The tenor has called off the rest of his Walkure performances at Baden-Baden on medical advice.
Stuart Skelton subbed the first concert.
Andreas Schager takes over tomorrow, Sunday, on Kaufmann’s birthday – his 47th.
Gladys Hooper was the oldest known person in the UK.
In the 1920s, she played with London bandleaders Jack Payne, Debroy Somers and Maurice Winnick.
She gave up the stage to start a car-hire business.
In an interview with El Pais (and not as previously reported), the conductor said his country had ‘shot itself in the foot’.
Plus some other comments here.
Visiting the Pavarotti house in Modena, Una Barry found some unexpected aspects. He painted, for instance.
He got fan letters from Princess Diana.
He had a part-time job at the Met.
The Ireland-based composer Kevin Volans dropped a bombshell at the conference of the International Association of Music Information Centres (IAMIC), telling them that most of what they put out was landfill.
Why do pop and rock look and sound so good when most ‘contemporary music’ feels like it has come off a skip? And with apologies attached.
Now we find even the ISCM (International Society for Contemporary Music) calling for orchestral scores of less than 15 minutes! Do they realise that almost no major piece of the 20th Century would qualify? This is like an international art fair asking for work no larger than 1 metre by 1 metre. Where did this idea come from? Three guesses.
So it’s time to cut to the chase: What is the composer’s relationship with the audience, with the listener – given that she or he shouldn’t take them into account when writing?
Well, I think the answer should be: profound respect.
No composer I know can bear being unperformed and un-listened-to. We need audiences to show them what we have discovered, what we have struggled with. And to share the experience. For their cooperation we must treat them well.
New Music audiences are as sensitive and as picky as people going to a restaurant for the first time. If you want them to come back, everything has to be as perfect as possible. If they find a cockroach in the soup, they will never return. The same goes for contemporary music events.
So … how do we create audiences for New Music?
Read the full speech here.
Sotheby’s are offering for sale in November the manuscript of Gustav Mahler’s second symphony, following the death of Gilbert Kaplan at the start of the year.
The finished score only ever had three owners – Mahler himself, the conductor Willem Mengelberg and the financial publisher-turned-conductor Kaplan, who bought it from the Mengelberg Foundation in the 1980s.
I have studied the score in New York, where it has been conserved in immaculate condition.
How do you put a price on a piece of music that changed our perception of musical space and brought the symphony into debating the afterlife?
Sotheby’s are guesstimating £3.5-4.5 million, or around $5-7 million, which would break all known records.
Nine Mozart symphonies fetched £2.5m.
In my view, the Mahler Second is historically the most significant work of music to be offered for sale since Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring in November 1982 (and I was there for that one, too).
I wish I had five million to spare.
Guess I’ll just have to make do with the brilliant facsimile.
From an Australian study in Scientific American:
Although singers can generate very loud sounds, how can they compete with a large and enthusiastic symphony orchestra?
One strategy is to maximize their sound output at frequencies above 2,000 Hz. This is because an orchestra is typically loudest around 500 Hz, with the sound level dropping off quickly at higher frequencies. Furthermore, the ear is most sensitive around 3,000 to 4,000 Hz. To this end, singers often modify the resonances of their tract to produce a characteristic “vocal ring” that considerably boosts the sound output in this frequency range. This is of more value to lower pitched voices than to sopranos.
Ah, but how? Read on here.
From the Los Angeles Times:
Los Angeles Opera said unaudited figures for its recently ended 30th anniversary season show a 19.9% increase in the number of tickets sold and a 27.6% rise in ticket revenue compared with the previous season.
Read how here.
An Israeli-Arab student at the Barenboim-Said Academy was refused permission to take his violin as carry-on to an El Al flight when he boarded yesterday at Berlin’s Schoenefeld Airport.
Hisham Khoury, 25, says he was told he would have to check in both his backpack and his violin. Neither could be brought into the cabin.
Hisham, an Israeli Arab citizen whose family lives in Haifa, told Haaretz: ‘What order forbids taking a violin on the plane? It’s clear that such an order wouldn’t be given to a non-Arab passenger.’
Hisham added on his Facebook page:
‘I am writing this post while I am being yet again humiliated by El Al and being deprived from going home like a normal human being.
‘I was first questioned for an hour by a security officer where I had to specify every single action I had done for the past 2 year and asked for my purpose of VISIT as if I don’t live there or don’t have anything with where I’m going to.
‘After a while I asked the officer whether he thought it was just the way I’m being treated just for being an Arab . He said so politely like a well trained puppet “I’m sorry for the inconvenience, but these are the security instructions”.’
From the Lebrecht Album of the Week:
As a general rule, I would rather eat porridge that has been left to stand overnight than listen to music of the Romantic era being played on what is supposed to be a period instrument and is actually a modern replica, made the year before last. In this case, a reproduction of an 1830 Paris Pleyel that was manufactured by Paul McNulty in 2010. I mean, why….?
Then again, ask any composer if he or she wanted their music to be played on the best possible soundboard or on a washboard and you’ll get an answer far more conclusive than the UK’s recent Brexit vote. So why am I listening — and vastly enjoying —….
Read on here.
And here.
As well as here.
As part of intensified security for this year’s Parsifal, the festival has banned seat cushions and handbags from the Festspielhaus. It is also asking patrons to arrived at east 45 minutes early for security checks.
‘Da erweiterte Kontrollmaßnahmen durch die Polizei nicht auszuschließen sind, planen Sie bitte für Ihre Ankunft am Festspielhaus und den Eintritt mehr Zeit als bisher ein.’
Opera house, or airport?
There are going to be some sore rears after Parsifal.
Ricordi have announced a deal with Georg Friedrich Haas, who outed himself earlier this year for bizarre sexual practices.
The things a composer has to do to get published these days.
press release:
Berlin, July, 08 2016. Ricordi Bühnen- und Musikverlag, Berlin, is pleased to announce a new publishing agreement with the internationally renowned composer Georg Friedrich Haas. In 2016 Ricordi Berlin will release three compositions: a work for choir and chamber orchestra called Three Pieces for Mollena, Haas’ Ninth String Quartet and a concerto for trombone and orchestra. Several new works are scheduled for 2017, including an orchestra piece for Berliner Philharmoniker, a new violin concerto and an ensemble work for Ensemble Resonanz which will be played on the occasion of the opening of Elbphilharmonie, the new concert hall in Hamburg.
Born in 1953 in Graz, Austria, Georg Friedrich Haas is one of the most important composers of his generation and has received numerous composition awards and was honored with the Grand Austrian State Prize in 2007. Georg Friedrich Haas has been commissioned by Berlin Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, Leipzig Gewandhausorchester and the Bavarian Symphony Orchestra. Perhaps his most frequently performed work is his ensemble piece in vain, which is in part performed in complete darkness. In the 2015/16 season his opera Morgen und Abend (Morning and Evening) was given at Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and at the Deutsche Oper Berlin. Georg Friedrich Haas lives in New York, where he is Professor of Music at Columbia University. He also continues as a professor at the Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Graz.