The pianist has told a German TV audience that he often gets protests late at night in hotels from people who are kept awake by his practising. He calmed one down in Berlin, he says, by offering to play something romantic.

lang lang tiger

The furious row over a musicologist’s post about his jailhouse work shows no sign of abating. Amid allegations of racism and elitism from one side and repression of academic freedom on the other, the argument serves mostly to illustrate how the present language of musicology is hopelessly inadequate for addressing American reality.

Two examples:

In my view, aesthetic autonomy and academic freedom are a pair of specters looming over our debate on Musicology Now. Aesthetic autonomy: its connotative stains of paternalism, insularity, and colonialism have seeped into the fabric of our disciplinary conscience. Academic freedom: an ideal that many of us applaud and champion. But to my ears, aesthetic autonomy can actually sometimes bring echoes of academic freedom. It’s not that they’re identical in sense or syntax, but that recommendations of Let music be music bear injunctive similarities to Let scholars be scholars, the notion that academics have a de facto right to pursue their work free from political pressures and without fear of termination. Such freedom can nurture creative, progressive thought. But how can one ethically claim this extreme immunity without simultaneously attending to others’ extreme vulnerabilities? How can one feel entitled to speak with full exemptions without paying dues to the systemic silences that make selective free speech audible in the first place?
William Cheng (@willishire) teaches at Dartmouth College

The online community of the American Musicological Society is currently exploding around a post by Pierpaolo Polzonetti called “Don Giovanni Goes to Prison.” The post, about teaching opera in prison, sparked both harsh criticism of Polzonetti’s efforts and writings as well as important discussions about implicit and explicit biases in our field….

The disciplinary debates going on now should serve as a reminder that scholars who step outside of their training should do so with intention, with a willingness to fail, and with an eye for what they don’t know.  For example, 49% of the people incarcerated at the prison Polzonetti works in are people of color, according to their website.  Polzonetti named one inmate as African American and didn’t mention the race of any other.  This disjunction allows us to reinscribe myths of black criminality and violence.  Khalil Gibran Muhammad describes black criminality as “one of the most commonly cited and longest-lasting justifications for black inequality and mortality in the modern urban world.”  Writings on mass incarceration as the new Jim Crow and on the criminalization of black men, should have informed how Polzonetti wrote about his experience in a prison.
Bonnie Gordon is an Associate Professor of Music at the University of Virginia.

bonnie gordon

In plain English, it now seems impossible to teach music analysis without filtering one’s teachings through a prism of social inequality. This appears to be what passes for academic freedom. It is oxymoronic.

 

In the Lebrecht Album of the Week on scena.org, openlettersmonthly.com and elsewhere, I try to draw a defining line between highly paid stars and the ones who really matter.

Great violinists come in two forms: stars and legends. Think about it. Jascha Heifetz was a star, Nathan Milstein a legend. One was a household name, the other inspired a kind of spiritual reverence among musicians of all stripes, not just violinists.

Read on here.

Nathan+Milstein

One of the best-kept secrets in outer London is the concert series at St Mary’s Perivale, where outstanding international talent can be heard – for free.

And the players still get paid. How does that work? Find out here.

st mary perivale

The highlight of Dane Johansen’s career so far was playing the Elliott Carter cello concerto at Carnegie Hall with James Levine.

He then walked a performance of the Bach suites all the way across northern Spain.

Johansen, now 31, has put all that behind him to join the cello section of what is probably America’s elite orchestra.

Dane-Johansen

 

In a rare feature interview with the Star-Tribune, Minnesota Orchestra concertmaster Erin Keefe discusses how she balances her relationship with her husband, music director Osmo Vänskä, and her colleagues in the orchestra.

Simple, she says.

“I haven’t felt any awkwardness,” Keefe said. “He’s here only 12 weeks a year; I’m here 28 weeks. When we are here together, we don’t bring anything inappropriate to rehearsal.”

Read on here.

erin keefe

We have reports of the death of Elena Rizzieri, a lovely Italian soprano who sang with Callas in Turandot (1948), with Mario Del Monaco in Mefistofele (1948) and Boheme (1950) and with Renata Tebaldi in Mozart’s Nozze di Figaro.

She retired in 1966.

Elena Rizzieri died in Rome on 17 February. She was 93.

elena rizzieri

h/t: Rudi van den Bulck, www.operanostalgia.be

Watch her in this indispensable Glyndebourne rehearsal film.

The theatre monitoring site hawskinthewings.com has correlated the vital statistics of English National Opera over the past decade in an attempts to find the roots of its crisis.

ENO box office

What the main chart shows is that 2010 and 2011, the years of greatest artistic adventure, were when the company topped 80 percent at the box-office. Seeing more people coming in through the doors, the board  increased ticket prices by an average 14 percent. So people stopped coming.

Not rocket science, is it?

Oh, and the man who helped push through the price rises was vice-chair Peter Bazalgette, now chair of the Arts Council which is trying to shut ENO down.

See full report and charts here.

ENO box office

Not quite Haitink, but getting there.

Bernie Sanders speaks during a Democratic presidential primary debate Saturday, Dec. 19, 2015, at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, N.H. (AP Photo/Jim Cole)

photo: AP

The composer Pascal Bentoiu died today, aged 88.

He leaves 8 symphonies and a large volume of chamber music.

Pascal Bentoiu

Michael Berkeley reports the death of his mother Freda, widow of Lennox Berkeley. She was 92.

An account of her life can be read here.

Our sympathies to Michael and the family.

lennox berkeley_freda_michael

The airline has decided to claw back the concession it made for a while, allowing violin and viola players to carry their instruments on board. Now it is back to demanding a full extra fare for small instruments.

On 18 February, a Slipped  Disc reader emailed Air Berlin with our post on their concession, asking them for a policy ruling. Their policy is unambiguous: you must buy an extra seat, unless your violin is 55x40x23cm (which, of course, it never is).

Other readers have received similar guidance. Our advice: take another plane.

Airberlin have just rejoined the list of world’s worst airlines.

Here’s the rule:

Sehr geehrter Herr X

vielen Dank für Ihre E-Mail.

Wenn Sie ihr Musikinstrument mit in die Kabine nehmen möchten, müssen Sie telefonisch oder persönlich an einem Airberlin Schalter einen Extra Seat buchen. Ansonsten müssten Sie sich an unsere Handgepäckmaße halten,  55 cm x 40 cm x 23 cm / max. 8Kg.

Zögern Sie bitte nicht, sich bei Rückfragen an uns zu wenden.

Ich wünsche Ihnen einen schönen Tag und verbleibe mit freundlichen Grüßen

Ihr P. Engelberg
Service Team airberlin group

Air Berlin PLC & Co. Luftverkehrs KG
Saatwinkler Damm 42-43
D-13627 Berlin
Germany

airberlin