The soprano Genia Kühmeier has pulled out of the Berlin Phil’s season-opening concert tomorrow and its tour to Salzburg, Lucerne and Paris. She’s unwell.

Her last-minute replacement in Haydn’s Creation is the young French soprano Elsa Dreisig.

Rattle conducts.

Reports are appearing of the death of Aloys Kontarsky, surviving half of the celebrated German piano duo. He was 86 and had been struggling in the aftermath of a stroke.

His brother Alphons died in 2010.

The duo recorded extensively for DG and other labels.

 

A chamber music play by Mauricio Kagel with the mime Rolf Scharre and the brothers Alfons and Aloys Kontarsky. Munich. 1964. Photograph by Franz Hubmann/Lebrecht

All the talk yesterday was about the visit of the French President and his intensive talks with three other EU leaders.

Was there a festival going on?

photo: Reuters

UPDATE: The Macrons did manage to attend the Argerich/Barenboim recital in the Grosses Festspielhaus last night.

The orchestra is looking to the future.

Gordon Hunt, the veteran principal oboe and one of the Philharmonia’s defining lights, will share his seat from now on with Tom Blomfield, fresh out of the Royal Academy of Music.

Tom, 22, is from north Wales. He recently guested as principal with the LSO and BBCSO before the Philharmonia moved in with a contract.

Gordon Hunt previously shared his title with Christopher Cowie, who has joined the Royal Opera House orchestra.

 

They are down to the last three in the Clara Haskil Competition:

Aristo Sham, from Hong Kong, a student of French and Economics at Harvard;

Alberto Ferro, runner-up at the Busoni competition; and

Mao Fujita, from Japan.

 

The British conductor who resigned last year from English National Opera has been named principal guest this season with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra.

The Ensemble Modern co-founder Cathy Milliken is named composer in residence, requiring her to deliver three new works.

 

 

Global News has obtained an internal email from Sheraton Cadwell Orchestras, a company ‘specialising in providing professional musicians for the upscale market in and around the Greater Toronto Area.’

Its specifications are anything but upscale.

After noting that ‘although almost all of our vocalists are fit and slim – the way our boutique orchestra would like our front line performing artists to be … two of our featured singers were not’, the email lays down the law:

‘As per our highly selective casting requirements for vocal artists taking on a prominent leading role on stage, only singers who are physically fit and slim (or at the very least, those who know how to dress strategically/suitably in order to not bring attention to their temporary physical/dietary indulgences) would be showcased with our boutique orchestras.’

This is clearly not a company that puts music or ethics anywhere near the top of its priorities.

Full story here.

Sample performance:

UPDATE: Fit and slim company is forced out of business

Some of the most respected musicians in Britain- including the composers Judith Weir, Howard Goodall and James MacMillan have published a letter calling on the National Musicians Church to revoke its decision to close the church to musicians who want to hire it for rehearsal and performance.

They write:

This move was made without consultation and contradicts assurances given when the church was taken over in 2013 by Holy Trinity Brompton. At present, the historic building rings with rehearsals and concerts by the country’s finest ensembles, including the Sixteen. It is deeply regrettable that the current incumbent, the Rev David Ingall, wishes to exclude superb music, even as he asserts that “our ministry as the National Musicians’ Church continues to be a core part of our church’s identity and vision”. We don’t understand how excluding musicians and listeners who regularly visit the church during rehearsals and concerts would further this goal.

This is truly the worst kind of bad faith.

You can sign a petition here.

Nicky Carpenter, board chair of the Minnesota Orchestra from 1990 to 1995, led the orchestra in a period of relative prosperity.

When the board, of which she remained a member, locked out the musicians in 2012, she kept open covert lines of communication with the musicians and was instrumental in achieving a settlement in 2014.

Ms Carpenter has died, aged 82.

Marshall Marcus, chief executive of the European Union Youth Orchestra and a director of Sistema England, has written a piece in the Guardian newspaper calling for the world to support Gustavo Dudamel.

Among other things, he writes:

news piece yesterday in what is probably the world’s most read online music site called for “musicians who believe in justice and human rights … to make their voices heard”. And now is indeed the time. To lose El Sistema would be to lose one of the most precious commodities Venezuela has ever produced.

The slogan of El Sistema is tocar y luchar – “to play and to struggle”. In the US, where Dudamel is music and artistic director of the LA Philharmonic Orchestra, the Take a Stand platform brings together a number of El Sistema-inspired partners. El Sistema has spread around the world and now has hundreds of imitation programmes, thousands of young musicians and millions of supporters and audience members in every continent of the globe. Now that Dudamel has put himself on the line, it is time for all of those people to voice their support.

No one should be deceived about the power of such voices. But as the situation in Venezuela continues to deteriorate, making life for ordinary citizens impossible, it is simply too late to think about whether music and politics should be kept apart. Dudamel may have wanted that, but events have now taken over. And for everyone around the world who cares about Dudamel, his Sistema or the opportunity for young people to develop through music-making, it is now time to “take a stand”.

 

Marshall Marcus has stated that the Guardian article was edited without his consent and furnished with a misleading headline.

The Russian-based Greek conductor has issued a strong statement attacking the Russian justice system for its arrest of the opera director Kirill Serebrennikov. Here is his statement in Russian and English:

 

Любое государство должно стремиться к созданию такой системы управления, где люди доверяют правоохранительным органам, доверяют суду. Но ситуация, свидетелями которой мы стали, создает ровно противоположный эффект.

Что мы видим сейчас? Известные господа открыто присваивают огромные средства и остаются на свободе, более того, пользуются привилегиями и продолжают руководить государственными театрами. А люди, которые занимаются настоящим делом, создают нечто действительно новое в современном искусстве, что получает признание во всем мире, оказываются за решеткой.

Более того, интеллигентного человека, не оказывающего сопротивления, хватают и уводят в тюрьму люди в масках, как преступника. Такое грубое обращение и предвзятое отношение к художнику недопустимо. Это дискредитирует саму систему правосудия в нашей стране. Если так будет продолжаться, режиссеры будут бояться делать свою работу, которая требует свободы высказывания и поиска нового языка. А если государственная система лишится доверия, мы пропали.

Мы солидарны с Кириллом Серебренниковым и поддерживаем его. Под арестом сейчас находится не только крупный российский режиссер, на скамье подсудимых – современное российское искусство.

Теодор Курентзис

 

Every state should aim at creating a system where people trust law enforcement agencies, trust the courts. We are now witnessing the opposite situation. What do we see? Well-known men openly defraud huge sums of money and remain free. Moreover, they are still in charge of state theatres, and enjoy great privileges. At the same time, people who are doing real work, people who create something new in modern art that is recognised all over the world, these people end up in prison.

There is more to it: an intelligent man who does not resist arrest is slammed down by masked men as if he is a criminal. Such harsh and prejudicial treatment of an artist is unacceptable. It diminishes the system of justice in our country. If it continues, directors will be afraid of doing a job which includes freedom of speech and search for a new language. And if there is no trust in the government system, what is left?

We are at one with Kirill Serebrennikov and support him through this. This is not just a famous Russian director who has been imprisoned. The future of Russian contemporary art is at stake.

Teodor Currentzis

Photo by Nina Vorobyeva

From meduza.io:

A Moscow court has placed director Kirill Serebrennikov under house arrest until October 19 on controversial charges of embezzling a large sum of money from the government. Serebrennikov will be forbidden from corresponding or speaking to the outside world, including Internet use, phone calls, and meetings. Serebrennikov cannot leave his home without permission from state investigators, who convinced the judge that he is a flight risk, in light of his property abroad and residency permit in Latvia, though Russian police seized his passport in May. The court refused to release him on a 68-million-ruble ($1.2-million) bail, which Serebrennikov requested and Irina Prokhorova — sister of the famous billionaire — offered to pay. A large crowd of supporters gathered inside and outside the courtroom, protesting Serebrennikov’s arrest.

Stuttgart Opera, where Serebrennikov is due to stage Hansel and Gretel next month, has summoned the rest of his team in an attempt to save the production. Some 14,000 people have signed a petition calling for his release on what many believe to be a purely political prosecution.

UPDATE: Currentzis attacks Russia over Serebrennikov arrest.