From a vivacious 90th birthday interview with the irrepressible interview with Ivry Gitlis, who turns 95 today.

Ivry on the music business: ‘You have people with business sense, who treat their artists like potatoes. It’s terrible, and people go along with it. But I see a new generation of younger people who are beginning to play for themselves. That gives me hope.’

Read Ariane’s full interview here.

 

We’ve reported before that the source of ‘O Canada’ is to be found in Mozart’s Magic Flute.

But it has just leaped out from another place, taking us completely by surprise.

Ivan Ilic’s wonderful Chandos excavation of the forgotten music of Antoine Reicha contains a whole sonata built on a theme that we would now recognise as O Canada.

It’s laconic, witty and ever-so-slightly disrespectful to Mozart.

You really need to hear it.

It’s….

Prague.

According to the 2017 British Post Office Travel Money Cost of Culture Report.

Read full report here.

 

Haaretz has published a summary of a lecture I gave in Jerusalem a couple of months back, assessing the future of arts funding.

Among other points, I urged the Israel Philharmonic and Israel Opera to cut the apron strings of public funding and reclaim their artistic freedom. The arts in Israel are under pressure from the culture minister Miri Regev to show ‘national loyalty’ in exchange for state cash, which many find unacceptable.

The Israeli film industry has boomed by using other resources. The music institutions, however, have been too timid to break free from the nanny state. ‘Government support is choking the Philharmonic,’ I argued. There are plenty of alternative options. With a change of management at both the Philharmonic and the Opera, this is a good time to declare independence.

You can access the Haaretz article here (in  Hebrew).

Hours after the leak of an email calling for ‘only fit and slim’ performers, Toronto’s Sheraton Cadwell Group announced it was shutting down. The company has been organising orchestras for 14 years.

Its cessation letter begins:

Dear Members:

In consideration of recent events in our personal lives, we hope that you would accept our notice of resignation with immediate effect.

With our resignation, our financial funding for the SHERATON CADWELL community service project & music training program will also be terminated forthwith with much regret and, as such, the entire organisation will cease to exist in due course.

We sincerely apologize for any embarrassment/harassment that you may experience from media representatives or other individuals/parties as a result of misconstrued/malicious allegations and extremely negative/destructive/evil intent.

Read full letter here.

 

Antonio Mormone, well-liked president of the Società dei Concerti di Milano, has died at his villa on Lake Como at the age of 87. He had run the society for 35 years.

 

From BBC National Orchestra of Wales:

It’s with tremendous sadness that we share that our much loved colleague and friend Eva Stewart has passed away. Eva joined the Orchestra in 2002 as our Principal Piccolo and constantly amazed us with her wonderful musicianship and dedication. Her skill and sincere musicality were real gifts to be treasured and she will be greatly missed. Our thoughts go out to her partner Bill, and her family and friends.

UPDATE: We understand that Eva died while on holiday in Egypt.

From her bio:

Eva Stewart was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, and grew up in the Midlands…. Graduating from the Guildhall in 1993, she won the Lord Mayor’s Prize and joined the Northern Sinfonia, where for nearly ten years she enjoyed a great variety of music-making, with a particular focus on chamber music. During this time she discovered her love for community music-making, teaching and workshops. This led to the completion of an MA in music education in 2001. The following year she joined the BBC National Orchestra of Wales as principal piccolo. An enthusiastic teacher, she is a professor at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. In addition to orchestral playing, she has collaborated with singers, dancers and storytellers in mixed media and improvised performances.

The French opera world has been shocked by the sudden death of Pierre Vernes, founder of the Paris Competition which has yielded such talents as Julia Lezhneva, Omo Bello and Bogdan Volkov.

He appears to have suffered a heart attack in his sleep.

Nathaniel West has joined the double-bass section. Yu-Ting Chen and Jeoung-Yin Kim (pictured) are new members of the second violins.

All three are Curtis graduates.

After 12 years with Music Productions Ltd, the Singers have signed with Intermusica.

From the press release:

The King’s Singers say:

“We are thrilled to be joining the Intermusica family after a hugely successful relationship with Music Productions, who have guided us for over 12 years with great skill and care. Huge thanks are due to Claire Long and her team for the hard work that has put The King’s Singers in such a strong position going into our 50th Anniversary in 2018. In looking to the future we are excited to be working with an industry-leading team at Intermusica and know that the group is in very safe hands as we begin our second half-century.”

 

The violinist issued a statement today in Russian (loosely translated here), condemning the systemic faults in the arrest and prosecution of the opera director Kirill Serebrennikov:

I am deeply disturbed by the situation that led to the arrest of the original Russian artist Kirill Serebrennikov. The way it was conducted (night raid in a minibus, police in masks) is even more depressing.

Similar pressure is being applied to other suspects, to “ordinary” employees.

It’s easy to talk about this from afar … But it is quite obvious that the circle of people who are entrusted with administering justice is completely devoid of the notion of human norms. Judges per se are violators of the code of respect for rights, as well as being blind to the world of art.

Is this justice?

The trampling of elementary human rights has been and continues to be a sad tradition of Russian society… A creative person once again has been deprived of the right t work. Remember the recent premiere cancellation of the ballet Nureyev at the Bolshoi Theater, and the stopping of a film about Victor Tsoi in St Petersburg…

The very title of the artist suggests a certain morality, and I’m sure that Kirill Serebrennikov is its avatar.

The outstanding and extremely busy tenor Gregory Kunde, 63, is taking time out next season to conduct Rossini’s Barber of Seville in Venice.

He has previously conducted Donizetti at Bergamo.