Melanie Wise is asking us to look out for her early 19th century German violin, which was stolen from a van parked near Mare Street in Hackney.

She was working at the time with the band Primal Scream.

Here’s what Melanie writes:

I HAVE HAD MY BELOVED VIOLIN AND ENTIRE MUSICAL SETUP STOLEN @ 3PM TODAY FROM THE BACK OF DARK BLUE MERCEDES SPRINTER VAN PARKED ON RETREAT PLACE IN HACKNEY. THEY DRILLED THE LOCK AND ESCAPED WITHIN 6 MINUTES.

There was panic last night at the Gesellschaft für Musiktheater when a well-known soprano called in sick with the audience already making its way to the venue.

Step up Kurt Equiluz, one of those Viennese indestructables who looks after his voice long after retirement.

Kurt, now 87, started out as an alto soloist of the Vienna Boys Choir. In 1950 he became member of the Vienna State Opera Choir upgrading to a soloist’s contract in 1957. He sang in 1,700 performances over the next 26 years.

He was especially well known for Bach oratorios, which he recorded with Nikolaus Harnoncourt. He retired in 2000 with a performance of Schubert’s Winterreise at the Vienna Musikvereinsaal.

Last night he sang a full programme of works by Randhartinger, Liszt, Marx, Wolf and Salmhofer.

Here’s proof.

A critical sign of our times.

The administration  of the Pittsburgh Symphony, which is refusing to resume talks with the striking musicians, has cancelled  all concerts down to November 18.

“This is a decision made by Management, and Management alone,” said Micah Howard, PSO bassist and Chair of the Musicians’ Orchestra Committee.  “We are ready to negotiate an end to this dispute so the Musicians can be back on stage at Heinz Hall.  But Management has repeatedly declared that they are unwilling to compromise – that they won’t even meet with us unless we accept the ‘last, best, and final’ contract demands they made a month ago.

The Hungarian conductor will step down as music director of Berlin’s Konzerthaus orchestra in 2018, when he’s 65.

Says he wants to conducts less.

He has raised the orchestra’s profile to the extent that he was ranked with Rattle and Barenboim at state events.

There’s a new co-principal horn at San Francisco Opera.

His name is Mark Almond, he’s from Manchester, England and he has played guest principal with several London orchestras before heading abroad.

Unusually, he read medicine at Oxford and Cambridge and qualified as a respiratory physician.

Three early favourites – Mone Hattori, Shiori Terauchi and Eva Rabchevska – have failed to make the third round of the Wieniawski Competition in Poznan.

All three are students of Zakhar Bron, who sits on the jury.

Some insiders suggest this might indicate a backlash against the controversial judge.

Here are the third round qualifiers:

Our weekend has been much enhanced by the discovery of Shittyflute, a Youtube channel that will cause your eyes to water, for one reason or other.

Try this:

More here.

Wasfi Kani, head of the relocated Grange Park Opera which reopens in Surrey next summer, doesn’t expect everyone to turn up in formal wear.

The new dress code reads: ‘Guests wear something stylish. Most of the audience wears black tie/ long or short dress, but don’t be afraid to stand out from the crowd. We encourage creativity.’

What she means, she tells the Telegraph, is: ‘People can wear whatever they like. A nice Italian suit is a better piece of clothing than a tatty old dinner jacket. We don’t all have to have the same life.’

Trainers will be welcomed, provided they are very expensive.

Berlin’s Komische Oper, whose recent chief conductors include Kirill Petrenko and the late Yakov Kreizberg, has got itself into a tangle over its next music director.

The incumbent, Henrik Nanasi, is on the way out. A shortlist of six has yielded one outstanding candidate who is well liked by the artistic director and ovated by the public in Barber of Seville.

Antonella Manacorda, 46, is a former Abbado concertmaster who studied with Jorma Panula and now heads the orchestra at Arnhem in the Netherlands.

He is also rumoured to have a Sony record deal, according to the combative Manuel Brug in Die Welt.

But musicians of the excellent Komische Oper orchestra have voted him down.

They want a bigger name.

Simon Rattle has been mentioned. (Won’t happen: Manacorda shares an agent with Rattle.) So they’ve got stalemate.

Story here.

The neo-tonal Dutch composer arouses heated opinions on Sipped Disc.

He has a premiere coming up in London on October 23. Go hear for yourself.

Ask nicely and we might offer a couple of tickets.

In a long, rambling interview to the Financial Times’s former bureau chief, he seems to be in complete denial about his subservience to Vladimir Putin and his service to the Russian propaganda machine.

Example:

Yet there is another side to Gergiev, on display a few weeks earlier in a very different location and on a very different occasion. In the dusty, ancient city of Palmyra, recently recaptured by the Syrian army from the fanatical jihadis of Isis, Gergiev conducted a short concert in the Roman theatre in a performance dripping with political symbolism. The previous year Isis murdered 25 people at the site, turning their executions into a propaganda film.

“I saw the blood on the stones myself,” Gergiev told me later in London. “We musicians, we artists, are asking politicians: why did you allow this to happen?”

Has he ever challenged Putin about the air strikes on aid convoys and hospitals carried out by the Assad regime with Putin’s approval? Has he ever considered that he might be acting as an apologist for war crimes?

This is no longer the Valery Gergiev we once knew and admired.

Full report here.