Like the Nobel decision to give the literature prize to Bob Dylan, the Pulitzer Prize music award to an album by hip-hop performer Kendrick Lamar is an almighty kick in the teeth of contemporary composition, whether fiction or orchestral music.

It is the first time the Pulitzer has gone to a work that is neither classical nor jazz and the Pulitzer administrator Dana Canedy said afterwards, ‘We are very proud of this selection.’

She added: ‘I think this is a huge moment for the music industry and the Pulitzer Prize.’

Two classical works were shortlisted in he final selection- Quartet by Michael Gilbertson and Sound from the Bench, by Ted Hearne. Any half-awake critic could have named a dozen recent classical works by US composers that warrant serious consideration, but the jury were clearly onto something else.

The people who made this decision were:

 

– Regina Carter, jazz violinist, Maywood, NJ (Chair, pictured)
– Paul Cremo, dramaturg/director of opera commissioning program, The Metropolitan Opera
– Farah Jasmine Griffin, William B. Ransford Professor of English and Comparative Literature and African-American Studies, Columbia University
– David Hajdu, music critic, The Nation and professor of journalism, Columbia University
– David Lang, composer, New York City (Pulitzer Prize Winner)

Perhaps they would care to elucidate their criteria?

Does anyone still read CD booklets?

I made the mistake of opening the small print that comes with Andris Nelsons’s DG Bruckner 7th from Leipzig and found this:

OK, so the conductor’s having a cuddle with the composer in the mortuary.

The picture is from a photoshoot by Marco Borggreve, not a passing paparazzo.

Whose idea was it?

And can anyone supply a printable caption?

Kirill Serebrennikov was unavailable to accept his 2018 Golden Mask award in Moscow last night as best director. He has been under house arrest for much of the past year, awaiting possible trial on what appear to be political charges.

The award was a sign of a sturdy independence still throbbing through Russian theatre. Long may it last.

Other winners included the conductors Teodor Currentzis and Oliver Dohnanyi.

‘We all believe that this injustice will be corrected and they will be with us here, free. Let’s wish them to get their freedom soon,’ said Alexei Bartoshevich, chairperson of the Golden Mask, referring not just to Serebrennikov, but his colleagues, who face the same charges: Alexei Malobrodsky, Yury Itin and Sophia Appelbaum. These names were mentioned by almost every presenter on stage. 

More here.

 

You may be surprised.

The Notos Quartet, winners of a 2017 ECHO award, have sent it back after the 2018 prize was given to a pair of rappers making an Auschwitz joke.

The Notos said today:

‘Until recently, the ECHO was in our eyes the biggest music prize in Germany. But the fact is, this prize now tolerates racism and gves it a public platform. We are deeply shocked by … the mockery of victims of the holocaust

‘Therefore we wish to distance ourselves from the award and give our ECHO back.

Notos Quartet’

Kurt Voormann, who received a lifetime achievement award, has also sent it back.

The organisers of the award appear to be running well behind the general outrage.

UPDATE: Igor Levit returns his award.

UPDATE: Fabio Luisi: ‘They mock the suffering of millions’.

The Italian violinist and director Fabio Biondi has resigned as joint music director at the Palau de les Arts in Valencia after musicians called a no-confidence vote in him, and in his co-director Roberto Abbado.

The maestros they would prefer to have are Gustavo Gimeno and Henrik Nánási, not that they are necessarily available.

The Italian intendant Davide Livermore, who appointed Biondi and Abbado, resigned last December.

Valencia is in trouble once again.

The London Symphony Orchestra has appointed Steve Doman and Carol Ella as its newest section members, starting this morning.

Jonathan Welch has retired after 33 years.

More here.

The British German Philharmonic Orchestra, launched with an oompah in January, has collapsed without playing a single concert.

Apparently they could not find enough players in Germany who were willing to play in a British band.

Ah well, stiff upper lip and all that.

In 1963, a promising English pianist called Norma Fisher came joint first in the Harriet Cohen International Music Awards with a Russian,  Vladimir Ashkenazy.

He went on to make more records than any pianist of his time.

She never cut an album.

Why not?

‘I developed a focal dystonia,’ says Norma, who became a distinguished teacher.

Now her live BBC performances are finally being released on record.

Read press release below.

From her triumph in the 1963 Harriet Cohen International Music Awards, when she jointly won first prize alongside Vladimir Ashkenazy, it seemed clear that the English pianist Norma Fisher would have a long career at the highest level. And performances at the highest level did indeed follow, with a Proms debut that same year and many and regular appearances with the London Symphony OrchestraPhilharmoniaRoyal PhilharmonicBBC Symphony OrchestraCBSO and the like. She quickly became beloved of audiences, with piano fans hailing her as one of the finest pianists the country had ever produced. Yet to the surprise of many, in the late 1990’s and at the height of her art, she abruptly ceased playing. A second career blossomed as she became one of the most sought-after and admired piano teachers. Her many fans will be thrilled therefore by news of the new archive recording by Sonetto Classics – incredibly, her first-ever commercial release – “Norma Fisher At The BBC, Vol. 1”.

And even as she welcomes this release, Norma Fisher reveals the reason she had to cease playing. “I developed a focal dystonia,” she says, “a highly-debilitating neurological condition that affected my right hand, causing the muscles to seize up without warning. Public performances became unbearably nerve-wracking, knowing that at any moment my hand could just stop working. It never actually happened mid-way through a concert, but I didn’t want to inflict that on myself or an audience and it seemed only a matter of time before it could actually do so.” So she reinvented herself, the great pianist becoming a great teacher, now a professor of piano at the Royal College of Music in London, a Fellow of the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, and Artistic Director of London Master Classes.

The Sonetto Classics release, the first in a projected series, features some of her very finest broadcast performances from the archives of the BBC – including, from 1972, Brahms’s Variations on an Original Theme and Variations on a Hungarian Song (Opus 21, Nos. 1 and 2); from 1979, Scriabin’s Piano Sonata No. 1 and Scriabin’s Etudes Nos. 1, 4, 5 and 8(Opus 42). The recordings were lovingly remastered by Sonetto Classics’s producer and CEO Tomoyuki Sawado, and engineer Andrew J.Holdsworth.

“I am beyond thrilled with the selection,” says Fisher, ” Brahms was always my first love; the size and depth of sound demanded totally suited my physical approach, while his emotional demands came naturally to me. I played the Brahms 2nd and 3rd sonatas throughout my career, as well as the Brahms-Handel and Schumann Variations – but I ‘lost my heart’ to these Variations Op 21 and am so thrilled to have these recordings to treasure! The 2nd Concerto was one of the last things I played in public, at the Barbican.

“And these Scriabin works I learnt at the BBC’s request, never having played him before, when I was invited to contribute, in 1972, to their series marking the 100th anniversary of his birth. I discovered a natural and glorious affinity with Scriabin’s spirit and sound-world!”

 

Last night at La Scala, Fabio Luisi conducted David Pountney’s new production of Zandonai’s Francesca da Rimini.

From 1914 to 1959, the melodrama was a mainstay of La Scala seasons.

Last night, I found no more than a couple of people in the house who had ever seen it live. Among the cast, only the tenor had ever sung it before.

I shall write more of the experience in due course.

 

The pre-concert and tour lecturer Roderick Swanston died last Thursday.

A benign character, Roddy was never at a loss for an illuminating word.

Four Koreans based in Germany last night took top prize in the Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition.

The Esmé Quartet won £10,000 plus an extensive UK tour and residencies at Banff, Canada, and Avaloch Farm Music Institute, USA.