A decade ago when she burst onto the scene, Yuja Wang was playing tough stuff that was not calculated to please an audience.

Now she has found an audience by other means, she’s going back to the tough stuff.

Look at this upcoming LA concert: Prokofiev and Scriabin sonatas, mingled with a little light Rachmaninov and Ligeti.

Natalia Popovich was chosen in 1981 by Yury Temirkanov to head the chorus of the Kirov (now Mariinsky) Theatre in what was then Leningrad.

After seven years she moved to Moscow, first as chorus chief at the Stanislavsky Theatre, then at the Novaya Opera.

Natalia died at the weekend, aged 73.

A company called Band Management Universal has apparently shut down after a deluge of complaints.

The company is said to have charged musicians for services it never delivered and to have engaged in abuse campaigns against those who complained.

The MU’s Horace Trubridge calls it the worst scam he has seen in 20 years.

Singer Sarah Kaloczi has posted:

PLEASE SHARE THIS – IT’S IMPERATIVE FOR US TO CATCH MATTHIAS

Do YOU recognise this man’s voice? If so get in touch. It’s the voice of Matthias of BMU, the man responsible for heading up the BMU management scam that has seen hundreds of musicians, scammed out of thousands, followed by a vicious hate campaign against any of us that dared to stand up to him. Help us catch him, so justice can finally be served for those of us that fell victim to him.

For more information on the BBC story: bbc.in/2GgYhnR

From the Lebrecht Album of the Week:

I’m just about old enough to remember a time when piano duos were a thing — pairs who travelled the world playing nothing but four hand. I even had an adventurous young friend who made it her business to sleep with both members of a duo, just to see if it disrupted them.

Whatever happened to the piano duo?….

Read on here.

And here.

unrelated image

John Hsu, cello in the Amadé Trio, taught both cello and viola da gamba at Cornell University, wrote a definitive handbook of French Baroque Viol technique and edited the works of Marin Marais.

He loved Haydn above all composers.

His trio partners were Malcolm Bilson and Sonya Monosoff.

He taught a full alf-century at Cornell.

Utah State has received complaints of mistreatment of female piano students.

Read here.

The international tenor Michel Sénéchal died yesterday.

Outside of Paris and Brussels, he appeared at the Salzburg and Glyndebourne festivals and at many major opera houses.

Renée Fleming counts him among her influences.

Last week George Henry Jackson, assistant conductor at Opera North, got an early morning call from the London Symphony Orchestra asking if he was free to stand in on a new-music rehearsal until the travel-delayed French conductor turned up.

That went well.

So now he has been asked to stand in for Daniel Harding this week at the Orchestre de Paris.

We have been informed of the death of Livia Gollancz, wartime horn player in the Halle and the LSO and later a brilliantly inventive heir to her father’s publishing firm.

She had a wonderfully fulfilling life.

photo (c) Anne-Katrin Purkiss/Lebrecht Music&Arts

A NY Times reporter finds a prodigy dropout in a boatyard in the Bronx.

In the 1960s Mr Chandler was one of the most promising classical violin prodigies in New York…

Read his story here.

Michael Tree died last night at his home in New York at the age of 84.

Son of the noted violin pedagogue Samuel Applebaum, Michael studied Efrem Zimbalist and appeared as soloist with many orchestras and on numerous recordings.

He was co-founder of the Guarneri Quartet, with Arnold Steinhart, John Dally and David Soyer. They played together for 45 years and were America’s most recorded and widely toured string quartet.

Michael was mentor to dozens, perhaps hundreds, of viola players.

May he rest in peace.

This is the KWA design for the new Beethoven hall in Bonn.