The trial opened in Munich yesterday of Siegfried Mauser, a distinguished pianist who is accused of sexual offences against two colleagues in 2009 and 2012 while he was rector of the Munich Academy of Music.
Mauser was in court to hear the charges, which he denies.
After submissions from both sides, the hearing was postponed until the end of May. Mauser has been suspended from his Salzburg positions, pending the outcome of the trial
Court report here, together with Mauser’s letter to his Salzburg staff.
The regional governor has decided to separate the presidency of the festival from its commercial management.
The president Helga Rabl-Stadler has held both roles since 2011. Her term ends in September 2017. Both her position and the commercial director’s are to be advertised immediately.
The festival will also be losing its executive director, Stefan Mehrens, who departs at the end of June.
Regime change is in the Salzburg air.
Rabl-Stader, 67, has been president since 1995, steering the festival through the second half of the turbulent Mortier decade into a period of alternate dreariness and elevation.
The wonderful Emmanuel Ceysson received his notification of tenure from music director James Levine earlier this week, on his birthday weekend.
And an anonymous admirer – a fellow-professional musician – presented the Met with two new harps for him to play. When I saw Emmanuel the other day, he was radiant with happiness.
You’d think the Met would bang the media drums about it? Not a whimper.
It was about 5:30 in the morning when Gwyn Richards’ phone rang. He needed to come to the Monroe County Airport. There had been an accident. Five students at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music had died in a plane crash. Richards, the school’s dean, spent the rest of the day in IU’s hangar, gathering facts and meeting with the students’ families who came to Bloomington later that day. It was a surreal and difficult time, Richards said, but looking back 10 years later, he is reminded of how important it is to come together in times of tragedy. “I’ve learned since, when you have a loss as impactful as that, it’s important to gather as a community,” he said. “The only thing that helps is to be held by someone else. It’s not so much about the words but the presence.”
On April 20, 2006, after a rehearsal for a performance as soloists with the Bach Chorale Singers at Lafayette’s Long Center for the Performing Arts, voice students Robert Clayton Samels, Zachary J. Novak, Garth A. Eppley, Georgina H. Joshi and Chris Bates Carducci boarded a Cessna 206 piloted by Joshi to head back to Bloomington. As the plane approached the small airport on the western edge of Monroe County, Joshi activated the runway lighting system. But the Cessna never touched the pavement.
Joe will be hosting a remembrance of the five at 7 pm tonight, concert broadcast live at 8. wfiu.org.
At rehearsals for Verdi’s Falstaff, Riccardo Muti and the Chicago Symphony became aware of an unusual guest in the hall. Turns out the Chicago Bulls’ Pau Gasol is a big opera fan. Like, very big.
He stayed right through the afternoon, looked into Maestro Muti’s score and agreed to a photo-op, with some adjustment for size. It was taken by the bilateral Todd Rosenberg, who covers both concerts and competitive sports.
Big day all round in Chicago.
photo (c) Todd Rosenberg
The effervescent, witty and extremely music Victoria Wood has died of cancer at 62.
The mortal toll of 2016 is intolerable.
Victoria was outstandingly musical, often performing her own compositions.
She was a regular attender at symphony concerts and a totally civilised human being.
It has been announced that Gavin Reid, chief executive of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra is leaving the organisation to become head of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.
Execs don’t usually leave big symphony orchs to work for chamber ensembles.
But the BBC is not a happy place these days with cuts everywhere and orchs fearing for their future.
It could prove a good move.
Gavin Reid says: ‘I am enormously thrilled to take up this post with the SCO after 10 wonderful years at the BBC SSO. I am passionate about music and the arts and the extraordinary opportunities that they can offer to everyone. I am particularly excited by the crucial and influential role that the SCO plays within Scotland and I look forward to working closely with players, staff, artists and all of the SCO’s supporters to build on the fantastic achievements of recent years, as led by Roy McEwan.’
Here’s what happened when President Hollande visited Egypt this week.
Avert your ears.
It’s the new atonal.
A massacre, say French media.
From Jan Jiracek von Arnim:
I am teaching for 15 years already in Vienna at the University for Music and Performing Arts, and now I am finally able to welcome the first female professor colleague in our department for Piano Performance..!
Lilya Zilberstein gave her inaugural recital the other night. Welcome to Vienna, Lilya!!
The Vienna State Opera has called in Alexandra LoBianco to sing Leonore in Fidelio next month, replacing Anne Schwanewilms, who is sick.
It appears to be Alexandra’s European stage debut.
Operanostalgia has alerted us to the death of Deva Dassy, daughter of a French cabinet minister and mistress of another, who created three roles and was renowned in her day as a dramatic mezzo in Mignon, Werther, Madam Butterfly and La Belle Helene.
Her real name was Marie-Anne Lambert. She was much recorded.
Her lover Georges Mandel, a Resistance hero, was murdered in July 1944.
Tobias Picker has posted the following, which we reproduce with his permission.
‘After 36 years together, Aryeh Lev Stollman and I were married a few weeks ago at the Supreme Court of the United States by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. We are endlessly honored and grateful to have been married by one of the greatest Americans in history.’
