We’re delighted to report that the young Polish assistant conductor who took over a Korngold opera in Paris from her sick boss, has got both feet now on the career ladder.

Marzena Diakun has signed to boutique CLB management. Week by week, more and more young women are taking their rightful place on the podium.

marzena diakun

by Joel Cohen

The time, the mid-1990’s. The place, the Library of Congress, where the Boston Camerata has been commissioned to produce a concert around an exhibit entitled “Rome Reborn: The Vatican Library and Renaissance Culture.” The performance is attended by then-Vice President Quayle and his wife (who introduces the Camerata), by then-Speaker of the House, the late Thomas Foley, who dozes tranquilly in the front row during much of the performance, and by several Supreme Court judges, including the just-deceased Justice Antonin Scalia, There is also, from the College of Cardinals in Rome, an important, red-clad delegation of elderly church princes; they provide the event with an impromptu audience singalong. As Camerata musicians process in to the Gregorian tune of Pange Lingua, they are joined, ad hoc, by the cardinals’ rumbly, offkey bass-baritone voices.

About halfway through the program, Camerata rips into Guillaume Dufay’s (1400-1474) semi-raucous, mildly transgressive Trumpet Gloria (Gloria ad Modum Tubae), in which the lower voices imitate trumpet blasts, while the two top voices chase each other in a playful, catch-me-if-you-can round. Joel Cohen, Camerata’s director at the time, expains to the assembled dignitaries that the very conservative and authoritarian Council of Trent’s (1545-1563) austere strictures concerning wayward church music was aimed squarely at such musical shenanigans.

We understand that Justice Scalia, ever the defender of order and tradition, hears the piece and then comes down decisively on the side of those sixteenth-century counter-reformers, and against the trumpeteers. “Well, they had to do something,” the eminent jurist is heard to say.

Guillaume Dufay is not available to comment.

In deference to the controversial, recently departed Justice, we are happy to acknowledge his enormous erudition, and his genuine interest in musical art. And our sympathies extend to his friend Justice Ruth Ginsburg, with whom, we understand, he attended many, many opera performances. May his successor, like Justice Scalia himself, be more than happy to stay awake during early music concerts!

Joel Cohen

justice scalia

The Met music director was to have conducted this week in Philadelphia.

But the orch in a press release says it has been told the trip would be ‘detrimental to his current medical treatment’, presumably for Parkinson’s Disease.

The NY Times has just reported that the Met is once more considering Levine’s immediate future.

james levine wheelchair

 

The fast-rising Karina Canellakis is flying to Copenhagen to replace Yuri Temirkanov, who has pulled out of this week’s concerts because of a family illness. The announcement quotes the orchestra’s music director Fabio Luisi saying: ‘Karina Canellakis is on her way to becoming a great conductor.’

That’s some boost.

karina canellakis

In her latest diary entry on joining the Artemis Quartet, Anthea Kreston finds she has even more to adjust to than just changing ensemble and country.

 

anthea kreston1

 

Looking at the calendar, I realize that we have our first concerts three weeks from today. The frenetic energy and non-stop doing of the past three weeks will not abate, but it has already changed course. Instead of packing, tying up endless loose ends, and saying farewell to family and friends, we are getting settled in our new apartment, figuring out the ubahn, finding the grocery store, and trying to make the girls’ landing as spectacular and filled with wonder as possible.

The Artemis is just my kind of band – everyone is super organized, both in and out of the practice room, and excited to dig in, and dig in hard to these amazing pieces. And we sweat during the rehearsals. You know – the Artemis is one of just a few groups which performs standing up, and I was curious if this was the way rehearsals would be conducted. Tomorrow all seven hours will be standing – and the energy expended at the beginning equals the energy at the end.

I was given the master calendar – each day has a 4 hour rehearsal, and often, because of the time crunch, an additional 3 hour rehearsal in the evening. Each rehearsal is assigned a movement, and often two – a big amount of work for the time. They are not content to just “fit me in” to the pieces they have played before – they want to hear my new perspective and are happy to entertain new bowings, colors. Also – I realize that I have to keep on top of learning German – a portion of rehearsals are already in German – I wish I had paid more attention during my (gulp) one semester at Curtis all those years ago. Luckily Jason’s German is fairly good, and he got some books for me today. I will get a tutor as soon as I can come up for air.

Today was our first rehearsal – because of my emergency back procedure, I was not able to play for a week, and am supposed to be on modified schedule for three weeks (I don’t see this as a realistic option).  I took a double dose of ibuprofen when I came home today, but stitches are holding strong. By tomorrow evening (after 7 hours of rehearsing tomorrow and 4 today) we will have worked our way through the entire Beethoven Op. 59 #1.  Then on to Grieg – and this is the pace for the next three weeks. It reminds me of my student days preparing for international competitions – a blend of (un?)realistic optimism, passion, and determination. “No” is not an option here.

And my family – the girls (age 4&6) can’t possibly understand jetlag – and they can’t stay awake past 4:00 in the afternoon. They wake up around midnight – last night was later – 2 AM.  Then they want to have kindergarten and jump on the bed and play with their toys. Jason and I take turns cat-napping until around 8.  This morning at 3, they decided to just go upstairs and make breakfast by themselves. Oh dear.

Anyway – all is well! My first work-visa appointment happens Monday, and meetings Tuesday evening with the manager, publicist, and secretary to go over the many logistics of keeping this fine stallion of a quartet running on all cylinders. What a ride though!

‘Till next week

artemis quartet1

From Mike Block, a busy chamber musician:

Excited for my second SOLD OUT show in a row here during this trip to Portland, OR! The only downside to this trip is that southwest airlines destroyed my cello… The picture here doesn’t show the fact that the neck fell off, and there were four large cracks on the top…

Thanks to local luthier Caitlin Pugh for her brilliant and quick restoration work, and the use of a loaner for these concerts! Tonight’s show is a duo concert with the great Rachel Barton Pine for “friends of chamber music” organization.

smashed cello

See world’s worst airlines for musicians.

We have been informed by La Scala that, due to a sudden death in the family, Daniel Harding has withdraws from Monday’s concert with the Orchestra Filarmonica della Scala.

Marc Albrecht will conduct an almost identical programme.

We send Daniel our deep sympathies in his time of sorrow.

daniel harding

Catherine Gardner, a Canadian soprano, is gathering information for a doctoral thesis on how women perform in opera and concert while expecting a child. Catherine herself sang Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs a week before giving birth.

Catherine writes:

When I became pregnant with my daughter, I searched for information about how my changing body would affect every aspect of my singing and performing. Finding the information lacking, I decided to focus on this topic for my doctoral work at the University of Toronto. I am currently in the data-collection stages of this research, which includes in-depth interviews with pregnant and recently pregnant classical singers in Canada, the U.S. and Europe.

If you have experiences to share – anonymity guaranteed – please click here to join Catherine’s research.

catherine gardner

The indefatigable Ton Koopman claims to have discovered ‘a previously unknown cantata by Georg Frideric Handel for soprano and instrumental ensemble.’ It’s an unknown variant on ”Tu fedel? Tu costante?’, HWV 171.

Premiere in Amsterdam on April 9.

ton koopman

When he finished, he made the station a gift of his piano – a Yamaha grand.
elton john eurostar

Architect Léon Krier has been contemplating the unfolding half-billion pound disaster that will unfold if the London Symphony Orchestra is allowed to build another concrete monster in a part of the city where few care to visit for pleasure.

His solution has simplicity, charm and tradition. Build the hall, says Léon, where Londoners are used to go after dark. And build it with beauty.

london concert hall leon krier

Léon writes on the FSI site:

AS AN ERSTWHILE RESIDENT OF LONDON and attendant of innumerable classical concerts, it is not the ravishing beauty of the music but the ghastliness of the Southbank and Barbican concert halls and surroundings which leaves the most enduring, albeit painful, imprint on my mind. What the urbane theater and opera life so successfully achieves in Covent Garden is hopelessly lacking in these desolate music venues. Along with countless music-lovers and performers I have wished that those buildings would disappear forever from the face of London and the music world. The tabula rasa mentality that bestowed on us those loathsome aliens should at long last be turned against its coarse products in an overdue act of redemption.

And yet, judging from the GLITZY BROCHURE “Towards a World-Class Center for Music” – with foreword by the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Mayor of London – an aesthetically dumb kultural nomenklatura have not finished tormenting the good citizenry with conceptual incubi. How else could the Museum of London site and the Barbican environs be considered, even for an instant, as possible locations to re-found London’s classical music life?

Where, exactly? Read on here.

The announcement today that the Independent newspaper will cease printing is both sad and inevitable. Sad, because 30 years ago the paper changed the face of British journalism. Inevitable, because it now sells only 40,000 copies, in place of 400,000 in its heyday.

David Lister, the veteran arts editor, joined the paper in 1986. In what may be one of his last utterances, David tries to read the runes for the future of an opera company in dire straits:

A worrying footnote in the history of opera took place this week. It occurred in the English National Opera’s production of The Magic Flute.  In one scene, Sarastro should appeal to his assembled Masons for their support in solving the problem of Tamino’s future, but instead he turned to the audience. In a twist that Mozart would not have foreseen, but one that the mischievous composer might have relished, the cast and director had clearly decided to forget the masonic overtones of the plot and make this moment a cry for help for English National Opera itself. 

One sadness after another.

Independent_on_Sunday

But there’s not much for the Coli to learn from the Indy’s disaster, even though both have depended for years on rich men’s calculated benefactions.