The Wall Street Journal reports a breakdown of relations at Carnegie Hall between the new chairman, Ronald Perelman, and the English executive director, Sir Clive Gillinson.
Perelman accuses Gillinson of failing to obtain board approval for major deals, such as a branded competition funded by Warner’s Len Blavatnik. For a period of 24 hours last month, Gillinson was suspended from his job.
Karl Fenner was exultant. He had won the doublebass audition at the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.
Then he handed his precious instrument to TSA for transportation on SouthWest Airlines.
Karl writes: ‘Thanks Southwest Airlines and or TSA Atlanta. I’ve trusted you with my baby for 9 years and then this. The heavy duty case was heavily damaged too.’
His friend Sasha Mäkila adds: ‘Heart breaking to see musician’s livelihood hanging on a thread every time they board a plane with their instrument.’
Ivan Fischer has spoken out in Berlin against his government’s treatment of the refugee crisis at its borders. Now he has organised an aid convoy. He spoke yesterday in Budapest (in Hungarian, followed by English) about the mission, and other Hungarians who are helping. ‘They saved the conscience of this country,’ he says.
His Holiness with DG team presenting the Sistine Chapel recording.
Pope Francis checks the credits on the DG cover. Mark Wilkinson, former head of DG, struggles with the cellophane.
photos (c) Osservatore Romano
It’s the controversial Anne-Akiko Meyers, and she steers carefully clear of controversy in this friendly interview with Zsolt Bognar for Living the Classical Life.
But the confession (play 12:00) that she absorbs music best while running errands in her car is one that we hear quite often.
Is that what other soloists do – working out an interpretation while searching for a parking spot?
A date has been set next Tuesday for the city to affix a plaque on the house where Henri Dutilleux lived and composed for many ears. The local authorities had initially refused to agree to the plaque after endorsing false claims that Dutilleux had been a wartime collaborator.
Guess who’s joined Facebook under a foreshortened name.
– ‘One of the advantages of having such a large budget, we shaved a little bit here and a little bit there, and those little bits added up.’
– ‘We sold more single tickets, but we are losing subscribers.’
Hot on the tail of the Halifax violin heist, we have footage of a man stealing a viola on a train from London to Dover.
He’s about the least competent thief you could imagine. The judge released Stephen Tillyer, an insurance salesman, with a suspended jail sentence and costs. The viola is valued at £300,000.
It belongs to London Symphony Orchestra principal viola, Edward Vanderspar.
The apparently indefatigable Yannick Nézet-Séguin has signed on for five more years with the hometown orch that gave him his first break, the Orchestre Métropolitain of Montreal.
‘My commitment has never wavered to the first orchestra that was prepared to place its trust in a young conductor 15 years ago,’ he said today, signing a contract that sees him through to 2021.
Yannick, 40, is also music director of the Philadelphia and the Rotterdam Phil. He’s due to leave the latter in 2018.
This spot-on definition of classical concerts comes from an anonymous blogger, and it’s a response to Gillian Moore’s piece about getting people to behave better in concerts she puts on at London’s South Bank.
It’s an accurate perception, almost brilliant. Here’s some more:
I sometimes feel like we’re missing something else, something bigger, that we could be experiencing if we stopped looking on our fellow concertgoers as an irritation, and started taking notice of them. What would it be like if we tried to enjoy being in a room with a lot of other people, experiencing the music as a group, rather than all sitting in our individual seats feeling aggrieved that the chap next to us is manspreading and the woman in front is so ridiculously tall and trying in vain to pretend that Iestyn Davies (below) is singing to us ALONE in our living room for our personal delight (however brilliant that sounds)?
A major competition has finally broken with the tyranny and collusion of conservatory teachers who vote for each others’ students.
The 2017 jury, all noted performers, will be:
Leonard Slatkin, jury chairman (United States)
Arnaldo Cohen (Brazil)
Jean-Philippe Collard (France)
Christopher Elton (United Kingdom)
Marc-André Hamelin (Canada)
Joseph Kalichstein (Israel)
Mari Kodama (Japan)
Anne-Marie McDermott (United States)
Alexander Toradze (United States/Georgia)
UPDATE: It has been pointed out that one of the above-named is primarily a teacher. He’s the token teacher on a panel of performers. This is a vast improvement on past Cliburns and general competition practice.
