Nikolaus Bachler has announced he will step down as Intendant of Bavarian State Opera in 2021, coinciding with the departure of his music director Kirill Petrenko for the Berlin Philharmonic.
Bachler will be 70 that year. He has been in charge at Munich since 2008.
A North London mother has pulled her boy out of school for fear his piano playing will be damaged by compulsory football.
Hayley Bushell says Curtis, 12, suffered a left arm sprain and concussion during rugby lessons. The boy previously competed in Britain’s Got Talent. His mother is a piano teacher.
Curtis has now been transferred to a gentle theatre school.
Molly-coddled?
A statement by the Salzburg Festival in tribute to Nikolaus Harnoncourt admits what had previously been denied with great vehemence – that the festival had accepted a demand by Herbert von Karajan that his former orchestral cellist should not conduct there in his lifetime.
Harnouncourt taught and performed at the Mozarteum from the 1970s but was not admitted to the Festival roster.
This was the official confession:
The Mozarteum Foundation was also responsible for his debut with the Vienna Philharmonic. After all, Herbert von Karajan did not want him to appear at the Festival during his lifetime.
The Festival then goes on to blur the record:
Karajan and Harnoncourt – those were separate musical worlds. However, they did have one thing in common: they were both after truthfulness in music. Both remained seekers throughout their entire lifetimes, but their searches took radically different paths.
Truthfulness?
The great conductor will be laid to rest this Saturday in a private ceremony at his parish church in St. Georgen.
In Vienna, the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde will celebrate his life and work on April 16 in the Musikvereinssaal.
(c) Marion Kalter/Lebrecht M&A
State auditors have exposed a huge deficit at BR, amounting to 100m Euros over the years 2010-14.
The BR symphony orchestra, radio orchestra and chorus amount to just over 25 percent of the network’s costs.
The record label BR-Klassik has clocked up a 491,000 Euros loss.
There will be a reckoning to come.
Weeks after the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra appointed Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla as its next music director, its offshoot the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group has appointed a new artistic director.
He’s extremely well connected. Stephan Meier – percussionist, conuctor, composer – is presently artistic director of Hanover’s Das Neue Ensemble, which he founded in 1993. His ensemble has worked with Earle Brown, Wolfgang Rihm, Carola Bauckholt, Johannes Schöllhorn, Mark André and Helmut Lachenmann. Meier is also chairman of Musik 21, a national network for new music in Germany.
Meier, who succeeds Stephen Newbould, will remain artistic director of Das Neue Ensemble while leading BCMG.
This is Brett Easton Ellis’s idea of how to draw a new audience to opera. It was commissioned by the Paris Opéra.
Must have cost half a Carmen.
Hint: It’s not her.
Picture taken after Lohnegrin, Deutsche Oper Berlin, April 2015.
Meistersinger is cancelled tonight.
The corps de ballet have walked out over pay.
Macca’s tribute today to his late producer:
photo: McCartney
‘It’s hard to choose favourite memories of my time with George, there are so many but one that comes to mind was the time I brought the song ‘Yesterday’ to a recording session and the guys in the band suggested that I sang it solo and accompany myself on guitar. After I had done this George Martin said to me, “Paul I have an idea of putting a string quartet on the record”. I said, “Oh no George, we are a rock and roll band and I don’t think it’s a good idea”. With the gentle bedside manner of a great producer he said to me, “Let us try it and if it doesn’t work we won’t use it and we’ll go with your solo version”. I agreed to this and went round to his house the next day to work on the arrangement.
‘He took my chords that I showed him and spread the notes out across the piano, putting the cello in the low octave and the first violin in a high octave and gave me my first lesson in how strings were voiced for a quartet. When we recorded the string quartet at Abbey Road, it was so thrilling to know his idea was so correct that I went round telling people about it for weeks. His idea obviously worked because the song subsequently became one of the most recorded songs ever with versions by Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Ray Charles, Marvin Gaye and thousands more.’
The death is reported today in Recife of Naná Vasconcelos, Brazilian percussionist, berimbau player and vocalist who crossed several genres, working with Jon Hassell, Pat Metheny and Jan Garbarek. He was 71.
William Spaulding, Kapellmeister of Deutsche Oper Berlin, has been named to succeed Renato Balsadonna as head of the ROH chorus this summer.
An American, born in Washington DC, Spaulding studied trumpet and piano at the University of Maryland and conducting at the Vienna Hochschule. He has been Associate Chorus Master at the Vienna Volksoper and Principal Chorus Master at the Liceu, Barcelona, for five years.
