On Sunday, the young Lithuanian conductor Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla gave a hastily-inserted concert with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. It went, by all accounts, outstandingly well. Mirga, 29, impressed the musicians on debut last year. She is presently a Dudamel assistant at the LA Phil. This was to be her confirmation concert.

There is just one hurdle to overcome. Next weekend, the Israeli Omer Meir Wellber will conduct in Birmingham. Wellber, 34, is a few steps ahead of Mirga in the music pecking order, having made a couple of recordings for Decca and earning respect from international stars.

omer meir wellber midori

recently, with Midori

The musicians will make their decision within a week of the Wellber concert. At present, we hear, they are 4-1 in favour of Mirga, but a lot can change in a week, or a night.

Either way, Birmingham will once again break the mould for the next generation of music directors in Britain.

Rattle, Oramo, Nelsons: nobody beats the CBSO for talent-spotting.

Mirga Gražinyte-Tyla

(Needless to say, nothing of this nail-biting showdown has been spotted by UK national media.)

On Sunday, the young Lithuanian conductor Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla gave a hastily-inserted concert with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. It went, by all accounts, outstandingly well. Mirga, 29, impressed the musicians on debut last year. She is presently a Dudamel assistant at the LA Phil. This was to be her confirmation concert.

There is just one hurdle to overcome. Next weekend, the Israeli Omer Meir Wellber will conduct in Birmingham. Wellber, 34, is a few steps ahead of Mirga in the music pecking order, having made a couple of recordings for Decca and winning respects from opera stars.

omer meir wellber

The musicians will make their decision within a week of the Wellber concert.

At present, we hear, they are 4-1 in favour of Mirga, but a lot can change in a week, or a night.

Either way, Birmingham will once again break the mould for the next generation of music directors in Britain.

Rattle, Oramo, Nelsons: nobody beats the CBSO for talent-spotting.

Mirga Gražinyte-Tyla

(Needless to say, nothing of this showdown has been spotted by UK national media.)

Christoph Schwandt was chief dramaturg at Cologne Opera from 2002 to 2009. Before that, he worked for three years at the Salzburg Festival in Gerard Mortier’s team.

When not on stage he wrote good German biographies of Bizet, Verdi, Janáček and Carl Maria von Weber.

Christoph died on Christmas Eve in Wurzburg, after a long illness.

christoph schwandt

Loneliness in old age is a terrible thing.

Our hearts are moved by the announcement that Mr Rupert Murdoch is to marry Ms Jerry Hall, former long-term companion to Sir Michael Jagger of the Rolling Stones, with whom she had four children.

Mr Murdoch is 84, Ms Hall 59.

Social workers need not call.

 

ari l goldman

In a bid to attract younger audiences, the orch will supply some concertgoers with iPads, giving access to a range of information, entertainment and different video angles on the orchestra.

Good idea.

nelsons boston

 

press release:

On Friday, January 15, the Boston Symphony Orchestra launches “Casual Fridays,” a new audience initiative designed to make concerts more affordable and accessible for the next generation of attendees. “Casual Friday” performances will be offered on three Friday-evenings during the 2015-16 season, January 15, February 12, and March 18, with significantly reduced ticket prices ranging from $25 to $45. In addition, for the first time ever at Symphony Hall, the BSO is doing a pilot project to experiment with iPad content as a way to enhance the concert experience, providing 110 devices to be used by patrons seated in a designated section at the rear of the orchestra floor. “Casual Fridays” also introduce audiences to the people behind the music through informal conversations; on January 15, BSO bass trombonist James Markey will speak to the audience from the Symphony Hall stage. (Speakers for the February 12 and March 18 programs will be announced at a later date.) This new concert series also encourages concert-goers to wear their favorite casual attire to Symphony Hall, and to mingle and share their experiences at a pre-concert reception and a post-concert gathering in Higginson Hall, where live music, snacks, and a cash bar will be offered.

FURTHER DETAILS ON iPADS AT SYMPHONY HALL
[iPad (photo by Barco Borggreve)]Designed to enhance the listening experience, the BSO-provided iPads will feature digital content exclusive and relevant to that evening’s performance, including video interviews with the featured soloists; video podcasts focused on biographical information about the composers; scores of the pieces being performed; and videos explaining the evening’s musical works, including (for the January 15 program) an analysis of the music being performed, a harp demonstration, and a synopsis of thePetrushka story. Patrons seated in this designated area will also have the chance to get a close-up look at the conductor from the orchestra’s point of view through special video screens that will be set up on both sides of the hall. The BSO was the first orchestra to provide extensive digital content to patrons for use during concerts through orchestra-provided tablets with the launch of its Lawncast program at Tanglewood in Summer 2014.

David Bowie, 2002, New York Times interview:

 

David Bowie performing onstage, October 1995

I don’t even know why I would want to be on a label in a few years, because I don’t think it’s going to work by labels and by distribution systems in the same way. The absolute transformation of everything that we ever thought about music will take place within 10 years, and nothing is going to be able to stop it. I see absolutely no point in pretending that it’s not going to happen. I’m fully confident that copyright, for instance, will no longer exist in 10 years, and authorship and intellectual property is in for such a bashing.

Music itself is going to become like running water or electricity. So it’s like, just take advantage of these last few years because none of this is ever going to happen again. You’d better be prepared for doing a lot of touring because that’s really the only unique situation that’s going to be left. It’s terribly exciting. But on the other hand it doesn’t matter if you think it’s exciting or not; it’s what’s going to happen.

The soloist is Maximilian Simon and this is what happened during Britten´s violin concerto in Jena last Wednesday:

string_motion_snapshot

The recovery is so smooth, it might almost have been rehearsed.

brel amsterdam

Every January, the Bachtrack website publishes an analysis of its worldwide classical concert listings, 28,000 in all. The repertoire never changes much, but the maestro worksheets are worth consideration.

According to Bachtrack, this man was the busiest conductor in 2015.

jonathan mcphee

He’s Jonathan McPhee and he’s triple-time music director of Boston Ballet, Lexington Symphony and Symphony New Hampshire. Bachtrack liested him conducting 28 times in December 2015 and plenty through the year.

The site ranks Simon Rattle as the world’s second busiest and Valery Gergiev as third.

We would gently challenge that placement. Gergiev has been known to conduct 49 times in a month – last April, in fact. Not all of his tour dates are listed on Bachtrack. By our count, he is by far the world’s busiest.

 

 

In authoritarian Egypt, people keep their voices down when state security is around.

But members of the orchestra at the Cairo Opera House were so outraged by an invasive search by President Sisi’s security team that they have spoken up and – even more remarkably – Al-Ahram has published their complaint.

cairo instruments

This was the scene after Presidential security conducted a search of the Opera House ahead of President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi’s National Youth Day speech at the Opera.

Official sources blamed the musicians for failing to leave their lockers open, as instructed.

Report here.

The latest incidents:

smashed guitar

The guitar belongs to a British-born musician, Jon English, the keyboard to a member of his band.

smashed keyboard

This is how they came off a Virgin Airlines flight from Coffs Harbour to Sydney this weekend.

Mr English, who publicised the incident on his facebook page, accused Virgin Airlines baggage handlers of ‘running over our musical instruments with their baggage trailers’. He said it was the second incident in three months.

Virgin say they’re very sorry.

In what he would later describe as his ‘first period of isolation’, David Bowie recorded Peter and the Wolf with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Released in May 1978, he said it was a birthday present for his seven year-old son.

The album, which reached #136 in the US pop charts, is one of the more affecting and appealing readings of the piece.

Philip Glass composed Low Symphony in 1992 on themes from Bowie’s Low album.

Around this time, Bowie talked of creating a Gesamtkunsterk for the Salzburg Festival.

The LSO made a memorable recording of Space Oddity as part of a classic rock album.

Bowie’s death was announced today, of cancer. He was 69.

davidbowie2013-large_trans++eo_i_u9APj8RuoebjoAHt0k9u7HhRJvuo-ZLenGRumA