Facebook has reminded me that five years ago today I posted this rare clip of CK conducting Wozzeck, a work which his father premiered in Berlin in 1926.
Has that score ever sounded more captivating?
Can’t get enough of it.
Enjoy your week.
This is the trailer for a new Rachmaninov recording by Khatia Buniatishvili, one of the more engaging soloists on the circuit.
The orchestra is the Czech Philharmonic. Their facial expressions are phlegmatic, if not glacial.
Do these players enjoy being on record? And on camera?
It’s a slightly better picture than the deserted landscape we posted last week.
But this is the current state of sales for tomorrow (Monday) night for Idomeneo. The red spots are the seats still available – about one-third of the house.
No wonder they can afford to tell Jonas Kaufmann he’s not really needed.
From my essay in The Literary Review, on Fritz Trümpi’s new book about the two Nazified orchestras.
… Compare this to how the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra treated its former concertmaster. Szymon Goldberg, a Polish Jew, was recruited to Berlin in 1930 by the conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler. Expelled from the orchestra in 1934, he roamed Europe and Asia, finally winding up in a Japanese internment camp on Java. In 1945 he wrote to the Berlin Philharmonic, asking for his job back. They refused. Ten years later he applied for compensation. His request was refused again. It was 1970 before the orchestra acknowledged that Goldberg, a violinist of high pedigree, had been unfairly dismissed.
It is case histories like these that illuminate the persistence of Nazi practices decades after the war….
Read the full review here.
That’s Goldberg in the concertmaster’s seat.
The pianist Evgeny Kissin, 45, married Karina Arzumanova yesterday morning in Prague, where the bride lives.
The couple have known each other since they were children.
We wish them every happiness.
Valery Gergiev has flu. Janine Jansen has sinusitis.
Sunday’s concert will be conducted by Susanna Mälkki with Christian Tetzlaff as soloist in the Brahms concerto.
No loss of value.
Book here.
The Buenos Aires opera house has issued its own account of the events that prompted the Romanian soprano to storm out last week. We have shortened the text slightly for legal reasons.
Media release:
Buenos Aires, Argentina, 8 March 2015 – The Argentine soprano, Virginia Tola, will sing the leading role of Adriana Lecouvreur in the opening night of the 2017 season of the Teatro Colón, replacing Angela Gheorghiu, who refused to agree to the contract terms offered by the administration of the theater.
…Having agreed to arrive in Buenos Aires on February 27th to begin rehearsals on March 1st. Angela Gheorghiu arrived on March 1st instead, and retired to her hotel suite for three days, during which time she was silent, refusing to attend rehearsals, costume fittings or to communicate whatsoever with the administration of the theater. She remained cloistered in her hotel throughout her stay in Buenos Aires, refusing to meet with any representative of the Teatro Colón…
Having agreed to the basic terms of her engagement via a letter of agreement, issued in October 2016, Gheorghiu arrived in Buenos Aires without having signed the contract issued by the Teatro Colón and delivered to her manager. On March 3rd, the administration was informed by the manager that Miss Gheorghiu required changes to the contract. The administration was able to grant her requests with the exception of her insistence that the universally utilized force majeure clause be removed. Such clauses are required by city regulation to protect all parties against acts of God, war, and civil tumult. Miss Gheorghiu’s refusal to sign the contact, coupled with her unwillingness to participate in the collaborative artistic preparation of the Adriana Lecouvreur, caused the administration of the Teatro Colón to cease contract negotiations and present Virginia Tola as Adriana Lecouvreur in the four performances originally offered to Miss Gheorghiu.
A precious violin, stolen from the Boston teacher Roman Totenberg in 1980 and recovered after the death of the thief, has been restored and is ready to be played once more.
AP reports: Mira Wang, a violinist who immigrated to the United States from China 30 years ago to study under Totenberg, will play the instrument at a private concert in New York on March 13, and more performances after that are possible.
More here.
An apocalyptic vision from two young Australian violinists.
Albert Gendelshtein’s 1966 Soviet documentaty, ‘Dmitri Shostakovich – Sketches for a portrait of the composer’, shows rare historic footage of the great composer.
Among the participants are Maxim Shostakovich, Leonid Kogan, Sviatoslav Richter, Galina Vishnevskaya, Mstislav Rostropovich, Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, Evgeny Mravinsky and more.
Do not miss the billiards scene. Or Richter with the Beethoven Quartet.
Альберт Гендельштейн – Дмитрий Шостакович – Святослав Рихтер – Мстислав Ростропович – Владимир Немирович-Данченко – Леонид Коган – Галина Вишневская – Карл Элиасберг – Максим Шостакович – Евгений Мравинский – 1966
You read it right: violin. ‘As Isaac used to say…’
Watch here.
The hall was originally built by the piano manufacturer in 1901.
Tomorrow, on stage, Pierre-Laurent Aimard will play an 1899 Bechstein, specially restored for the occasion.
Worth hearing.
See here.
