The orchestra’s crowdfunder for its purchase of a disused inn for Syrian refugees is still short of target.

With 11 days to go, it has raised 58,430 Euros. It needs 75,000.

You can help them reach the required amount by donating here.

The Detroit Symphony has an unusual event coming up this week.

A cello concerto commission it awarded to the US composer Mohammed Fairouz, who is of Palestinian and Gulf origin, will receive its world premiere in a Detroit synagogue, Congregation Shaarey Zedek. And the soloist will be Maya Beiser, who was born in Israel.

‘Desert Sorrows’, a half-hour work for amplified cello and large orchestra, draws its themes from Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The protagonists discuss the work here with Detroit critic Mark Stryker.

We’ve received clarification from Milan about the background for Graham Vick’s removal from Fanciulla del West.

In the first place, it was not a gay bar the director wanted but a miners’ bar. Reports of a gay bar that appeared in Austrian and Italian publications (quoted by Slipped Disc) are being sternly contradicted.

The official position is that the music director, Riccardo Chailly, is asking all directors to discuss their ideas about the staging with him before contracts are signed.

In this instance Chailly and Vick, meeting several months ago, found they had different views and decided not to go ahead with this project. According to La Scala, they parted on good terms and have spoken again since then.

The famously shy incoming music director of the Berlin Philharmonic has published a letter to the Danish authorities expressing his concern at plans ‘to permanently decimate the orchestra’ of the royal opera.

He adds: ‘It seems to be the beginning of the deconstruction of an orchestra with an enormous tradition and artistic experience.’

No reply from Schloss Borgen.

It’s going to be bleak if you live south of the river.

Fairfield Hall, the only concert venue on the less fashionable side (except the South Bank Centre, which hugs the river), is to be shut for two years for much-needed refurbishment. At least two years, the authorities say. And no alternative venue is being booked.

Campaigners are up in arms. South London deserves better.

For some reason, no-one is considering it as a site for the Simon Rattle vanity hall.

Jonas Kaufmann has pulled out of his only appearances at the Met and Covent Garden this season.

Now he has cancelled the Teatro Real in Madrid. Acute sinusitis is the given cause.

The well-known Zurich firms Musik Hug and AKHZ Management (formerly Krompholz) have been hit by the Swiss competition commission with a massive fine of half a million Swiss francs for price fixing.

The two firms were found to have conspired to fix prices and discounts illegally on upright and grand pianos made by Steinway & Sons and Grotrian-Steinweg. A third conspirator, La Bottega del Pianoforte, was exempted from the penalty after admitting its involvement.

One offence involved the sale of a Steinway to a public institution, the Zurich Hochschule der Künste.

Some details here and here (auf Deutsch).

More than 200 boys were subjected to beatings, starvation and rape over a period of 40 years at the Regensburger Domspatzen choir school in Bavaria, according to a lawyer investigating the allegations on behalf of the Roman Catholic diocese.

Ulrich Weber told a press conference: ‘I have 231 reports of physical abuse.’

The school choir was directed by Pope Benedict’s elder brother, Georg Ratzinger, from 1964 to 1994. Ratzinger has said the matter was ‘never discussed’ during his time as director.

(agency reports)

The Vienna Symphony Orchestra has named Lahav Shani principal guest conductor from 2017-18. Shani, 27, is deputising at the moment for the orch’s music director Philippe Jordan, who is invalided out for two months.

Winner of the 2013 Gustav Mahler International Conducting Competition in Bamberg, Shani has already made a last-minute, well-received debut with the Vienna Philharmonic.

He’s also on a shortlist of three for the vacancy at Birmingham.

A rare and altogether extraordinary venture by the French modernist into the strict classicism of C P E Bach. Recorded in Spain in 1979 with Jean-Pierre Rampal, who is made to go much faster than he might have liked in the scurrying finale.

The philanthropist has posted a Youtube video in memory of her friend, Gilbert Kaplan, who died on New Year’s Day.

New online, here’s a 30-minute BBC-TV documentary I made about Gil  Kaplanin 1987 (not as listed), titled ‘Mahler and the Millionaire’.

I think that’s a grey cord suit I’m wearing, very hipster. The hair, too, is of its time.

Enjoy.

Danny Lai has been touring the camps, where hope is in short supply. He writes:

One of my favorite workshops was a week-long camp we hosted in Mafraq, Jordan. The city took on (and is still taking on) a multitude of Syrian refugees and many of the children cannot possibly comprehend the situation. So we gave them a place to build community, and to learn about and experience the transformative power of music. Every day we had a different instrument for them to learn about, different ways to be reflective on what we are thankful for, and musical performances. Our hope is that we were able to impress on them how to constructively channel our energies into the creative endeavors of music, learn about our culture, and remember that the community of humanity can only be held together through a common language of music.

Read (and help out) here.