The moment in Truly, Madly Deeply when Alan Rickman, whose death was announced today, comes back from the beyond. Juliet Stevenson is his ‘widow’. No-one has ever watched this scene with dry eyes.
One of eight participants in a Channel 5 documentary on alcoholism, Rachael Lander talked about furtive drinking on stage, in orchestra dressing rooms, everywhere ‘to take the edge off’.
You can watch the programme here.
Rachael tweets that she is ‘overwhelmed by lovely messages from people watching’.
‘I was playing in professional orchestras drunk. Drunkety drunk,’ she admits.
Cello, she now says, ‘is the best addiction’.
The auto manufacturer has filmed its new campaign around the inner contemplations of conductor Marie Rosenmir as she drives to work.
Marie, 42, won the Swedish conductor’s prize in 2006. She works in the Inversion collective of six women conductors and composer. She is about to get more media exposure than any woman conductor alive. This is a b-i-g motor industry campaign.
Photo: Jan-Olav Wedin
The ovations were so long and loud last night at the end of the second act of Rigoletto that Leo Nucci and Nadine Serra repeated the cabaletta, in front of the curtain.
This was the first Verdi encore sung at Scala since Riccardo Muti repeated Va, pensiero in Nabucco in 1988 (source: La Scala archives). The prohibition on repeats in Verdi was instituted by Arturo Toscanini, back in the mists of time.
From a Paris correspondent:
“David Bowie est un fantôme.” These were the words that opened the solemn voiceover of a FranceTV documentary last Wednesday, days before the rock star’s death. The programme, titled Bowie, l’Homme Cent Visages ou Le Fantome d’Hérouville (The Man with 100 Faces or The Ghost of d’Hérouville), explores a curious idyll in his prolific career, two stints in an historic, sprawling manor in the French village of Hérouville, 45km outside of Paris.
The composer Michel Magne bought Château d’Hérouville in 1962, and transformed it into Strawberry Studios.
The rooms where Frederic Chopin and George Sand once made love were rocked by the sounds of Pink Floyd, Iggy Pop, Grateful Dead and Jethro Tull. Elton John named his 1972 album Honky Château after the place where it was recorded.
Bowie recorded his Pin Ups cover album in the Château d’Hérouville in 1973, sampling Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No.3 (at 4:00) and (briefly) Strauss Also Sprach Zarathustra in the song ‘See Emily Play’.
Bowie at Honky Chateau, 1973
He returned in 1976, a recovering cocaine addict, for Low – the first in a Berlin trilogy, actually recorded in France – a masterpiece and his most advanced album up until that point.
In the TV documentary, Dominique Blanc-Francard, a sound engineer working on the 1973 sessions, said: ‘When he looked you in the eyes it was like he was piercing you with lasers, it felt as though someone was rummaging around in your thoughts…Out of all the clients we had at the chateau, he was the coolest. For that time, he had such a bizarre look, really like an alien. One couldn’t imagine him being human.’
Bowie complained about the diet of rabbit and potatoes. More troubling, according to his collaborators on Low Brian Eno and Tony Visconti, were visitations by a ghost, and a bedroom Bowie refused to sleep in, believing it was haunted. By Chopin, perhaps?
Strawberry Studios shut down in 1985, a year after Michel Magne’s suicide. The chateau remained derelict and was finally put up for sale in 2013 with an asking price of €1.29m (£1.12m). A group of sound engineers has taken up the challenge of restoring the honky chateau to its former glory, and are seeking investors. (See below for contested claim).
They hope to reopen Honky Chateau this year. The piano used by Elton John on Goodbye Yellow Brick Road is still there, rotting away in the attic.
A deadline is reached at midnight in the standoff between the musicians and management of the Hartford Symphony Orchestra in Connecticut. If the players refuse to accept further cuts, the orchestra will be shut down.
Hartford is a nice place in a fairly wealthy region. But it seems the locals have lost the will to sustain a concert life.
pictured: music director Carolyn Kuan
The players, who are employed on a per-session basis, have issued this statement:
The musicians of the HSO are salaried professionals. We are here to work. We have offered to forgo wage increases in order to keep the product competitive. We have done our part. It’s now time for management to stop misrepresenting a situation that it has created.
It is management’s job to manage, not dismantle, our organization. It is management’s job to promote and sell its product, which is live orchestral music performed by the musicians of the HSO. Cutting the product is not an option. In order to fulfill its mission, the HSO needs to grow its product. Creating a scarcity not only diminishes the product itself, but deprives the community of that which it values. An orchestra must work together on a regular basis to achieve and maintain the level of excellence that the public expects and deserves.
Here is the HSO’s stated mission:
“We believe passionately in the performance of live symphonic music and its value in the community. To that end, the mission of the HSO is to perform live orchestral music of the highest quality forever expanding audiences, and to increase through its educational programs the understanding and enjoyment of that music by residents in Connecticut.”
Clearly the HSO has forgotten this mission. Look at its unprecedented pullback of performances and educational programs. Last year saw the cancellation of both a chamber orchestra series and the well established Jazz and Strings series. More importantly, the HSO’s in-school educational programming has diminished to the point of near nonexistence. Core musicians once went into the schools over 25 times per year. This season, under the new HSO management, most of the musicians have yet to perform in a single school. These programs are a key component of the HSO’s stated mission. They are also key to justifying its status as a not for profit entity.
The Hagen Quartet have cancelled their Berlin Philharmonie concert due to illness. Viola player Veronika Hagen is undergoing surgery for a shoulder injury, according to a Berlin press release. We wish her well.
The concert is rescheduled for May.
The Artemis Quartet have also cancelled their Berlin date this month while they reach a decision on a new viola player to replace the late Friedemann Weigle.
The Styriarte festival, founded by Nikolaus Harnoncourt 30 years ago in his home town of Graz, faced a critical dilemma. How does one replace a legend who has just retired in this summer’s Beethoven cycle?
They have taken the bold option.
Harnoncourt’s dates have been divided between three rising conductors: the American Karina Canellakis, 34; the Colombian Andrés Orozco-Estrada, 38; and the French period-practice expert Jérémie Rhorer, 42.
The 9th symphony at Salzburg will be conducted by Orozco-Estrada.
In Paris they will offer prayers at 4pm this afternoon for Pierre Boulez at Saint-Sulpice, ahead of a private burial in Baden-Baden.
In Leipzig at 11am there will be a service for Kurt Masur at the Thomaskirche.
In our thoughts today.
The Orchestre Nationale de France has announced that Chrstiane Lagarde, managing director of the IMF, will accompany its forthcoming tour to the US and Canada.
That should bring in a few bankers.
Christine Lagarde, Présidente du Comité d’honneur de la tournée américaine de l’Orchestre National de France sous la direction de Daniele Gatti du 24 au 31 janvier 2016….Christine Lagarde a bien voulu accepter de parrainer cette tournée et de réunir dans un comité d’honneur les ambassadeurs de France à Washington, Ottawa et auprès des Nations unies ainsi que la Directrice générale de l’Amcham. Ce comité s’est donné pour mission d’accentuer le rayonnement de la tournée.
I met Stephen Endelman a few years back when he was working on Bruce Beresford’s biopic of Alma Mahler, Bride of the Wind. He had a long list of credits and a crammed diary.
What I did not know was that Stephen was a victim of a teacher’s abuse at school. He has since testified at the man’s trial and is now seeking funding to film a reconciliation with his lost childhood.
Here’s his account:
I was a victim of sexual abuse when I was a young boy from the age of 11 it went on for 2 and a half years. I want to tell my story so that other boys might come forward and tell their stories. We are not alone. 1 in 5 boys and 1 in 3 girls will be abused by the age of 18. The only way to end this is by exposing it and helping the victims! Read below and please donate so that I can make my film and launch my charity, Consent!
A BOY A MAN AND HIS KITE
My name is Stephen Endelman. I’ve spent the last 20 years writing music for films and television in Hollywood.
I was the victim of sexual abuse as a young boy. My abuser was sentenced to life in prison this past Novemeber. I went to London as a witness for the prosecution, it was the most empowering experience. I’m making a short film which I hope will launch a charity called Consent. My abuser without my consent sexually abused me for almost 3 years for his own sexual gratification. My film explores the effects of my abuse along with me confronting my abuser.
In 2009 whilst on a TV show for ABC and a movie for Gale Anne Hurd I got deathly sick and eventually found myself lying in a coma. My friends and family weren’t sure if I would live, or if I did live, how I would recover. I did live and I recovered. After I recovered I began to question why’d I gotten so very sick. During that process I explored many healing modalities. As part of that process I composed three pieces of music, a short film, and a book. Together they explore the reason for my sickness and what I’ve learnt from my near death experience. This campaign is to raise money for the film. The short film explores the reason I believe I got sick, the abuse I suffered as a child and the way I repressed those feelings for almost 30 years. I want to inspire others to come forward and share their stories and confront their demons.
My mission is to reach as many people as possible and inspire them to believe that there is life after abuse and illness. In supporting this film you will be enabling the recovery of abused victims.
If you can help Stephen, please click here.
Nicholas Daniel, oboist and conductor, informs us of his teacher’s death:
Today I heard that Lenore Reynell died. She was the Head of Music at the Purcell School for many years, during my whole time there, and I’ve often thought about her huge musical influence on me and so many others. Today is a good day to celebrate it.
She was someone who TOTALLY loved music. I remember her literally exploding at Pat Bloomfield (now Lady Haitink) when she declared she had to leave to go to a gig. Lenore spasmed in horror at the idea of earning money through music and almost hit her with a music stand!
But this is because she was an amateur in the very greatest sense, she loved music wholly and completely, and dedicated her whole life to it and to us, thought the school and Piggots Music camp. The Beethoven 1 we learned with her is still truly memorable for me, in fact so much so that I still know the whole work from memory and I’ve never played it or conducted it since. The same goes for Britten’s Rejoice in the Lamb. I’ve never forgotten the way she forced the whole school choir to sing my highly experimental, Penderecki influenced Gloria, berating people for laughing at it… And making something memorable (for me) from it.
When I did my audition for the school, I remember Richard Taylor the headmaster trying to be cool and keep my Mum guessing, and Lenore waltzed into the room and declared “yes marvellous, wonderfully musical, give him a scholarship”.
When she coached me in the Poulenc Sonata, she almost literally fell off her seat working with me on the last movement as the music hit her so hard. She was never afraid to show how the music affected her.
Later on it was she who taught me the Vaughan Williams concerto first of all, which I played when I won BBC Young Musician. She gave me her conducting score of it as a gift and wrote in it such inspiring and supportive words, and I was so happy to be able to write to her before I finally recorded it last year and thank her for her unique and most special insight into the piece.
When Lenore retired she spent some years teaching English to the Gujarati speaking community in Wembley and caring for her dear old Mum. I remember dropping in on her once and I felt that she had rather moved on from school, quite correctly, and yet her musical love and uncompromising manner with the music will be part of who I am for ever, and the same goes for so many of my contemporaries from school.
That woman is conducting a choir of angels right now, possibly throwing music stands at those who say they have to leave early for a paid gig.