of Film Music (1994) is a widely used campus text.
The claim is made in a new campaign by Help Musicians UK, formerly the Musicians Benevolent Fund.
It comes with a case-history video.
The naked statistic cannot be true. It must apply only to those musicians who seek financial help.
How did a poor boy from Odessa lay hands on a Stradivarius in the grim Soviet 1930s? And another in the 1940s?
The story is told in Tarisio’s new digital exhibition on the instruments played by the great contenders, a series timed to concide with the LSO’s upcoming international violin festival.
Click here to read about Oistrakh’s Strad and sign up for the full Tarisio series.
It’s not all about knitting…
The English composer John McCabe, who died in February aged 75, was a formidable pianist who won fame in the mid-1970s by recording the complete sonatas of Joseph Haydn for Decca. Around the same time, less noticed, he performed the piano music of a Danish composer who had fallen out of fashion. In his 150th anniversary year, the piano music of Carl Nielsen (1865-1931) has been recovered from analogue tapes and revived for a very different era.
This precious retrieval is my Album of the Week on sinfinimusic.com. Click here.
Hilde Zadek, probably the last surviving member of Vienna’s golden cast of the 1940s, is back this week at 97, presiding over the 9th Hilde Zadek Competition for Voice.
A Hitler refugee in Jerusalem, Hilde returned to Vienna in 1947 to join a company that was dominated by unrepentant Nazis. She wa Vienna’s first-choice Aida for the next two decades.
Today, a little frail, she can still pick great voices from also-rans.
You can watch the competition’s final round live on Saturday, right here.
And dead at 44.
Slipped Disc editorial:
Opinion has split down the middle on the Toronto Symphony’s sacking of star pianist Valentina Lisitsa, whose social-media hostility to the Ukrainian government provoked irritation among Canada’s pro-Kiev lobby.
The majority of commenters on Slipped Disc take the view that Val’s much-tweeted propaganda is virulent and the TSO was right to sack her.
Most commenters on Toronto’s Globe and Mail take the opposite view, arguing that the TSO was wrong to cave in to pressure and that an artist’s politics have no relevance on whether she or he has the right to make music.
So who’s right?
From our perspective, Val’s politics are odious. She spouts the Putin line on the Ukraine, justifying the aggression of ‘pro-Russian’ citizens who are armed, trained, funded and supported by the Russian army. Everything she writes, from her US refuge, is cast in black and white: Russia is right, the rest of the world wrong. She has come very close to condoning some of the worst war crimes committed in Europe since the Serb wars of the 1990s.
However, that is no reason to ban her from a concert hall. If it were, then Valery Gergiev, Anna Netrebko, Dennis Matsuev, Yuri Bashmet and dozens more should have been excluded long ago from the world stage. No-one in their right mind would want that. In a free society we cherish the freedom of speech, even when we disagree to the point of revulsion with the sentiments expressed. Freedom of speech entails freedom of performance.
The Toronto Symphony has transgressed that principle by caving in to a small and noisy pressure group. It is one of the most cowardly acts seen from a music organisation in years (outside of Russia, where a cough from the Kremlin can cost an artist his job). The TSO’s gung-ho boss Jeff Melanson has made a terrible error of judgement.
Boycotts are bad. They don’t work, and they hand moral advantage to those whose views they try to silence. Toronto has got it wrong. The TSO board needs to convene in emergency session and revoke Melanson’s rash decision.
Stats are out for the festival, Peter Alward’s last as manager, and the indicators are all pointing upwards.
Ticket sales hit 94.2 percent, up from 88 last year and the highest since 2002. Revenue was up 14.4 percent to 3.4 million Euros.
Alward, a former EMI Classics boss, was brought in by a panicked Eliette von Karajan and Simon Rattle after the previous festival boss was run out of town on charges of fraud that have never come to trial.
Rattle and the Berlin Phil defected soon after to Baden-Baden in a major moral and commercial error. Alward brought in Christian Thielemann and the Dresden Staatskapelle to replace them.
The results speak for themselves. Against 75% for some Rattle/Berlin productions, the Easter festival has become a hot ticket once more and Peter Alward can toddle off to his Schloss, job well done.
In the press release(below), Thielemann fails to offer a word of thanks.
The Staatskapelle Dresden and Christian Thielemann, the artistic team in residence at the Salzburg Easter Festival, conclude their third season on 6 April 2015 with the opera performances Cavalleria rusticana and Pagliacci. This year’s Festival has been both artistically and economically extraordinarily successful.
The new productions of Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana and Ruggero Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci directed by Philipp Stölzl and conducted by Christian Thielemann were acclaimed by both audiences and critics alike as highly convincing and impressive. Jonas Kaufmann, who led a starry international cast of soloists, achieved huge success in his role debuts as Turiddu and Canio.
Thanks to our media partner Unitel, this production will also be televised worldwide and issued on DVD. Broadcasting times: Cavalleria rusticana: 6 April 2015, 10pm, ORF 2 and 23.15, ZDF. Pagliacci: 6 April 2015, different times, Classica (pay television) in the following countries: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, China, Czech Republic, Cyprus, Estonia, France, Germany, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Malta, Mexico, Mongolia, Poland, Philippines, Romania, Slovakia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan. Cavalleria rusticana/Pagliacci: 11 April 2015, 20.15, 3sat; 6 April 2015, 9pm, Classica Italia
Earnings from ticket sales increased by 14.4 percent compared to last year, which represents a new record income of 3.4 million Euro. This outstanding development contributes considerably to the fact that the Easter Festival continues to achieve an extremely high self-financing ratio of 88 percent.
18,900 tickets (last year: 16,400) were sold for the 2015 Salzburg Easter Festival and the overall seat occupancy factor was 94.2 percent (last year: 88 percent). This percentage has not been achieved since 2002. The opera performances, the Choral Concerts and the Concert for Salzburg were completely sold out. The number of patrons rose by 17 percent compared to last year, meaning an increase of 300 members with a total of 2,100.
The international media interest in the Salzburg Easter Festival remains on a high level: 114 journalists from 13 nations filed reviews about the festival.
This season ist the last for which Peter Alward and Bernd Gaubinger take responsibility as managing directors.
Peter Alward, Managing Director and Intendant, says: „Both the artists and the artistic administration of the Festival are particularly gratified by this year’s success. We are also very proud of the fact that, following some turbulent times, the Festival is now moving in calmer waters and that artistic matters now stand in the forefront. It is a particular source of joy that the Staatskapelle Dresden and Christian Thielemann have positioned themselves so convincingly as our new artistic leaders.”
Bernd Gaubinger, Managing Director, points out: “We were expecting an increase in ticket demand for the 2015 festival, but this excellent result has clearly exceeded our expectations. This success impressively confirms the fact that the Salzburg Easter Festival is travelling in the right direction. We feel justified in stating that we are handing over a commercially secure and successful festival. We would like to thank all those who have supported us on this journey in the last six years and wish both the Easter Festival and Prof. Peter Ruzicka continued success in the future.”
Christian Thielemann, Artistic Director of the Festival and Principal Conductor of the Staatskapelle Dresden, says: ”The last days have given me particular happiness. The Staatskapelle has managed to establish itself firmly in the last years in the hearts of our festival audiences. The reactions that every concert seems to inspire are simply overwhelming. Salzburg has become a second home for us and I am already looking forward to the coming years. I would like to express our thanks both to all the artists and to all the staff of the Festival without whom this would not be possible.”
A wonderful clip from Stephanie Argerich’s film, Bloody Daughter, now on UK release.
The conductor appears to be suffering from advanced foot-in-mouth syndrome.
In one interview , he assesses his likely successors, in the next he downgrades his new orchestra against his old.
He also tells the FAZ how he will balance the 2017/18 season when he is music director in both London and Berlin.
Read here (auf Deutsch).
The pianist Valentina Lisitsa has been highly outspoken in her hatred of the Ukrainian government and her support for Russian intervention. She lives in the US and she likes to play up alleged Fascist and Nazi elements in the Ukraine government and its forces.
She now reports that , in face of protests from local Ukrainian ‘loyalists’, the Toronto Symphony has cancelled her concert and is paying her to stay away.
You may not agree with Val’s politics, but TSO’s action, now confirmed, seems censorious, cowardly and anti-art.
UPDATE: Why Toronto is totally wrong.
Read Val below and take the appropriate action:
Dear fans, DEAR FRIENDS!
I have a confession to make and a huge favor to ask all of you. I really REALLY need your help now.
But first, my confession.
Over the last year I have been leading a double life. There was me – a “celebrity” pianist hopping from a concert to a concert, all over the world; learning new pieces, meeting fans, recording, chirping about my happiness in upbeat interviews.
But there was another me: not a musician but a regular human being – a daughter, a mother, a wife. And this human being was watching helplessly how the country of my birth, of my childhood, of my first falling in love – this country was sliding ever faster into the abyss. Children die under bombs, old ladies die of starvation, people burned alive…
The worst thing that can happen to any country is fratricide war, people seeing each other, their neighbors as enemies to be eliminated. This is what has befallen my beautiful Ukraine. My heart was bleeding. You all saw on TV screens all over the world a magnificent revolution, the people of Ukraine raising in fury against their corrupt rulers, for a better life. I was so proud of my people! But the ruling class doesn’t let go easily. They managed to cunningly channel away the anger, to direct it to other, often imaginable, enemies – and worse, to turn people upon themselves. Year later, we have the same rich people remaining in power, misery and poverty everywhere, dozens of thousands killed, over a million of refugees.
So, I took to Twitter ( how many of you know I have a Twitter account? LOL) under a name “NedoUkraïnka” – a word roughly meaning “Sub-Ukrainian”, a stab at Ukrainian Prime Minister who called Russian-speaking Southern and Eastern Ukrainians “SUBHUMANS”! Yes, I kid you not. In an official written document. I am a subhuman, my husband, my mom….I mastered Ukrainian language perfectly, far better than a so-called “president” of Ukraine. But I don’t speak it to my family, I didn’t sing lullabies to my son in Ukrainian, when I sleep I never see the dreams in Ukrainian, when I will be dying my last words will NOT be in Ukrainian….
Sorry, I got carried away telling you those things… To get back to my story – I took to Twitter in order to get the other side of the story heard, the one you never see in the mainstream media – the plight of my people, the good and bad things that were happening in Ukraine. I translated news stories from Ukrainian language websites, I translated eyewitness accounts of atrocities…. I became really good in unmasking fakes published by Western media in order to make one side of the civil war look whiter and softer than Easter bunny, and another – as sub-humans, not worthy of mercy, the “collateral damage.
To give you just one example: one of my feats was to confront French fashion magazine “Elle” who published a glowing cover story about women in Ukrainian army. After the research I have shown to the magazine in my Twitter posts that the “cover girl” they have chosen to show was in fact a horrible person, open Neo-Nazi, racist, anti-Semite who boasted of murdering civilians for fun! The magazine issued a written public apology.
I was very proud! But with time my activities attracted a lot of vicious haters. I was a particularly important “target” because of being Ukrainian, thus – a traitor. I thought I knew hate – my playing on YouTube certainly “attracted” a fair share of hate mail. But I was mistaken. Death threats, wishes for my family to die, calling me “paid Kremlin wh*re”…the list goes on and on smile emoticon
My haters didn’t stop there. Trying, in their own words, to teach me a lesson, they have now attempted to silence me as a musician.
I am scheduled to play Rachmaninoff Concerto #2 with Toronto Symphony Orchestra this week. Back in December someone in the orchestra top management, likely after the pressure from a small but aggressive lobby claiming to represent Ukrainian community, has made a decision that I should not be allowed to play. I don’t even know who my accusers are, I am kept in the dark about it. I was accused of “inciting hatred” on Twitter. As the “proof” , ironically enough, they presented to the orchestra my tweets containing, of all things, Charlie Hebdo caricatures depicting lying media!!! We all know what those who can’t tolerate free speech did to Charlie Hebdo journalists.
Now, the orchestra based in one of the freest democratic countries is bending over to the same kind of people, helping them to assassinate me – not as a living person yet , but as a MUSICIAN for sure.
Yes, Toronto Symphony is going TO PAY ME NOT TO PLAY because I exercised the right to free speech.
Yes, they will pay my fee but they are going to announce that I will be unable to play and they already found a substitute.
And they even threatened me against saying anything about the cause of the cancellation. Seriously.
And I thought things like this only happen in Turkey to Fazil Say?
Now, the plea.
Before you decide to help me – If you wish, please take time and read my tweets. You might find some of them offensive – perhaps. The satire and hyperbole are the best literature tools to combat the lies. Bear that in mind when reading.
Here is what I ask you to do for me, and in defense of freedom even if you disagree with me on politics (LOLl!)
I ask you to raise your voice and tell Toronto Symphony that music can’t be silenced.
Ask them to let me play.
If you want to write something – great!
Or just share a photo I made ( sorry, I made it on my phone, nothing fancy)
Ask your friends to join in.
If they do it once, they will do it again and again, until the musicians, artists are intimidated into voluntary censorship. Our future will be bleak if we allow this to happen.
Please stand with me.
Here are the links :
https://www.facebook.com/
Twitter @TorontoSymphony
h/t: Joe Goetz, Christine Mori
Couldn’t make it up?
Oh, yes they could….
