From the Telegraph:

When Private Richard Howard began making his violin, he envisaged the day he would return from the battlefield to play it. 

It was a dream cruelly shattered when the soldier met his death on the first day of the Battle of Messines in  1917.

Now, 100 years later, the violin – carefully completed after being found – has been played at his graveside. 

Read on here.

I got taken to a concert of cantorial music last night in Tel Aviv’s Heichal Hatarbut. Not my usual choice of music, but the hall was packed and the four cantors were pretty good.

The orchestra was the Symphonette Ra’anana, described by the compere as ‘one of the best in Israel, in the world, even.’

Not sure about that, but my eye kept being drawn to the clarinet player, sitting in the middle of the last row. Her enthusiasm for the music was uncontained – not just when she played but, more evident still, when she had nothing to do and could sway with the rhythm and mouth some of the words.

Her playing, too, was top-notch.

I believe her name is Michal Beit Halachmi, and here she is in klezmer action.

The first three Toulon performances of Gounod’s Romeo et Juliette have been lost to a strike called by unions representing the orchestra musicians and chorus.

The strike is indefinite, no end in sight.

It’s rare for an orchestra to agree on anything without a single dissenting voice.

Donald Munro tells us that in Fresno, which yesterday appointed a music director, Rei Hotoda was the unanimous choice among six candidates both of the orchestra’s board and of its musicians’ search committee.

That augurs well for Fresno.

Donald was laid off last month after 16 years as arts writer for The Fresno Bee. He has started his own blog here. Please share this link among friends.

He’s too good a writer to lose.

Here’s a sample:

On a crisp Sunday in March, the final notes of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5 floated into memory at the Saroyan Theatre. The audience broke out in tumultuous applause. Four standing ovations followed. Many people in the audience at the Fresno Philharmonicconcert, including me, had just come to the same conclusion: Rei Hotoda nailed her audition.

That premonition was confirmed today when the orchestra announced that Hotoda is the eighth music director (and first woman) in Fresno Philharmonic history. Her name was revealed at a standing-room only event at Pardini’s.

The St Louis Symphony has appointed Stéphane Denève to succeed David Robertson as music director in 2019.

Denève, 45, has been music director in Scotland and Stuttgart. He is presently with the Brussels Philharmonic.

He has guest-conducted in St Louis since 2003.

The post that Theodor Kuchar vacated last year at the Fresno Philharmonic has gone to Rei Hotoda, presently assistant conductor with the Utah Symph.

She starts next month.

Also making a summer move is Paul Haas, newly appointed music director of the Thunder Bay Symphony Orchestra, in Ontario.

There were tremors in the cowslips when Jeremy Bines won the job as as chorus master for Berlin’s Deutsche Oper. He leaves, after eight years, in September. Not long to find a replacement.

Not to worry. Gly have repatriated an English musician from his exile as interim chorus master at Dutch National Opera.

Nicholas Jenkins is vastly experienced across all forms of English opera and has quite a large portfolio of work on the continent.

The Canadian-US violinist Benjamin Bowman has been named concertmaster of the Metropolitan Opera orchestra. He will share duties with David Chan, who has held the seat since 2000.

Bowman, 38, is presently concertmaster with American Ballet Theater.

He replaces fellow-Canadian Nikki Chooi, 28, who won the seat last year on a one-year, non-tenure contract. It’s tough out there.

Lovely story from the Brixton blog, in South London, about Anthony Garner, a retired gent who takes kids from tough neighbourhoods to the Royal Opera.

Read all about him here.

H/t: Malcolm Noble

That’s the thrust of Philip Kennicott’s hot-headed anti-Koch polemic in the Washington Post.

Can beggars be choosers?

Is there any donation an arts organisation should turn down? And in any circumstances?

Your thoughts, please.

Alexander Goldscheider has lovingly documented the entire musical career, in performances and pictures of Jiri Belohlavek, who died last week, aged 71.

The intensity of his musical life is phenomenal: 10,074 performances of 1,680 works.

See Sascha’s Facebook page for more.

The tenor tells the Covent Garden website:

‘I can’t tell you exactly the amount of offers I got for this part… You need an enormous amount of experience. It’s not so much the technical side of singing the role, but the challenge of losing yourself in the craziness of this character and pushing yourself to a limit where your voice might be harmed. I waited very long and I finally realized, “If I don’t do it now, when then?”. It has to be done under the best possible circumstances. The Royal Opera House has always been a place where I’ve felt very at home and the acoustic is good – it’s not too big but still has a glory.

‘Otello is the perfect Verdi opera. It starts, the curtain opens and you’re thrown right into it. A lot of actors are very jealous of opera singers in operas like Otello because we have this carpet of emotions. You don’t have to do it from scratch. The audience is already captivated – you just have to go and harvest.’

More here.