Remember when the best music critics were syndicated, coast to coast?
Nat Hentoff was.
He wrote mostly about jazz and famously about civil liberties and human rights.
He had a 1940s radio show called From Bach to Bartok.
Nat died yesterday at home in Manhattan.
Simone Kermes came on stage in Moscow to face an audience that looked sparser and colder than her normal crowd.
So this is what she did.
If you’re still feeling unwarmed, jump to 3:30 and see what she did to an unsuspecting young man in the front row.
I wonder if his glasses ever got unmisted.
From the New Yorker:
Don’t clap too soon, wait till they’re done, don’t clap too soon, wait till they’re done, don’t clap—
So this is the Symph-Tacular Winter Series.
Four concerts times two seats plus parking equals . . .
Jesus. I could’ve gotten something I wanted.
Cool piece. Read on here.
I bet it annoys them when he’s all, “Play soft, play soft, look at my stick getting very low. now play loud look at my stick way up here!”
If I were in the orchestra, I’d probably roll my eyes when he did that. Just enough so the audience could be, like, “That guy gets it.”
Are they done? Do I clap now?
They’re not done.
The violin section seems to be where you find the most attractive women.
But are they just “orchestra attractive”?
If I were involved with one of the violinists, would I have to learn a lot of stuff about violin? Like, if she asked, “How did I play tonight?,” would I have to have a specific, informed answer? Or could I just say, “Great!”
Or maybe, “Honey, you were awesome, as always. You should totally be first chair. Babe, I know, it’s so political.”
Something about this 6-foot-5-inch man struck a chord with her.
She put down her pen, looked straight at him and said, “What are you doing here? Are you a singer?” He replied, “Yes. I’m a tenor,” and she began asking questions about his career aspirations and preparation.
When she asked how things were going, he took a deep breath.
“She looked at me and said, ‘Let me help you. I want to help you.’ I literally just stood there dumbfounded. I didn’t know what to say, and she had to repeat herself. She goes, ‘Can I help you?’ And I said, ‘OK.’” An assistant gave him her phone number, and she said, “Call me tonight.”
He did, indeed, call her that night and met with her. About six months later, when she was back in town to give a concert at Carnegie Hall, she had Pupu’a come backstage, then took him to Juilliard to sing for Brian Zeger, artistic director of vocal arts at the famed performing arts conservatory. She got him in the door — his talent and tenacity got him a full scholarship.
Read the full story here.
Anthea Kreston’s weekly Slipped Disc diary:
I have been savouring my final moments of vacation before quartet resumes this week. Both daughters are home with us (our youngest had her 5th birthday this week) and I have spent much time preparing for the heavy musical workload coming my way in the early months of 2017. The luxury of a quartet schedule allows for time off between frenetic work cycles – a time to connect deeply with family and to have long, uninterrupted personal practice sessions. As Jason begins work, our house takes on a new order, with a nanny schedule and a house cleaner. We have connected with friends, and had a magical evening at a musical soirée – it felt almost historical in a way – a true European living room chamber music evening.
The first snow has graced Berlin this week, and as Jason and I set off, early evening, to the home of a friend, the trees on Kurfürstendamm, still decked with millions of tiny white lights, glistened in the dark winter night. We passed the scene of the recent terrorist attack, boarded up, but bustling with people, a large memorial area covered with candles and flowers lines the sidewalk. Life continues quickly despite tragedy.
We buzzed up to Clemens’s apartment – he is the host of the musical soirée. As the head of Deutsche Grammophon, Clemens is an unusual person. A passionate performer (clarinet), active concert-goer, and keen businessman, he also has a past resume which includes a law degree and work in the tech industry. When we met this summer, his easygoing and casual nature belied his high-powered musical career.
Jason and I were among the first to arrive – Franziska Hölscher was already there, wrestling with the computer printer, which was furiously spitting out potential music for tonight’s concert (which was to begin in 90 minutes time). Jason and I plopped down our donations towards the reception food as other musicians arrived – Andreas Willwohl, Kristina Kerscher, Markus Groh, and Kian Soltani.
We began to move the furniture, piano, set up stands and chairs, and lined up potential repertoire on the couch. It soon became apparent that we had no complete sets of music except a Schumann piano trio, so as people set tempi for that, someone ran to get more paper for the already overtaxed printer as it started to fill out the missing parts to Tchaikovsky Souvenir de Florence and the Schumann Piano Quintet. The Piazzola Seasons were found, and with the addition of a Prokofiev quintet, and Beethoven Gassenhauer, our program was complete.
The doorbell began to ring, and the musicians all instinctively rotated into the rolls of greeters, dish washers, bread cutters and cheese-plate preparers, and fire-brigade chair retrievers from the cellar. As the tables began to fill with bottles of wine and plates of food, the musicians would find each other in the kitchen – someone had begun to rip the baguette and we passed it amongst ourselves, slicing Camembert and stealing grapes from the tray.
And we were off – we gathered by the piano, in the living room with the wall of books reaching to the ceiling, audience piled on every possible piece of furniture, and the French doors open to the other rooms, and someone asked about the order. I quickly grabbed a magazine from the bedside table and jotted down a program on the back page. Before each piece, a counting of the tempo and checking repeats – and a lovely off-the-cuff introduction by one member or the other. As the audience stomped enthusiastically (their exuberance bolstered no doubt by their filled wine glasses), Clemens pulled out an encore – the slow movement of the Mozart Clarinet Quintet. What a wonderful way to end the evening.
As Jason and I left the party in the wee hours of the morning, the sidewalk dusted with fresh snow, and me with my new German driver’s license in hand, we look forward to 2017 and all the magic it will bring.
Gustavo Dudamel is selling his LA pad for $3.1 million.
You can get the guided tour here.
The death of announced of Mary Lynn Fixler, who retired last June as senior vice president at Barrett Artists.
She was 85.
Among the artists she looked after were: Rudolf Serkin, Robert Casadesus, Richard Tucker, Yevgeny Sudbin, Alessio Bax and Vadim Gluzman.
Whenever I watch any opera by Mascagni and Leoncavallo other than ‘Cav’ and ‘Pag’ I have no trouble understanding why the two composers went down in history as one-hit wonders. True, there are those who make claims for Leoncavallo’s La Boheme (Mahler deemed it vastly inferior to Puccini’s) and others are thrilled by Mascagni’s sex-slave Iris, but neither work has struck me as more than a barrel-scraping of the short-lived 1890s verismo craze, deservedly occupying the fringes of musical memory….
And here.
He’s unwell.
Marek Janowski will take over next week’s three performances of the Verdi Requiem.
Seong-Jin Cho, winner of the Chopin Competition, is a fabulous artist with a brilliant future. But he should never be allowed to talk to camera until he acquires a pull-on charisma set from his local makeover shop.
Which DG genius thought this chat was going to help sell records?
The composer and oratorio singer Tristan Clais has died at the age of 87.
A student of Igor Markevitch, he was fascinated by surrealism and explored affinities with graphics and collages.
He was also a prominent broadcaster.
