The Berlin Staatsoper chief is now the fourth conductor – after Luisi, Jansons and Thielemann – to return his ECHO award in protest at this year’s choice of an Auschwitz-joke rapper duo.
Barenboim said:
Als Jude, der seit vielen Jahren gerne in Deutschland lebt und Freiheit in der Kunst als ein hohes Gut ansieht, hat mich die Debatte besonders beschäftigt und ich habe auch abgewartet, ob seitens der Verantwortlichen eine adäquate Reaktion hierauf erfolgen wird. Meinungsfreiheit und Freiheit in der Kunst gehörten zu den wichtigsten Errungenschaften und Werten einer demokratischen Gesellschaft. Mit jeder Freiheit kommt aber auch eine Verantwortung: unsere Verantwortung, die errungenen Freiheiten so zu nutzen, dass auch die Freiheit eines jeden anderen Menschen und Andersdenkenden bestehen kann – ebenso wie die Verantwortung, andere Menschen in ihrer Würde zu achten und zu respektieren. Diese Überzeugung ist seit vielen Jahren Kern meines Denkens als Mensch und meiner Arbeit als Künstler. Antisemitismus, Frauenfeindlichkeit, Homophobie und die offene Verachtung von vermeintlich Schwächeren und Minderheiten sind ein Missbrauch von Freiheit, den wir als Gesellschaft niemals tolerieren dürfen. Wir müssen uns geschlossen gegen solche Stimmen erheben und dürfen sie nicht auch noch dadurch bestärken, dass wir sie mit Preisen auszeichnen und dadurch legitimieren.
‘As a Jew who has enjoyed living in Germany for many years and values freedom of the arts, the debate has particularly occupied my mind and I waited to see whether responsible persons would react adequately. Freedom of expression and art are among the most important achievements and values of a democratic society, but with each freedom comes a responsibility: our responsibility to use the freedoms that have been gained so that the freedom of every other human being is respected. This conviction has long been at the heart of my thinking as a human being and of my work as an artist: anti-Semitism, misogyny, homophobia, and the open contempt of allegedly weaker and more discriminating minorities are an abuse of freedom that we as a society can never tolerate, and we must stand united against such voices and not encourage them by giving them prizes and legitimising them.’
The Maltese tenor faced a demonstration in London this weekend when he turned out to sing at a company which is involved in the island’s political controversies. The unsolved murder of a campaigning journalist has greatly heated the atmosphere.
Dough Sheldon (l.) becomes chairman of the tilting agency, it was announced this morning.
Press release:
April 23, 2018 – Columbia Artists, the legendary performing arts firm founded in 1930, today announced additional details of its new corporate strategy which began with a rebranding in September 2017. Reflecting today’s ever-changing performing arts landscape, the firm has formed a new internal structure that will lead to expanded strategies and broadened collaboration for global artist management, performing arts attractions, touring and event production, and staged and semi-staged theatrical productions.
Four key business groups will now form the core of Columbia Artists, a substantial departure from the firm’s historic structure of manager-led, multi-disciplinary “divisions,” which internally competed for artists, projects and bookings.
The business group designations are being announced along with new executive and staff appointments:
Classical Music
Well-established as the world leader in the management of leading classical music talent, Columbia Artists continues its commitment to the classical music business. Newly-elected Columbia Artists Board Chairman and veteran artist manager with the firm for more than five decades, R. Douglas Sheldon, together with Senior Vice President, Stefana Atlas, lead the Classical Music group of artist managers and associates who focus on the career management of classical musicians, conductors and music directors, international touring orchestras and development projects throughout the global classical music market.
The Classical Music group is expanding with the recent addition of artist manager and booking representative, Martin Wittenberg, and promotion ofKatherine Smith, associate manager. This group has long been associated with the touring of leading orchestras such as the New York Philharmonic and London Symphony Orchestra, and the careers of international classical music superstars such as Anne-Sophie Mutter, Denis Matsuev and Valery Gergiev. The growing roster of established and emerging talent include recent additions of Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, the new Music Director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, and Jaap van Zweden, Music Director Designate of the New York Philharmonic.
Performing Arts Touring and Events
Columbia Artists is well-known for the creation, production and representation of touring performing arts attractions and projects. Under the direction of Columbia Artists President and CEO, Tim Fox, together with Senior Vice President and COO, Alison Williams and Vice President, Emily Yoon, thePerforming Arts Touring and Events group’s efforts have been broadened to include dozens of major American touring projects across all performing arts and entertainment disciplines and genres. This group of artist managers and producers is also active in the development of new programs for symphony orchestras that feature popular music in symphonic performance, including collaboration with performers from rock and pop music, Broadway and Hollywood, along with the development and management of an elite roster of conductors and music directors who specialize in popular and non-traditional symphonic repertoire, including Rob Fisher, Sarah Hicks, Keith Lockhart, John Mauceri and Ted Sperling.
In further exploration and development of fresh concert hall programming, the Performing Arts Touring and Events group established an international license agreement with Disney Music Group that has helped Columbia Artists lead the world-wide expansion of symphonic live-to-screen symphonic concert events, which includes a growing roster of beloved Disney feature films and animated classics. The team continues to successfully produce unique large-scale live events with Hollywood titles featuring live music and star-studded live performances in iconic music venues around the world including the Hollywood Bowl, Lincoln Center, Royal Albert Hall and Tokyo Forum.
Opera Vocal
Reinforcing its leadership as managers of the careers of the opera world’s most distinguished performers, the Columbia Artists Opera Vocal group is led by three veteran managers and Vice Presidents: Michael Benchetrit, Damon Bristo and William Guerri. To further enable the dynamic collaboration of this group in the international opera market, Francesca Condeluci and Nathan Wentworth have been promtoed to associate managers, providing greater support to the entire vocal roster. Highly regarded vocal manager and Columbia Artists veteran, Elizabeth Crittenden, continues to provide valuable artist management and support as artistic advisor and consultant to the Opera Vocal group.
Theatricals
As the North American market for touring theatrical productions continues to evolve into three separate and distinct tiers, Columbia Artists Theatricalsgroup continues to acquire, manage and distribute properties capable of moving among the week-long, split-week and one-nighter markets. Under the long-time direction of its President, Gary McAvay, Columbia Artists Theatricals has diversified its roster to include the iconic Broadway and Off-Broadway productions of CHICAGO and STOMP, as well as Theatrical Concerts, Tribute Shows, Variety, Cabaret and International Attractions. Columbia Artists Theatricals works closely with an impressive range of artists, producers, managers, agents, venues and presenters to deliver hundreds of performances each year on subscription and box office driven specials with track records for return engagements which are singular and unprecedented.
Looking Forward
This new internal structure merges the iconic firm’s founding principles of creativity, innovation, integrity, and passion for excellence with its new team-oriented and collaboration-first business practices. This guiding philosophy empowers Columbia Artists’s managers, producers, and agents to continue to shape individual artist careers and develop national and international touring and live performance strategies, and further the organization as a global leader in arts management.
The opening night of a new production of Dvorak’s Rusalka was called off at the interval at Coburg when the Bulgarian tenor, Milen Bozhkov, said he could not continue.
Nine finalists have been named in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, a showcase that has launched the likes of Renee Fleming, Thomas Hampson and Frederca von Stade.
This year’s contestants are:
Danielle Beckvermit, Soprano, Eastern Region Ashley Dixon, Mezzo-Soprano, Northwest Region Jessica Faselt, Soprano, Upper Midwest Region Megan Grey, Mezzo-Soprano, Upper Midwest Region Gretchen Krupp, Mezzo-Soprano, Central Region
Madison Leonard, Soprano, Middle Atlantic Region Emily Misch, Soprano, Eastern Region Carlos Santelli, Tenor, Western Region Hongni Wu, Mezzo-Soprano, Eastern Region
First reviews are trickling in. Here they are, more or less in order of online appearance:
This was the role debut Metropolitan Opera audiences have been dreaming of for more than a decade: on Saturday night, in a performance that was sold out months in advance, Anna Netrebko sang her first Tosca. The reigning diva of the opera world finally appeared as the greatest diva written for the stage.
Leading the season’s second cast in the new production by David McVicar that opened on New Year’s Eve, Netrebko gave a sensational performance. As ever, her soprano is dark and powerful, especially in her viscous, smoky middle range. Her top is as focused as it has sounded in years, soaring to majestic heights in “Vissi d’arte”; the passionate lament of Act II was breathtaking for both the passion of its delivery and the precision of its phrasing. The urgent piano singing in her plea after the aria was if anything even more affecting, a dramatic detail that completed the scene…
So … how did the performance stack up against the hype? Pretty well, all things considered. Anna Netrebko is a Superdiva and Tosca is a Superdiva and the singer and the role were well-matched both musically and temperamentally. Netrebko’s voice has grown so much in volume and richness but lost a lot of flexibility. I saw a recent video of her Lady Macbeth in London and while it was exciting she struggled in the passagework of the role. Tosca makes no such demands. It allowed Netrebko to do what she does best, which is flood the auditorium with huge waves of sound. And her instrument is still a miracle. You can quibble with the suspect pitch, mushy diction, weird dipthonged vowels, and occasionally loosened vibrato. But to have a voice that can sing high, sing low, can fill any house with surround sound stereo volume, and with a gorgeous, plush timbre to boot — that’s God’s gift.
Anna Netrebko als Tosca – das ist wie ein Meisterwerk in einem Museum, das jeder sehen will und bei dem sich wohl nur die wenigsten Gedanken über den Kontext oder die Hängung machen.
Aber was macht Netrebko so besonders in gerade dieser Rolle? Sie war ja zuletzt auch als Aida in Salzburg extrem erfolgreich, als Maddalena di Coigny in „Andrea Chénier“ an der Scala oder als Elsa in „ Lohengrin“ in Dresden, als Lady Macbeth in München oder als Leonora im „Trovatore“, an vielen Häusern und auch in Wien. Die Antwort lautet: Sie singt die Tosca exakt zum richtigen Zeitpunkt. Viele wagen sich zu früh an diese Rolle und müssen sich in einem Gewaltakt bis zum Finale, zum Sturz von der Engelsburg, retten. Andere singen die Tosca noch zu spät, zu dramatisch, mit scheppernder Stimme. Netrebko, schon bei ihrem Erscheinen auf der Bühne mit Auftrittsapplaus bedacht, nimmt sich der großen Puccini-Diva am Zenit ihrer Karriere an (wobei Zenit? Wer weiß, was bei ihr noch kommt).
Feminine and vulnerable yet mercurial and implacable, Netrebko’s Floria Saturday night was already an astonishingly complete realization of a quintessential diva role she initially swore she would never do and since has suggested she doesn’t particularly like. I don’t much care for Tosca either, but Netrebko’s been absent from the Met for a year so I along with an eager, jam-packed house welcomed her back with open arms and hearty bravas.
Ms. Netrebko knew what she was doing. She was a magnificent Tosca. From her first entrance, Ms. Netrebko, one of the opera world’s genuine prima donnas, seemed every bit Puccini’s volatile heroine, an acclaimed diva in the Rome of 1800, seized in the moment with jealous suspicions over her lover, the painter Mario Cavaradossi. As she hurled accusations at Mario — Why was the church door locked? Who were you whispering with? I heard a woman’s rustling skirt! — it took a couple of minutes for Ms. Netrebko’s voice to warm up fully. By the time Tosca, having pushed doubts aside, beguiles Mario into a rendezvous at his villa that night, Ms. Netrebko’s singing was plush, radiant and suffused with romantic yearning.
We understand that a member of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra has been sacked from his lecturer’s post at the University of Music and Performing Arts and suspended from playing in the orchestra. The man is not being named while investigations continue.
The Vienna State Opera and the Vienna Philharmonic tonight issued the following statement:
The University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna informed us about their immediate dismissal of a lecturer, a member of Vienna State Opera Orchestra and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. We immediately started looking into the case and collecting any information in relation to this message, which we received with great surprise and regret. Until the facts have been clarified, the management of the Wiener Staatsoper has consensually released the musician from his duties for the time being. The Vienna Philharmonic is sharing this measure.
COMMENTS: Please do not mention the name of any player in the Vienna Philharmonic.
Wigmore Hall Director John Gilhooly has invited Holocaust survivor and cellist Anita Lasker-Wallfisch to speak at a specially-programmed concert at Wigmore Hall following her recent address to the Bundestag in Berlin.
For this extraordinary event, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch – a survivor of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen – will describe her life story and the importance of learning from one of history’s darkest chapters. She is joined on stage by her son, the acclaimed cellist Raphael Wallfisch and the pianist John York for music by Bloch, Ravel and Korngold.
The event will be filmed and live-streamed via Wigmore Hall’s website.
Gilhooly felt compelled to bring Anita Lasker-Wallfisch’s message to London saying:
“After I saw Anita Lasker-Wallfisch’s address to the Bundestag, I felt it had to be heard in London, so I invited her to give the address in English at Wigmore Hall. As a non-Jewish leader working in the arts, I feel it’s necessary to give a public platform wherever possible to highlight the dangers of anti-Semitism, and I am puzzled as to why other non-Jewish voices have yet to speak out. After all, the Jewish diaspora has done so much for this country, in the arts, sciences, politics, medicine and not least philanthropy. Anita’s words are so important to hear, as history has shown, time and again, that where anti-Semitism, racism and extreme views are on the rise, dark times are usually never far behind. Combined with powerful and appropriate music, this very special event is presented as a timely lesson for all generations and creeds.”
In her address to the Bundestag, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch said:
“Anti-Semitism is a virus which is two thousand years old and apparently incurable […] No other genocide is as comprehensively documented as the Holocaust. And yet there are still the deniers, people who claim that all the accounts are fabricated and that the Holocaust never happened […] There are no excuses and no explanations for what happened all those years ago. All that remains is hope: the hope that ultimately, one day, reason will prevail.”
This third instalment of the Fortnightly Music Book Club revolves around chapters 6 through 11 of The Savior, a novel written by Eugene Drucker, a founding member of the celebrated Emerson String Quartet. The book is a dark, often surreal novel centered around a young German violinist, Gottfried Keller, in the waning days of World War II. Many readers responded with questions, and Mr. Drucker will answer below. Please continue to submit questions via email to: Fortnightlymusicbookclub@gmail.com. If you have interest in forming a brick-and-morter Fortnightly in your town, please write so we can find ways to connect.Keller, our violinist protagonist, is increasingly involved with the concentration camp. These layers of involvement are complex and intertwined – his relationship with the Kommandant, a somewhat sympathetic guard, and the prisoners (his audience). Keller is an unwilling part of the Kommandant’s experiment to see if prisoners’ hope can be revived through music, and as his concerts continue, the audience does begin to change, and Keller along with them.
Eugene Drucker, violinist of the Emerson Quartet, has answered this week’s questions below. We will have one more opportunity to explore The Savior, and if you would like to read ahead, the next selection will be “Gödel Escher Bach” lead by composer Daron Hagen, one month from now. See you in a Fortnight.
Question:
You say your father wrote to the Nazi paper, but the book doesn’t mention Ernst doing that — why?
Answer:
On page 41, Ernst tells Gottfried, “I’m going to write a letter to the editors, pointing out that Brahms dedicated his immortal German concerto to the Jew, Joseph Joachim, who helped him write the violin part.” A large part of the conversation between them from this point on involves Gottfried’s fear of the possible consequences, and his attempt to persuade Ernst not to write the letter. It’s true that I (as author) don’t confirm that Ernst really went ahead and wrote the letter. Actually it was not quite as dangerous in July 1933 to write such a letter as I made it seem, for the purposes of dramatization of the contrast and conflict between the two young men. My father never led me to believe that his writing the letter was an act of extraordinary courage, but it was undoubtedly an act of defiance.
Question:
What conclusion should we draw from the ant experience? (As a boy, Keller kills a handful of ants, and asks his parents why they didn’t hide from him)
Answer:
I believe that every human being has an innate capacity for anger and violence, as well as for good. Upbringing and culture, both within one’s family and in the society at large, contribute to the outcome of the struggle between these conflicting tendencies. Children often behave cruelly toward animals before they learn to empathize with the suffering of other creatures — before they can identify with the subjective experiences of animals and even of other human beings, rather than regarding them simply as objects. The unbidden memory of Keller’s childhood massacre of the ants is the first (largely unconscious) intimation of a link between him and the purpose of this camp.
Question:
In the Author’s Note at the end you say some of the bizarre moments in Keller’s performances for he inmates were based on your experiences playing in hospitals, psych wards, etc. Can you tell me more about your own experiences and whether your music made a positive change in the people you played for?
Answer:
In an alcoholics’ ward I was asked repeatedly to play The Flight of the Bumblebee, which was one of the few violin pieces that the patients were familiar with. When I replied that I couldn’t play anything I hadn’t prepared, this seemed to frustrate my listeners, one of whom turned her back to me and stared at the wall during my whole performance of music by Paganini, Ysaÿe and Bach. In a psychiatric ward, a young woman had fashioned a homemade mask out of some cloth. I was told by an attendant that this seemed to make her feel more secure in her interactions with other patients and staff. In a drug rehabilitation center for young women, I sensed that even without any background in classical music, my listeners were somehow open to the gestures, colors and emotions of the music. I can’t say whether my performances had lasting positive impact, as I didn’t follow up with subsequent visits to any of the six or seven facilities where I played.
Question:
Do you think Bach could have “done better” in depicting Judas’s despair, rather than writing a cheerful tune in G Major? (Pg 95-96)
Answer:
No, I don’t believe that Bach “could have done better.” But having played St. Matthew Passion three times in my mid-20s, and having performed the violin solo in that same aria each time, I often asked myself why Bach chose to represent the episode of Judas and his attempt to return the silver pieces in this particular way. The best answer I could come up with (as a non-musicologist) was what I offered on page 96: “ … he wants us to identify with Peter, but not with Judas. The aria isn’t sung from his point of view: we see him from the outside, so all we hear is the clink of coins.”
Question: Have you had deep musical experiences off the concert stage? (Page 117)
Answer:
As a listener, I have sometimes been very moved by all sorts of music, both in concerts and when listening to recordings in my own home: Lieder, opera, symphonic works and chamber music. The performances would have had to be great, and I would have had to be in a receptive mood. The criteria that allow for a peak experience don’t always line up perfectly, but one tries as both performer and listener to achieve this heightened state from time to time. Sometimes in my car, during a long solitary drive, I’ve also felt the type of exaltation I’m describing (though never in heavy traffic!). Tears have come to my eyes — fortunately not to the extent where they dangerously blurred my vision — and chills have run up and down my spine. Beethoven, Brahms and Mahler symphonies particularly have had this sort of effect on me while I’m driving. And at those times I’ve felt profoundly grateful that such music exists, and that I’ve been privileged to learn about it and to be able to respond to it like that.
Thank you for joining us, and see you in a Fortnight.
Thomas Sleper retired this week after 25 years at the head of the Frost Symphony Orchestra at the University of Miami.
He made it a rare bastion of American and English 20th century music.
How many times have I told you not to buy a record for its cover? Well, this one justifies the purchase. The image shows the central square of a small town in Poland in the 1960s, a place where nothing ever happens yet everything is closely watched. The image has been colourised for added artificiality. It is stifling, cloying, vividly reminiscent of the oppressive dullness of Communism.
