The Slovak composer Marian Varga, who made post-modern ‘interpretations’ of works by Haydn, Bartok and Stravinsky in Communist Czechoslovakia, has died at 70.

In a pointed satire at phoney classical reverences, he named his 1969 art-rock band Collegium Musicum. The authorities forced him to disband it.

Later on, he devised a kind of classi-rock.

From my profile of the Berlin Philharmonic’s incoming chief conductor in today’s Spectator:

It’s hard to keep count of the moulds he has broken. He will be Berlin’s first Russian chief, its first beard since Arthur Nikisch (died 1922), its first Jew. At the time of his election he had not worked with the Berlin Philharmonic for more than four years and had no plans to return. Yet the moment the ballot was cast, Berlin players told anyone who would listen that he was exactly what was needed — a breach with the stolid fixities of orchestral music and a leap into the void with a leader of firm principles who might, just might, cleanse the system of its toxic delusions.

Could Kirill Petrenko be the long-awaited saviour of classical music? 

Read on here.

 

A tale of samizdat subversion from the Soviet Union:

From 1946 to 1964 … people in Soviet Russia had been using X-rays as makeshift records to listen to the music they loved. The reason for that was that most of that music was forbidden.

“Stalin didn’t like anything that made people dance,” Coates explains. “The only music that was allowed were classic composers, or simple folk tunes, whose words were all about how great socialism was.”

Any other vinyl recording was prohibited on the grounds that it was bourgeois, western, or otherwise dangerous stuff. Jazz and US-made rock ’n’ roll obviously faced the ban, but so did the work of many popular Russian émigré singers, or Soviet musicians who had fallen out with the regime – such as Vadim Kozin, a popular tenor who was sent to a concentration camp for refusing to sing about Stalin. 

Young Russians immediately set about finding ways to overcome the ban….

Read on here…

We reported this morning on a new fifth trumpet in the Berlin Philharmonic.

But one principal trumpet wants to step back and the section is in the throes of generational change.

Watch Sarah’s hangout with Berlin Philharmonic principal trumpet Tamás Velenczei, at 31:00, for the inside story.

 

A compelling TV interview, nine years old and in English and Russian, reveals the genuine respect and affection between two great singers. Nothing faked for the cameras.

An organic encounter, irresistible.

‘You take after Domingo, don’t you?’ Kaufmann is asked.

‘You mean I learn roles on the plane?’ he replies.

Enjoy.

Vesa Siren reports that she’s singing Kundry (Parsifal) at Turku tomorrow.

To be followed by Begbick (Mahagonny, Ortrud (Lohengrin) and Madame de Croissy (Dialogues des Carmelites).

That’s a helluva lot to learn. Not that any is likely to eclipse memories of her 2004 Salome at the Met.

Warner are releasing a box of concerts from the 2016 Lugano Festival, the final edition of Martha Argerich & Friends before the Swiss ran (they say) out of cash.

We shall not see its like again.

The Guildhall School of Music and Drama has named Matthew Jones as head of chamber music. He has been professor of viola at the school since 2011 and has led the chamber music department de facto for 18 months.

Aside from his music c.v., Matthew is an accredited teacher of Kundalini Yoga and the Alexander Technique.

 

 

In contrast to Jonas Kaufmann’s Otello at Covent Garden, Anna Netrebko has been dipping into the shoe polish in Salzburg’s Aida.

Some pictures are lighter than others but this screen grab seems true to life:

So why are the usual suspects not howling foul? It is because the director is impeccably Iranian? Because the conductor is irreproachably Verdian? Or because Anna Netrebko gave a performance of such conviction that no-one noticed what colour she was?

The death is reported, aged 72, of the popular Soviet-era composer Pavel Slobodkin, founder of the Весёлые Ребята (Jolly Guys) ensemble which sold 15.8 million copies of its 1966 debut album and 179,850,000 records overall.

Moscow’s Pavel Slobodkin Theatre and Concert Centre bears his name and has its own chamber orchestra.

Harassed by the Nazis in Warsaw, Maryla Jonas escaped in 1940 to Rio de Janeiro by pretending to be married to the son of the Brazilian ambassador. Soon after arrival she suffered a nervous breakdown and spent time in a sanatorium. News arrived of the death of her first husband and her brother and she gave up her career.

A post-War visit by Artur Rubinstein persuaded her to return to the stage. On an icy Monday night in February 1946, she faced a near-empty Carnegie Hall and was acclaimed by a junior critic as ‘the finest woman pianist since Teresa Carreno’. Her second recital, a month later, was a sell-out.

Jonas was signed by Columbia Artists, the New York Philharmonic engaged her to open its next season, Columbia gave her a record contract and she married a noted endocrinologist Ernest G. Abraham – all in a matter of weeks.

It was all too much. She began to cancel concerts and the dates dropped off. In January 1951 she fainted on stage at Carnegie Hall midway through Schumann’s Carnaval. Critics began to note memory lapses and she became too anxious to accept further engagements.

Diagnosed with a rare blood condition in 1952, Maryla Jonas died seven years later at the age of 48.

Sony have just remastered her complete piano recordings. The piano sound is constricted and brittle, but the Chopin playing is fresh and powerful, a genuine artist with a voice all her own and a profound introspection. She seems to be playing entirely for herself.