While you enjoy your weekend:

This is a homeless man in Newcastle train station, soaking wet with a drenched sleeping bag over his shoulders.His name is Alan, he is 26 and he has been living on the streets for 18 months.

He plays Für Elise, Moonlight Sonata and other Beethoven standards.

Do not avert your eyes. Can you do something to help?

picture (c) North News and Pictures Ltd

A play about the 1958 meeting of minds between Dmitri Shostakovich and the Oxford philosopher Isaiah Berlin opens next month at Sadlers Wells.  From the blurb:

In 1958, at the height of his artistic ability and reputation, the composer Dmitri Shostakovich was invited by Oxford University to receive an Honorary Doctorate of Music, along with fellow musician Francis Poulenc and other dignitaries. From the initial invitation by Oxford to Shostakovich in Moscow, the story is a fascinating, humorous and poignant portrayal of the clash of two distinct, and distinctly insular, worlds: the Byzantine rituals and orotundity of Oxford University and the unsmiling officialdom of Soviet Russia.

Details here.

Mike Marshall and Caterina Lichtenberg have made a world premiere recording of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Two-Part Inventions, Organ Duets and Canons from the Art of the Fugue arranged for mandolin and mandocello.

Brave. Try some.

Gareth Davies, principal flute of the London Symphony Orchestra, has been reflecting on the constant demands for change in classical concerts. In a typically thoughtful blog, he dismisses most change initiatives as tinsel.

There seems very little invention and much more repackaging. I remember when I was a student in the 90’s, the fashion was to ditch the concert attire and for men to wear… ground breaking (drum roll please) brightly coloured waistcoats. I don’t think a waistcoat has ever knowingly encouraged anyone to go anywhere. Similarly, standing up instead of sitting down made a brief game changing appearance. That’s the players not the audience unless you count the proms. Don’t get me started on fancy lighting. Why on earth anyone thinks that  the holy grail of audiences for classical music – young people – who have been brought up on YouTube, video games, 3D films, iPhones and on demand content, are going to be impressed by subtly changing mood lighting during a symphony which never asked for it in the first place, is beyond me. 

As I watched the BBC news this week where Katie Derham talked about the new Proms season, the montage they used was exclusively clips of the headline grabbing acts involving DJs, jazz, urban and the like. Let me make this clear, I think it’s a good thing that the Proms embraces other forms of music, but as a percentage of the goodies on offer, it’s tiny. It’s frustrating then that these are the only bits a viewer that morning would have seen on TV.

Read the full blog here.

The young conductor Jonathan Bloxham has sent us this from his festival, Northern Sounds:

photo (c) Kaupo Kikkas

Hi Norman, 

I’d like to you meet Dave, a 74 year old community gardener from Gateshead who has never been to a classical concert but on Sunday will be performing Ligeti at the Sage.

This is part of a unique collaboration between myself and the photographer, Kaupo Kikkas. It is a project called ‘100 Faces of Gateshead’ and in it we bring together 100 people from different backgrounds in the town to each play one part in Ligeti Poeme Symphonic for 100 Metronomes. The idea behind is that music, art, can bring people from all walks of life together without prejudicing one group or another.

To support the project visually, Kaupo has taken portraits of all 100 participants – disabled actors, CEOs, retired, students, clergy – and we’ve complied a multimedia video, a exhibition and a book of all the photographs to accompany the performance.

The performance is the opening concert of my Northern Chords festival.

Lovely, revealing, un-pressy interview by Timothy Hazlett with the American composer John Luther Adams, whose success in the past year has overtaken that of his namesake without the added middle name.

Confused? You won’t be.  Click here.

h/t: Steve Smith

Can’t be done, right?

All the symphonies need someone at the front, giving shape and direction.

That’s what we thought.

The Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra of Los Angeles, a conductorless ensemble, decided to perform the fourth symphony without external interference.

See what you think.

They restore your faith in youth and beauty.

Three weeks ago, the Stillwater Area High School Concert Choir posted a video of their break at a hotel in Ames, Iowa. They liked the pool’s acoustics and sang F. Melius Christiansen’s “O Day Full of Grace.”

Three-quarters of a million people have watched in wonder.

More now.

Remember this album?

That frozen moment of eternal innocence? Well here they are today, still together after 46 years.

Nick and Bobbi Ercoline married two years after Woodstock, have two sons and live not far from the concert site.

Marriage must have something going for it.

In an address to the Classical Next conference in Rotterdam, the Canadian conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin called for ‘new venues, new dress codes and maybe also an entirely new repertoire’.

You can watch his speech here.

Announcing next year’s Salzburg Whitsun Festival today, the Italian mezzo said she will sing Maria in a new production of Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story.

UPDATE: Norman Reinhardt will sing Tony. Gustavo Dudamel will conduct the Simon Bolívar Symphony Orchestra. The director is Phil McKinley.

The musical fits into a Shakesperian theme that Bartoli has been running at the festival.

We reported last weekend that players in the Beethoven Orchestra of Bonn voted 98-2 in favour of Jun Märkl as their next music director, only to be overruled by a committee of three, including Nike Wagner (below), that chose Marc Piollet.

Now both of those choices have been set aside by the city’ political leadership.

How they proceed from here remains unclear. ‘The reputation of Beethoven’s town has been harmed,’ said one functionary. Latest here.