This is not all bad news.
The top two selling items on Nielsen Soundscan this week are two Max Richter sleep albums from DG.
Both sold over 1,000 copies.
Nothing else reached 400.
This looks like a work in progress.
Andrew Litton, 56, is shuffling his pack. He has told the Colorado Symphony, where he only recently renewed, that he wants out after the end of this season.
He is also leaving the Bergen Symph in Norway.
Instead, he will be music director of New York City Ballet (NYCB), which is closer to where he lives.
Gillian Moore is unhappy at all those misery-guts who spend their concert time finding fault with others, usually other people in the audience.
The woman in the seat behind vigorously poked my friend on the shoulder. ‘You were moving your head up and down during the music,’ she said. ‘You need to learn to behave in concerts, or stay at home!’
The woman in the seat behind had paid for her ticket. The woman she was criticising, a music biz insider, had not.
This is possibly more complicated than it looks.
Gillian wants to introduce courtesy rules in concert halls. Read her rant here. Maybe there should be special rules for people on free tickets. Have your say below.
UPDATE: Here’s a nail-on-the head response.
Léonard Frey-Maibach was announced today as first solo cellist of the Leipzig Gewandhaus orchestra.
He’s 24, from Lyon, and he’s been playing in the section for the past two years.
Léonard plays an 1810 Nicolas Lupot.
Like all skilled polemicists, Damian Thompson sprinkles his arguments with elements of truth and doubt. Picking up a Slipped Disc story about the inclusion of women composers in the school music syllabus, Damian maintains that women are given being an unfair crack at fame.
Sample:
Meanwhile, we’re stuck in a situation where the barriers to women becoming composers have been removed but they’re still honoured for being women. Judith Weir (born 1954) is a minor figure whose ‘stark’ scores sound as if crucial instrumental parts have gone missing. Her opera Miss Fortunereceived such a savaging at Covent Garden in 2012 that the Santa Fe Opera dropped its plans to stage it. Last year she was appointed Master of the Queen’s Music. You may not be surprised to learn that she’s all in favour of the new A-level syllabus.
Read full rant here.
Probably better not read the backwoods Spectator readers comments below the line.
h/t: Mahan Esfahani, David Conway
CBC Canada have blanked the thief’s face on this store video ‘because she has not been named as a suspect’.
If you recognise her, call the police in Halifax, Canada. The item she stole is a a MV400-2 Flame Violin, priced at C$2,616.
A presenter of Scottish and Irish music for BBC Radio Scotland, Radio 3, BBC2 and BBC 4, was found slumped drunk in a stationary car, blocking a narrow Highlands road.
Mary Ann Kennedy, 47, was said to be seven times over the drink-drive limit. She’s been banned for four years.
It’s her second ban.
photo: BBC
A call from prime minister Abe to accentuate ‘practical vocational education that better anticipates the needs of society’ has drawn a rapid response.
Out of 60 national universities that offer courses in humanities and social sciences, 26 say they will cut back their faculties. Of these, 17 will shut them altogether, according to the THES. Japan’s universities regularly top polls as being the best in Asia.
This could mark the start of a global trend.
Your thoughts?
We reported earlier that Heinz Holliger had received the Swiss Grand Prix for music, worth more than $100,000.
In a thoughtful interview with a Swiss newspaper, Holliger laments the decline of music in everyday life, wondering why people no longer sing while they work. He wants to do something about it.
He’s going to give away every cent of his hundred grand.
Good man.
Chicago has launched a Lyric Opera Bus for the northern suburbs. It costs $20 return, and you can have that second intermission drink without a second thought.
Way to go.
Read here.
An Italian tabloid heads oddly upmarket. Eat your hearts out National Enquirer, Rebekah Wade, Rupert Murdoch.
h/t: Joel Cohen
The Novosibirsk Opera and Ballet, which erased its previous chief conductor and general manager from its history after a controversial production of Wagner’s Tannhäuser, is under Putinist reconstruction.
The new oligarch-boss, Vladimir Kekhman, offered the vacant baton to Vladimir Jurowski. He honourably refused.
His younger brother Dmitry, however, has now accepted.
Dmitry Jurowski, 36, is chief conductor of the Flemish Opera in Antwerp.
