If I can dream, by Elvis Presley, has been included in the US classical crossover charts, as applied by Nielsen Soundscan.

This week, Elvis is in second place, behind Andrea Bocelli and with 14,000 fewer sales.

I guess to be classified as classical you have to show that you’re selling very few records.

For the English arts settlement, click here. For the Scottish squeeze, click here.

So which government is working better for us, his or hers?

Lovely seasonal flashmob.

From a radio interview in Houston:

The words ‘music’ and ‘guilt’ don’t go together for me. I got involved with doing benefit concerts and raising money for different kinds of organizations and I often put together all kinds of people to play. Sometimes it could be a string quartet with the Kronos Quartet, but it could be Paul Simon, or it could be David Bowie, or it could Iggy Pop… I’ve played with all these people. Part of the fun of doing these concerts is playing with someone who I’d never played with before.  I remember years ago we did a concert for a place called Tibet House – which is a cultural center in New York – and David Bowie was going to play on the concert. Then he told me, ‘Well, we have to rehearse.’ Now, we had never rehearsed before. I usually got together the day before, pick out the songs, then play them. Not David. We had to get together two days before and have a whole rehearsal of his songs. That was really intense.  So, sometimes really nice things can happen like that, that I wouldn’t really have planned. Those aren’t guilty pleasures. They’re pleasure pleasures.

Listen to the full interview here.

A second Swedish treasure from our featured holiday artist.

The orchestra has published a 55-page scholarly investigation into its ‘ambivalent loyalties’ in the period from 1938 to 1970. During the union with Hitler’s Reich the orchestra was a willing collaborator with racial persecution and other crimes against humanity. That much is well documented. The post-War period is more hazy.

The orchestra’s chairman from 1938-45, and its most influential board member for the next quarter-century was the charming Wilhelm Jerger, an avowed Nazi and lifelong anti-Semite. Jerger proclaimed that the orchestra’s first loyalty was to itself. His exchanges with Nazi leaders are among the most revealing passages in the new research.

Jerger emerges as the force behind the 1960s decision to award the orchestra’s Ring of Honour to the Nazi war criminal Baldur von Schirach (pictured), the genocidal Gauleiter of Vienna. However,  the research team of Silvia Kargl and Friedemann Pestel, admits that there are gaps in the archive for 1966-68 and decide that the post-War actions and attitudes of the orchestra require extensive further investigation.

The new paper, funded by the Birgit Nilsson Award, is a stride in the right direction.

You can download it here (in German, bottom righthand column).

David Frost interview with Schirach here.

We have been informed by his son, Alexandre, that the Argentine-born conductor Carlos Païta died in Switzerland on December 19, at the age of 83.

After a promising career launch, giving the South American premiere of Mahler’s second symphony, Carlos moved to Europe in 1968 but failed to settle with any of the orchestras he conducted.

A Decca producer, Tony D’Amato, signed him after hearing a concert in Brussels to record for the snazzy Phase4 sonic brand. His debut with Wagner orchestral pieces became a demonstration record. Païta followed up with further orchestral spectaculars, first on Decca and subsequently on his own label, Lodia (now defunct), mostly with London orchestras.

It has emerged that the shocking decision by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra to cancel a Europe tour ‘for security reasons’ was taken without consultation with the musicians or with their music director.

Jaap van Zweden has responded in diplomatic terms: ‘As an individual, I continue to travel around the world for my various conducting engagements. However, I respect the decision that has been made, as the safety of our DSO musicians and our extended touring group is primary.’

The musicians, however, are furious that a long-awaited trip has been scratched and that the first they heard of it was on Slipped Disc. The DSO seems to have forgotten that the music it produces is made by musicians. Failure to involve them in important decision can only be detrimental to organisational well-being.

There will be internal trouble ahead for DSO President and CEO Jonathan Martin. But it will pale in comparison with the scorn that will greet Dallas next time it tries to book an overseas engagement. Martin and his board have locked the Dallas Symphony in a self-enclosed ghetto.

Members of the Semper Oper who staged a demonstration against the anti-immigrant Pegida movement say they were assaulted and spat upon by rightwing sympathisers.

Artists gathered on the opera house steps to sing Beethoven’s Ode to Joy in a festive, non-confrontational atmosphere but they could not ignore hostile reactions.

The Semper Oper has taken a strong public stand against xenophobia.

The Staatskapelle’s music director, Christian Thielemann, was not apparently present.

Full report here (auf Deutsch).

A moving remembrance of Luc Brewaeys, by Valerio Tura:

I am utterly shocked to read about the passing of Luc Brewaeys. My relation with him started approximately ten years ago, when I was administrateur artistique at Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Bruxelles. Together with our general director Bernard Foccroulle we wanted to stage a new opera composed by him.

Because of various constraints, we needed to have an opera with a very limited number of singers, and no chorus. I knew that Luc could speak and read some Italian, and that, having studied in Italy, he loved Italian culture. Therefore I came up with the idea of asking him to write an opera based on a one-man-play by Pirandello, a piece of genius entitled “L’uomo dal fiore in bocca” (The man with a flower in his mouth).

Pirandello’s play is about a man who contracted an “epitelioma”, a tumour in the mouth, and is facing the approach of his own death: in the heart of the night, in remote and deserted café, he speaks about this, essentially speaking to himself. Luc told me that he knew some other plays by Pirandello: after he read the play he was enthusiastic about the proposal. He then wrote a beautiful and very inspired score, which was sung by Davide Damiani, and conducted by Patrick Davin: the production in February 2007 turned out a very good success.

Shortly after the production I met Luc again, and he candidly told me that he had just been diagnosed a form of “epitelioma” in his own mouth, something he has been battling with ever after, as far as I know. I had never got to know, til then, until what extent music, theatre and life can be intertwined. In some way I must confess that I feel slightly responsible for Luc’s death: he was very kind, cultivated and sympathetic person. Very sad. Sit terra levis.

That’s what Die Welt’s Manuel Brug thinks of Sonya Yoncheva.

Hasn’t he overlooked a few?

Photo (c) Bernd Uhlig/Staatsoper Berlin

We regret to report the passing today of John Duffy, composer and new-music activist, at the age of 89.

A student of Copland, Cowell and Dallapiccola, John composed accessible music both for Broadway and the concerthall, much of it inspired by Americana.

Read a full appreciation on NewMusicBox here.