He’s the leader of the new Finnish pack, a dazzling baton with schoolboy looks and a host of international engagements. We’re not sure this latest gig does much for the career of  Santtu-Matias Rovali, 29.

He has lent himself to a fashion photoshoot at the Sibelius shrine of Ainola, apparently simluating the composer’s daily life. Full story in the Helsingin Sanomat.

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Just lounging around, as composers do.

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Mucking around at the piano.

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And so to bed.

David Hare, the Labour-loyal playwright who loves getting under the skin of British institutions, is writing a play about the birth of Glyndebourne, opera festival for the dressed-up elite. Should be fun.

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The play relates how a wealthy landowner built a stage for his wife, The Moderate Soprano. More here.

 

The Carl Orff-Stiftung has issued a rapid response to the announcement by the Kloster Andechs festival that it was closing down because of restrictive meddling by the Orff copyright owners. The foundation says, in brief, that it refutes the Kloster Andechs version and has always respected artistic freedom. ‘We thought negotiations were continuing,’ it bleats.

The negotiations have been running for ten years. No wonder the festival got p*ssed Orff.

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Auf Deutsch:

Die Carl Orff-Stiftung weist die vom Kloster Andechs erhobenen Vorwürfe entschieden zurück. Sie hat die künstlerische Freiheit stets respektiert und niemals Zensur ausgeübt. Zu keinem Zeitpunkt hat sie mit einem juristischen Vorgehen gedroht.

Die Stiftung hat gerade heute in ihrer Sitzung über die Fortführung der Finanzierung der Carl Orff-Festspiele für das Jahr 2016 beraten. 

Über die einseitige Entscheidung des Klosters, die Carl Orff-Festspiele zu beenden und über den Termin der Pressekonferenz wurde die Stiftung nicht informiert. Wohl mehr als eine Stilfrage? – Für die Carl Orff-Stiftung war der Gesprächsprozeß noch längst nicht abgeschlossen. 

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Oh, dear.

Katherine Jenkins keeps hitting wrong notes in the National Anthem

A ten year dispute between the Carl Orff Foundation and the Kloster Andechs festival which performs ildly updated versions of his work has ended with the festival being cancelled after this summer.

Orff is buried in the church at Kloster Andechs. The stage director Marcus Everding says he was buried twice – once in the church and a second time by the Foundation.

The foundation is headed by a slavishly loyal ex-Orff pupil, Wilfried Hiller.

Read here (auf Deutsch). And Update here (in English).

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No-one’s quite sure how, but an innocent invitation by a University of California student, Azeem Ward, provoked a media storm in a country with nothing to talk about.

This is where is started:

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Here’s where it continued:

And then it just grew and blew.

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Full story here.

That reminds me: The Berlin Phil have a vacancy for a flute and one top candidate keeps refusing to audition. Azeem, you free?

The Oberlin College Music Conservatory has withdrawn from the National Association of Schools of Music, which it helped found in 1924.

 

The reasons are abstruse and couched in academic generalities, but Oberlin is due an inspection from NASM in a couple of years and its aims are now said to differ from those of the parent organisation.

‘In my view, the association is holding onto an old model in lieu of tackling the very pressing need for advocacy for arts education,’ wrote Oberlin Dean Andrea Kalyn. More here.

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photo: Tanya Rosen-Jones

The Leipzig string quartet, deprived of its leader Stefan Arzberger who is delayed in New York on a charge of attempted murder, have co-opted Conrad Muck of the Petersen Quartet as stand-in first violin.

Arzberger is due to appear again in court mid-June.

Press statement from the quartet:

Due to the momentary situation we are very glad that CONRAD MUCK is our 1st violin for the upcoming concerts. He is well known and with great reputation for more than 20 years with the Petersen Quartet in this position.
We are working to expand our repertoire together. The last 4 concerts in Italy and Spain were very successful. 

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Berlin’s number 1 tabloid B.Z. publishes a full-page op-ed by Norman Lebrecht this morning, warning the Berlin Philharmonic of the dangers of delay in selecting a music director and suggesting two ways out of the present impasse. B.Z. has the biggest readership in Berlin. It is unashamedly tabloid and working-class.

Its focus on the election signifies the importance of the Philharmonic to Berlin, and to Germany.

An English version of the op-ed will appear next week.

The French cellist Edgar Moreau, just 20 years old, has been awarded 25,000 Swiss francs (24,000 Euros) by the Lucerne symphony orchestra ‘to help advance his career’.

He’s doing pretty well already, with some poewerful mentors a Warner contract and a strong fan-base back home.

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We’ve been informed of the death, on May 8, of Jaime Leon, the most successful Colombian composer and conductor of the 20th century. He was 94.

Toccata Classics are about to issue an album of his vocal works. You can hear a sample here.

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Larry Johnson has good tidings from Chicago.

Renee Fleming will continue as Lyric Opera’s creative consultant through 2017.

Among other things, the soprano and national treasure is launching a ‘multi-year, multi-faceted project’ to nurture young voices.

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Chicago’s fairy godmother