The violinist Olga Guy invites us all to a recital in Brussels on December 20.
Rear view.
The culture-friendly Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, has sent a strong signal to the RTE to forget plans about merging two orchestras.
‘I certainly would share your concerns about any diminution of the RTÉ orchestra or any other orchestras,’ he told a Labour TD.
Varadkar has pledged to double Ireland’s arts spending over seven years.
We might all have to move to Ireland after Brexit.
The vocalist Jon Hendricks has died at 96 and the great Columbia Records producer George Avakian at 98.
Tributes at Jazz Times.
photo: John Ross/Masterworks
The Latvian-born conductor has been named the 104th recipient of the Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medal.
He will receive the medal at a London concert tomorrow night.
What took them so long?
The Russian baritone, who died today aged 55, will be flown to Moscow for a lying in state at Tchaikovsky Hall, followed by burial at the prestigious Novodevichy cemetery.
The funeral is likely to take place on Monday, Tass reports.
Peter McCarthy, professor of music at the University of Delaware, who conducted conducted Bruckner’s E Minor Mass at the Salzburg Festival in 1988 and Beethoven’s 9th at Carnegie Hall in May 1996, has died at the age of 79.
Obituary here.
Bob Keefer in Eugene, Oregon, has some new leads on the firing of Matthew Halls as artistic director of the Oregon Bach Festival, apparently on anonymous and trumped up charges.
The executive who sacked him acted in exactly the same way a year before with the OBF’s artist liaison manager, Linda Ackerman. The evidence, then as now, was flimsy or rigged.
The person behind both dismissals is Janelle McCoy, OBF Executive Director since January 2016.
She seems nice.
Read Bob’s exposé here.
It’s a chiller.
The adventurous William Harvey of Indianapolis has won the concertmaster audition at the National Symphony Orchestra (Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional, OSN) in Mexico City.
Juilliard trained, he has worked with young musicians in Afghanistan and served as concertmaster at two Mexican colleges.
He will serve a probationary period until next July before the position is confirmed.
The Kremlin has issued this statement:
The president extends his deepest condolences to the relatives and friends and all admirers of talent of Dmitri Hvorostovsky, who passed away today.
‘In general, we believe he is the heritage of both our domestic culture and global culture. This is a very grievous loss.’
Two months ago, Putin awarded the baritone an elevated state honour.
A new initiative is afoot to give the Catalan capital a musical identity.
From the press release:
Barcelona Obertura is a joint initiative of the main musical institutions of Barcelona – the Liceu Opera, the Palau de la Música Catalana and L’Auditori – to promote the world-class musical offering in the city.
The initiative aims to put Barcelona’s rich variety of music on the world map and has been created in order to attract music lovers from all around the world to come and enjoy the most exclusive range of music in the superb setting of the city. They want Barcelona, which is already internationally renowned above all for its cuisine, architecture, football and climate, to also be recognised for its classical music agenda and the uniqueness of its musical venues.
The violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter has been awarded the Culture Prize of the Bavarian State Foundation.
The 30,000 Euros will go to her own charitable foundation.
The eminent German pianist and conductor Justus Frantz has let it be known that he chopped off a fingertip with a bread knife on Monday.
Surgeons have managed to reattach the fingertip but Justus has been told he has no more than a 50-50 chance of playing again.
