The Italian mezzo Cecilia Bartoli is the first woman to be allowed to perform or record with the men and boys’ choir of the Sistine Chapel.

The record is out this week.

 

Can anyone see a woman on the cover?

Oh, no, she’s just on the video.

The shocking news from Klin, where Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky lived, is that the authorities have removed his statue from the central square and banished it to the outskirts of the town.

The town said it wanted a different monument for its 700th anniversary.

The conductor Vladimir Fedoseev says, ‘I can not believe that this is happening today in Klin, which I love so much, in Klin… For the whole world, Klin is inextricably linked with the name of Tchaikovsky.’

More here.

A poignant moment for the Czech-born composer, Alexander Goldscheider. Read through to the end for the triple-whammy:

 

Today brought me so much joy and happiness that it is hard to contain it in words.

Our grandson Ben Goldscheider played in a very special charity concert with the unique West-Eastern Divan Orchestra conducted by Daniel Barenboim to commemorate Jacqueline du Pré (Barenboim’s music partner and wife) and to raise money to STOP MS (Multiple Sclerosis).

Three key moments combined for me, one of which I never witnessed in my entire life. Ben played, and gorgeously so, a wonderful long horn solo in the Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony, and Daniel Barenboim, having singled out Ben in a standing ovation that followed, turned after a while to the Royal Festival Hall, silenced it completely, pointed to Ben and proudly announced: “He is British!”

To all the patriotic remark was in relation to the fact, that the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra is a brilliant youth orchestra consisting primarily of musicians from the Middle East, Israelis, Palestinians and Arabs, and Ben, albeit with Central European Jewish background, is not a typical member.

To me, who came to the UK as a political refugee in 1981, it means so much more: when you are 31 and leave everything behind, you think of the future for your children and their children more than of your own. Becoming British ten years later is a huge privilege, but again it is your children and their children who are truly British. And when one the world’s best ever musicians, a true genius, shows your grandson to thousands in a phenomenal concert and shouts “He is British,” it is a circle that is so wonderfully, unbelievably completed!!!

The whole concert was poignant to me as I have lived with MS for 22 years myself, so far very merciful, but to see my grandson playing a part in a fight against it was unforgettable.

The Echo awards were held last night for the first time at Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie, while parts of the city were under floodwater.

All the usual suspects went up to receive awards: Joyce, Jonas, Johannes Moser… anyone beginning with J.

Kent Nagano was named conductor of the year.

photo: Echo/Axel Heimken

More pics here.

 

A message from Anton Sorokow, 1st concertmaster at the Vienna Symphony Orchestra:

Today I missed my connecting flight from Milano to Bari with easyJet because they didn’t allow me to take my instrument on board.

Although, I traveled with a special Trinity Traveling-Violincase, which fits perfectly with all dimensions, the easyJet personnel at the boarding counter tried to force me to give up my Guarneri del Gesù violin to the baggage section of the airplane, which I, of course, refused.

I will stay over the night in Milano and fly tomorrow morning back to Vienna because there are no other airline connections to Bari from here. It is completely disastrous situation, which unfortunately, nowadays, can happen to every violinist…

The consequences: 30 students at the Conservatorio de Bari were deprived of an important masterclass because one half-trained clerk at easyJet could not read the rules.

EasyJet must be aware that there is a European convention which obliges them to fly small instruments, like a violin, in the cabin. Someone needs to run a test case against these companies to see how high a fine the courts and the aviation authorities will impose against airlines that flagrantly break the rules on musical instruments. Is there a good lawyer in Milano or Vienna who is prepared to take this up?

Most orchestral players complain about the difficulty of maintaining a balanced regular diet, especially when they are on the road.

No so in the Andre Rieu orchestra. From a Forbes interview:

You asked how a day looks like. So, we travel with nine big trucks. We play back-to-back, so the trucks arrive at 7:00 in the morning at the venue and they start to build. We are still in the other city where we played the day before in the hotel, then we leave by bus. We arrive at the venue, then everybody has something to eat or plays their instrument, and then we have a soundcheck. Every day I do a soundcheck because we have to adapt the sound to all the halls.

Then we have a meal together with our own cooks who travel with us because we want to be healthy, of course, and then I go to sleep two hours before the concert so I’ll be fresh onstage. Then we have a concert for three hours, and after the concert, we have an after snack because I told you I was in a classical orchestra where all the musicians after a beautiful symphony of Beethoven, the last note, the last applause, and then they all ran home. I love my wife, but when we play together a beautiful concert, I cannot go to sleep. I have to speak with my people and drink a glass of wine, so that’s what a day looks like.

Maybe that’s what keeps them smiling.

Rowland Winslow Floyd, founding oboist of the National Arts Centre Orchestra of Canada, died on October 13 at the age of 80, following a stroke.

He was one of the last living students of Marcel Tabuteau, principal oboist of the Philadelphia Orchestra, 1915 to 1954, and acknowledged founder of the American school of oboe playing.

Rowland studied first with Laila Storch, principal of the Houston Symphony and a former Tabuteau student and then with another Tabuteau alumnus, Marc Lifschey, before travelling to France to work with the master himself. Tabuteau died in 1966 while Rowland was still working with him.

Back in North America, Rowland played in San Francisco and Philaddlphia before joining the NAC in Ottawa on its foundation. He played there for 25 years under music directors Mario Bernardi, Ganriel Chmura, Trevor Pinnock and Pinchas Zukerman.

 

A celebration of his life will take place in Ottawa at a later date. The family respectfully requests that in lieu of gifts or flowers, please use the money you would have spent to treat yourself to something beautiful, spontaneous, maybe even a little extravagant – and do it in his honour.

We have been informed of the death of Peter Hall, a tenor active on the early music scene who made at least eight commercial recordings. He had been in poor health for several years.

Peter’s funeral will be on Friday, November 10th at 3.30 at Amersham (Chilterns) Crematorium, which is on the A404 just outside Amersham towards High Wycombe.

Donations, please, to Cancer Research.

 

 

 

It appears that Laurence Marchand quit at the end of July (without telling Slipped Disc). The former head of operations at Paris’s Châtelet left Verbier without explanation or the usual expressions of mutual esteem.

Her successor is insider Câline Herzog Yamakawa, who has worked at Verbier since 2006.

The festival will mark its 25th anniversary next summer.

Elijah Ho has written a fine profile of the pianist Daniil Trifonov, underpinned by admonitions from his teacher Sergei Babayan that he gives too much of himself, on stage and off.

“I do worry for a burnout,” says Babayan. “When he plays, he gives so much of himself. Sometimes I’m scared he’s burning that candle too intensely.”…

“As long as he takes care of himself — along with his incredible, beautiful soon-to-be wife, whom I adore — to not burn as crazily as he does, that would be my wish for him. ‘Proud’ is not the right word for how I feel about Daniil: I am simply privileged, grateful to have this diamond, this beautiful creature who can feel music this way, in my life.”

Read the full article here.

 

We have been notified of the death of the distinguished Alsatian composer, Jean-Jacques Werner.

 

 

Obituary note for Jean-Jacques Werner 1935-2017

By Pierrette Germain

English translation and adaptation: Christian Lesur

Jean-Jacques Werner passed away on Sunday 22 October in Barr where he had lived for several years. A French composer and conductor, he had returned to his native Alsace, to concentrate on composing after a very active conductor’s career, in Paris for the Radio France and other orchestras including the European Youth Orchestra and the Leon Barzin Orchestra which he founded in 1994, as well as in the USA, China, South Korea and several European Countries. He was particularly noted for his dedication to contemporary musical creation and the large number of such works he first performed.

Born in Strasburg in 1935, he had from childhood developed a strong relationship to the Rhine, the odoriferous Vosges forests, and the chimes of bells, the imprint of which may often be spotted in his works. Plentiful and diversified his production has concentrated on the orchestra, with special emphasis on chamber music and his more familiar instruments including the harp which he had practiced and violin, an instrument which his late wife Annie Jodry had so marvelously illustrated. He had received awards from SACEM and Institut de France. His last work, an opera, Luther ou le mendiant de la grâce (Luther or the beggar for grace), commissioned and composed on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, had just been performed for the first time to much acclaim days before his death.

The entire music faculty at Fiorello LaGuardia HS – best known as the setting for the movie Fame – have demanded a showdown with the principal over cutbacks in music teaching.

It’s happening everywhere.

Report here.