Headless since the last chairman winged away and the putsch that removed John Berry as artistic and executive director, the ENO board has made two stand-ins into permanent appointments.
Harry Brünjes is confirmed as chairman and Cressida Pollock as chief executive. Brunjes is a pioneer in private medicine. Pollock is a McKinsey management consultant who speaks geek jargon.
Neither inspires much confidence within the company, but the Arts Council likes grey suits. Both are on three-year terms.
There are grim, colourless times ahead for ENO.
From an open letter published today by the Metropolitan Opera Musicians:
The Met was able to trim $18M from its budget, the majority of which savings came from “management expenses,” and not from the players, singers, and craftspeople that make the Met the greatest opera house in the world.
Our contention all along has been that the Met’s budget grew needlessly large, and that it got that way because of wasteful spending and inefficient management. Therefore, we were certain that a more sustainable path could be found by focusing cost savings on management spending. These recent financial results prove that absolutely correct, and vindicate the imperative to preserve the artistic heart of the Met.
But while we are heartened by the recent financial news, we must remain vigilant, doing all we can to ensure the Met operates in a fiscally responsible manner while placing top priority on the highest artistic standards. Last summer, we wrote that “the Met’s finances will be subject to unprecedented oversight, with powerful new mechanisms put in place for enforcement and accountability…. An ‘Efficiency Task Force’…will have direct input on spending” in order to achieve the mandated $11.25M reduction in management expenses. It is due in part to the ceaseless vigilance of these union task force delegates that the Met balanced its budget. And we want our fans to understand that as we work tirelessly to present masterful musicianship, much work remains behind the curtains to ensure the music continues.
In the end, this progress is not just good for the MET Orchestra, Chorus, or even the entire Met Opera — it’s good for opera lovers the world over, because we are charting a more sustainable course for opera in the 21st century.
In an interview with Tass today, the maestro talks about maintaining control at the Mariinsky Theatre:
‘It was my strong wish the theater had a chance to live by its own rules, and I demanded obedience to the internal, corporate rules. Whenever some abused the code of conduct or fell out of step, I instantly froze relations with that person. I needed close associates whom I would be able to rely on. Some tried to use the Mariinsky Theater as a springboard, to perform on its stage several times for the sole purpose of clinching a second-rate contract in Dusseldorf, Vienna or London. I never used force to keep people, but I severed all further contacts with them. All of my thoughts were not about defectors, but about those who preferred to stay, about preserving the company, about survival. We managed. The 2000s were a little bit easier. Now I’ve had to confront new challenges. But I am certain that we will cope with them with honor and dignity.’
From my album of the week, on sinfinimusic.com:
Reviewing Jonas Kaufmann is rather like presenting the weather forecast. Nothing you say will make a blind bit of difference. The Jonas devotees will go out anyway to buy it and the sceptics will stay home. All a reviewer can do is tell it how it is, and try to save a few innocents from getting soaked.
You may have already formed an opinion on the title track when watching the Last Night of the Proms. The Turandot aria is, by some margin, the least impressive on the album….
Wedding bells ring out in St Petersburg for Mikhail Tatarnikov, chief conductor of the Mikhailovsky Theatre, and glamorous ballerina Angelina Vorontsova.
Angelina bade farewell to her former boyfriend, the Bolshoi dancer Pavel Dmitrichenko, when he was found guilty of organising an assault on the former Bolshoi chief Sergei Filin, who almost lost his sight in an acid attack. Pavel was jailed for six years by a Moscow court in December 2013.
It was reported in Russian media that high among his grievances against Filin was the director’s refusal to cast Angelina as the Swan in Swan Lake.
Carl Schorske’s book, Fin-de-Siecle Vienna, published in 1980, was an eye-opener and city guide to my generation of Mahler and Schoenberg researchers.
Schorske, born in New York, understood the inner cultural geography of Vienna better than just about anyone in German, English or any other tongue.
A teacher at Princeton for much of his life, Schorske’s tone was clear of academic clutter, multi-disciplinary to a fault.
Carl died yesterday in New Jersey. I just want to say, thanks.
The Wieniawski Lipinski Violin Competition took place last week in Lublin. President of the jury was Zakhar Bron.
This ought to ring two sets of alarm bells. The competition has been previously suspended from the World Federation of Music Competitions and the prolific Zakhar Bron – teacher of Maxim Vengerov, Vadim Repin and others – is notorious for rigging juries to ensure the top prizes go to his students.
In Lublin, two students of Zakhar Bron, Elea Nick & Issel Ines, took joint first prize in the junior section. Two others came second and fifth. In the senior group, first prize of course went once again to Bron students, Elli Choi and Eva Rabchevska. Third prize went to a student of Bron’s assistant and fellow jury member, Akiko Tatsumi. (The results have not yet been reported in Polish media, or online.)
Earlier this year, prizes at a Zakhar Bron competition were awarded exclusively to his students. Pay Bron for lessons, get an international award. When will the music world put a stop to such farces?
Please note: the Lublin competition is not to be confused with the Wieniawski competition in Poznan, which takes place next year, with Vengerov as chairman.
The French open their season with fresh faces.
Marc Minkowski at Bordeaux, Mikko Franck (pictured) at Radio France, Michael Schønwandt at Montpellier, Douglas Boyd at Paris Chamber Orchestra, Rani Calderon at Nancy and Grant Llewellyn at Orchestre Symphonique de Bretagne. Daniel Harding is soon to come at the Orchestre de Paris. That’s a sweeping set of changes.
Across the channel, meanwhile, no new hands on the baton – apart from Mark Wigglesworth at faltering English National Opera and Lars Vogt at the Royal Northern Sinfonia.
Birmingham and LSO both enter the season without a music director (though LSO knows who it’s getting in 2017).
There is a sense of stagnation in British music. It must not be allowed to turn into a stench.
Reno has a chamber orchestra thanks to Vahe Khochayan, who formed it in 1974 and was music director until 2003 when he retired (and was succeeded by Theodor Kuchar, left).
Vahe, who trained in 1950s Rome, died this weekend at an advanced age.
Members of the Bristol Ensemble, jammed on the M5, jumped out of their car and played Pachelbel’s Canon. It took the pain right out of the pile-up.
h/t: Helen Delingpole
Slipped Disc editorial
There was muted acclaim for Peter Gelb’s announcement last week that the Met had turned a $22m annual deficit into a $1 million surplus, despite a continuing box-office decline. Credit where it’s due: he has balanced the books.
But three caveats remain.
– Saleroom observers point out that Gelb has been selling the company’s silver – specifically a piece of jewellery made in 1855 for Empress Eugenie, wife of Napoleon III, and donated to the met by the singer Lucrezia Bori. It fetched $2,330,929 last October at Christie’s Geneva. Without that sale, Gelb would have been in deficit again.
– Next, still fighting a widening gap, Gelb plans to sell naming rights to the Met’s space at Lincoln Center.
– Thirdly, union negotiators are demanding to know why he took the company to the brink of closure in summer 2014 when he had all these assets to call in. Some are accusing him of outright deception.
Gelb has pulled off a balancing trick, but it’s not a triumph, let alone a long-term solution. The Met cannot carry on losing subscribers to death and disinterest. It has to find a winning new formula to place it once more at the centre of New York’s attractions. Nothing in Gelb’s latest announcement suggests he has scratched the surface of that crisis.
The doors at Newark are swinging again.
James Roe, an oboist who took over as president and chief exec just two years ago, is moving on to lead the Orchestra of St Lukes.
Roe will be replaced temporarily by chief operating officer, Susan Stucker, who also stood in for the last departing president, the discredited Richard Dare. That’s twice in two years. Time for NJ to seek stable management.
