The Royal Philharmonic Society has awarded its Gold Medal to Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, who is in the throes of a cancer struggle. Max, who is 81, was presented with the award at his home in the Orkney Islands.

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press release: 

One of classical music’s highest honours, the Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medal, has been awarded to composer Sir Peter Maxwell Davies. He becomes the 102nd recipient since the medal was founded in 1870 in celebration of the centenary of the birth of Beethoven (London’s Philharmonic Society commissioned Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and enjoyed a close association with the composer). The medal was presented to him at his home in the Orkney Islands by RPS Council Member, Sally Groves MBE.

In awarding the medal, the Society said:  “It is the brilliance of his writing, the searing power of his imagination, the vivid theatricality and the quality of craftsmanship that engage us with the music of Peter Maxwell Davies.

Over six decades he has been part of our public consciousness; an extraordinary musician who has moved from iconoclast and enfant terrible of the avant garde, to a leading cultural figure, appointed Master of the Queens Music in 2004. He continues to create wonderful, richly imagined works which are warmly welcomed by musicians and audiences at home and abroad.

Max is our foremost champion of creative music education, drawing on his early teaching experience and demonstrating that all children can compose music and perform given the minimum of opportunity. He is never reluctant to speak out or upset the status quo on matters about which he feels passionately (and there are many) – whether it be to admonish the government on arts funding or on green issues, to march against the invasion of Iraq, or to take on restaurants blighted by muzak.

And yet, while taking a very public role he has simultaneously embedded himself in the community of the Orkney Islands, his home since 1970. Here, as one of the founders of the St Magnus International Festival, he has put into action his belief (which he stated in his 2005 RPS Lecture), that “…a place cannot come to life musically unless or until the inhabitants make and perform their own songs which are relevant to that place, and to the lives of the people who live in it.”

Peter Maxwell Davies has redefined what it means to be a composer and inspired new generations of musicians. We applaud him for his generosity of spirit and are proud to present him with the Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medal.”

Peter Maxwell Davies commented:  “I am absolutely delighted and couldn’t be more honoured to receive the RPS Gold Medal. That’s the one I wanted!”

The irrepressible Joseph R. Olefirowicz was one of the early stars on Slipped Disc, playing to a hidden camera in a Vienna Volksoper performance of Leonard Bernstein’s Candide.

Well, folks, he’s back. Larger than life and storming the ramparts in a blockbuster Kismet.

An effervescent video to kick off your weekend.

olefirowicz

A CBC presenter in loose tie and suspenders attempts, in the film below, to retell the story of Brahms’s Lullaby. The film is over-produced, unadulterated, mostly counter-factual balderdash.

Brahms, we are told, got ‘screwed up… couldn’t trust his own feelings’.

Musicology is needed to confront and deconstruct this epidemic of classic-lite music history.

secret brahms lullaby

Schenker, oh Schenker, where are you now?

The president of the American Musicological Society, Professor Ellen T. Harris, has responded in the measured, meaningless terms of modern musicology to the lynching inflicted on Pierpaolo Polzonetti, when he reported his experiences teaching musical analysis in prisons.

Professor Polzonetti was subjected to every kind of politically correct abuse for trying to tell it how it really is.

Ellen T Harris refers to tell it how she thinks it ought to be, through the medium of self-censorship. Sample:

It is clear that there were aspects of the blog post that, although normative prose-writing to some, were heard by many readers as disturbing or even offensive. How often have each of us had the experience of seeing readers’ comments or reviews that understand something we didn’t intend or some relationship we didn’t notice. “How could anyone think that was what I meant?!” is something I have muttered often enough to myself. But one learns to think again and to clarify.

Most disturbingly, I have had private messages from senior scholars telling me about or quoting their students of color who express distress at the ubiquity in musicology of microaggressions (verbal or nonverbal slight and insults, often but not always unintentional) that leave them feeling marginalized and have led some to leave the field. I am reminded of the statement the late Charles M. Vest, President of MIT, made when he decided to publish the internal report on Women in Science (1999) that documented the “differences in salary, space, awards, resources, and response to outside offers between men and women faculty with women receiving less despite professional accomplishments equal to those of their male colleagues.” Vest wrote:

I learned two particularly important lessons from this report and from discussions while it was being crafted. First, I have always believed that contemporary gender discrimination within universities is part reality and part perception. True, but I now understand that reality is by far the greater part of the balance. Second, I, like most of my male colleagues, believe that we are highly supportive of our junior women faculty members. This also is true. They generally are content and well supported in many, though not all dimensions. However, I sat bolt upright in my chair when a senior woman, who has felt unfairly treated for some time, said “I also felt very positive when I was young.”

I ask that, like President Vest, we all become learners again. To become the open and welcoming Society we want the AMS to be, we all (authors and commentators alike) need to listen to one another, to think, edit, and revise.

Those wishing to study what is wrong with modern musicology, start here.

ellen t harris

The opportunistic pianist has filmed his own version of the Ennio Morricone score for the Oscar-nominated film.

He does not miss a note, or a trick.

Lang Lang’s performance shot on location on Feb 2 at the Rosewood Hotel Beijing, directed and produced by Harvey Weinstein, co-directed by Tobias Reeuwijk, co-produced by Bey Logan and Sharon Zhang. 

At last year’s Oscars, Lang Lang became besties (below) with best score composer Alexandre Desplat.

desplat lang lang

A Kensington financier has secured a court order to limit his neighbours’ piano practise to two hours a day.

His neighbours are two teenaged brothers, one of whom, James Carrabino, 17, is a former finalist in the BBC’s Young Musician of the Year. His parents are appealing the ban.

Joao Baptista, a man with three substantial homes, said: ‘It was torture, the repetition of piano playing, day after day, again and again. It was a tremendous imposition on us, we could not use the hallway or the study without the deafening sound of piano.’

He added: ‘We had to stop having people over for dinner, it was just awful. We could not even have conversations, even at weekends, we would have to stay away from the house.

‘It was fine when they were younger, their fingers were weaker, but now it is just a constant torture. Once they decided they wanted to become professional entertainers it has been a nightmare.’

silentmusic

The upheavals at the world’s largest music group following Max Hole’s retirement have reached France, forcing the resignation of the company’s veteran local boss, Pascal Nègre.

pascal negre

Described as the best known music executive in France, Pascal reportedly objected to the latest policy directives coming from company HQ in California.

He is replaced by Olivier Nusse, m.d. of Mercury Music Group and Universal Classic & Jazz in France.

 

ARA News reports that a 15-year-old boy named Ayham Hussein was caught by an Isis patrol listening to ‘western music’ in his father’s grocery store.

‘He was referred to the Sharia Court, which issued a decision to execute him.’

The boy was reportedly publicly beheaded; his body was returned to his family on Tuesday.

beheading

The London Evening Standard, once a well-informed newspaper runs the following headline:

Trust Sir Simon Rattle over new £278m concert hall, says top conductor

Now who could that be? Thielemann, Mehta, Barenboim, Nelsons, Dudamel, Muti, Chailly?

No, it’s Yuri Bashmet, the violist, whose activities as a conductor are confined largely to his own ensemble.

The report continuesMr Bashmet, who, along with recently departed LSO head Valery Gergiev, is regarded as one of the two best conductors in Russia, said the Barbican, Festival Hall and Royal Albert Hall were “very good”, but that all great cities needed to “think of the future”.

The interns have taken over the asylum. And the PRs are spinning them like mad.

Museum_of_London

Rattle’s proposed site

One of England’s most prestigious public schools has shrunk its music profile. This just in from Lewis Owens:

After 6 years Babssco (the commercial summer arm of Harrow School) have decided (without informing me) that our Piano Academy isn’t making enough profit for them (I assume) so would prefer to focus on other priorities (such as hosting quiz and pizza nights for the overseas students). My sincere thanks to the brilliant Colin Stone for all his efforts and to the wonderful Mayumi Stone Iida for hers. Huge thanks also to Tanya Ursova who coordinated everything as well as teaching on the course. Thanks also to those wonderful and distinguished pianists who have either taught or been our Guests of Honour over the years, including Vladimir Ashkenazy, Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, Benjamin Grosvenor and Elena Vorotko.

Most importantly, thanks to the many students from all over the world who have attended, enjoyed and benefitted hugely from the course. Sincere thanks to Steinway & Sons for warmly hosting the students every year for a recital and the Royal Academy of Music who welcomed us every year with a tour of the museum. Sometimes though I do wonder why I bother.

harrow school

BABSSCo is ‘a specialist provider of top quality EFL junior summer English courses for young students from all over the world’.

Tweet from the BBCSO:

BBCSymphonyOrchestra  @BBCSO
 
Duh duh duuuuuh…Familiarise yourself with Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 which we perform on Sunday

bbc so

Education, education, education.

Tucson Symphony have picked José Luis Gomez after a 30-month search.

Venezuela born and now a Spanish citizen, Gomez, 37, won the 2010 Solti conducting contest.

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