The Mark Allen Group, which bought Gramophone for a proverbial shilling in 2013, has today taken over all the assets of the Rhinegold stable.
These include such titles as Classical Music magazine, Opera Now, Music Teacher and International Piano.
Let’s see if they can kick some life into a suffering print-mag field.
The news has yet to be announced on the Rhinegold website.
The conductor Omer Meir Wellber, 36, has been named music director of the Fondazione Teatro Massimo in Palermo from 2020.
He is presently conducting Verdi’s Les Vêpres siciliennes at the Munich Opera Festival and will become principal guest conductor at the Semperoper Dresden in September.
The combative Michael Volpe (also known as @NoisyMV), head of Holland Park Opera, has a weakness for neglected works by neo-realists of the late 19th century, especially Pietro Mascagni whose operas he has been bringing back, one by one.
Not all of them have gripped. In 2016 I wasn’t sure I’d survive Iris, a seedy summer tale of rape, brothels and suicide. My companion took flight in the interval. Last ears was Zaza.
This summer, most London critics lost patience with Isabeau, the tale of a princess whose father makes her ride naked through the town. ‘An embarrassing and misshapen dud,’ was the verdict of my Spectator colleague, Richard Bratby. ‘Clichés, codswallop and passionate music,’ was the FT’s headline.
Since the conductor is a pal, and the production is coming next year to New York City Opera, I decided to catch one of the later shows, no easy feat since the entire run was sold out, despite bad reviews. I went on the hottest night London had sweated for 32 years.
Is Isabeau a masterpiece? By no means. There are too many holes in the flimsy plot and too much patchwork in the music, with pages of orchestration sounding like they had been lifted from Strauss, Elgar and, in one intermezzo, Sibelius. These deficiencies aside, the show is redeemed by an ingenious set and pinpoint direction by Martin-Lloyd-Evans. My heart was melted by Anne Sophie Duprels in the title role and by David Butt Philip her heroic lover, Folco. Francesco Ciluffo conducted with an imposing intensity.
The two hours passed very fast. Mascagni, no genius, knew how to sing on a summer’s night. I’m still whistling the intermezzo.
The final score was verismo 1, critics 0.
Classicalmusicnews.ru reports a second round of sackings at the famed Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatoire – 49 jobs are to go in all parts of the institution.
Last summer, the conservatoire dismissed 79 artists of its opera and ballet theatre.
From our string quartet diarist Anthea Kreston:
Today, I was practicing with my six year old daughter, using my iPad Pro, with scanned music from home. On the top right hand corner of Portnoff Russian Fantasia #2, I can see the old-fashioned, looping cursive handwriting – Dr. Milton Goldberg, my first serious teacher. He passed in 2002, and I was fortunate enough to be remembered by him well enough to find myself with several boxes of his music library, which somehow made their way to me in Philadelphia when I was studying to get my music degree. Funny editions, heavily edited by hand with his specific language and unique markings and extra flourishes, and with the consistency of an Indian Papadam – if bent slightly past flat, an audible snap and the music cracks in half. The spines have strings coming out, must be stored lying down, and everything has a slightly musty smell.
As a four year old, Dr. Goldberg seemed impossibly old. I couldn’t tell the difference between his wife and mother, who shared his house, and who both were built formidably. Their hair was always covered by a Russian scarf, they walked by swinging their legs from the hip, and they would be bustling about, wiping hands on their aprons, with strange, strong exotic smells wafting into the teaching room which doubled as the eating area after lessons were complete.
He came from a Russian/Lithuanian family who had run a small general store in Chicago, and walked with a noticeable limp, a legacy of polio. He spent much of his childhood bedridden, listening to music, and it became clear that music would be a suitable career. He went on to teach band and orchestra in the public schools, but he never tired of furthering himself – earning a Doctorate, warming up with Paganini Caprices and Vieuxtemps (he was famous for his 4th of July performances in our town parade, where he would play the impossibly difficult „Yankee-Doodle“ variations with flags sticking out of his outfit). Every year, before our summer break, he would allow me to ride once up and down his stairway chair – a terribly slow ride, but travelling sideways up a staircase and getting a glimpse into the privacy of their second floor was something I looked forward to all year.
I knew him only for four years, from 1976-1980, when he lovingly and patiently transitioned me from my Suzuki teacher to my next adventure as a student of Roland and Almita Vamos, teachers of Hungarian and Ukrainian descent. Dr. Goldberg taught from Wohlfahrt, Sevcik and Introducing The Positions – that incredibly tedious, dark and light red-covered book. He was patient and kind, thoughtful and quiet, and exacting. There were no stickers or practice charts. There was work to be done, and heavy expectations. He was unforgiving with his demands on the position of my hands and wrists, left-hand double-stop finger preparations – what I now realize were very advanced techniques. Especially for a 4-8 year old. He spoke to me as an adult, explaining, forming and holding my hands (even when painful), and expecting clear improvement from week to week. I was always up for a challenge, and relished showing off in public performance – my lions mane of curly red hair flying around as I made a dramatic upbow. By the end, working on Mozart 3rd Concerto, he knew I would be moving on.
These past weeks, I have been able to see many of my old students – people who opened up their violin cases for the first time together with me. As we looked at their violins, smelling the varnish, shining a flashlight inside to read the label, unscrewing the bow to look at the individual hairs of the horsetail, I knew how important these first moments could be. These are some of my most prized memories, and to see these students today, still with little bits of me in their playing, makes me wonder how much of Dr. Goldberg is in there too.
The concert promoter Christopher Axworthy has posted:
So sorry to hear from Eun Seong Kim’s mother that her son died in a swimming accident on 19th July. A major talent as you can hear from op 111. His Scriabin was one of the finest performances we have ever heard.
He was also one of the most humble and appreciative human beings. A life so cruelly taken from us when his musical journey was headed for the heights.
The Korean pianist and composer Eun Song Kim won the Mendelssohn Competition in Berlin in 2014 and came fourth in the Busoni contest.
Our profound sympathies to his family.
Anne Midgette and Peggy McGlone on the Washington Post have conducted an extensive survey of sexual harassment of women in classical music, reaching the conclusion that it is ‘rife’.
Among those named are the Italian conductor Daniele Gatti – who insists all his contacts were consensual – and William Preucil, respected concertmaster of the Cleveland Orchestra, who refused to comment.
Many of the other cases cited have previously been reported (not least in Slipped Disc), but the conclusion that harassment is endemic in classical music is a disturbing one and the legwork done by the two reporters is impressive.
Read here.
Patrick Williams, composer for the newsroom soap Lou Grant and the The Mary Tyler Moore Show, has died at 79.
If you were around newspapers in the late 1970s, this should ring some bells.
Richard Egarr is to step down after 15 years as music director of the the Academy of Ancient Music.
Under Christopher Hogwood, the AAM was a dedicated recording ensemble. That work no longer exists. It needs to refocus.
Dame Gwyneth Jones has asked us to publish the following message:
Following recent reports that the London Wagner Society Committee have neglected to honour their commitment to myself and the two young singers Michelle Alexander, soprano, and Adam Music, tenor, who won the President’s Award Public Masterclasses, in the highly successful Singing Competition which I was mainly responsible for organising last year, by refusing to present my masterclasses in one of their regular venues in London and in doing so, depriving the members of the Wagner Society of the pleasure of witnessing the progress these singers would hopefully make in such masterclasses, I am thrilled to now be able to make the following announcement:
As I have had no positive approach from the Committee for almost nine months, since the Singing Competition, I have taken the matter into my own hands in order to fulfil at least my commitment to the young singers and am delighted to be able to announce that my masterclasses will now take place in the afternoon of the 7th August, as a part of the Bayreuth Scholarship Foundation programme, in Wagner’s House “Villa Wahnfried”, using Wagner’s own grand piano.
As Michelle Alexander has unfortunately been confronted with Visa problems and is unable to travel, she will be replaced by the baritone Julien van Mellaerts, who was also a prize winner at the Wagner Society Singing Competition. Julien recently won the 1st Prize at the Kathleen Ferrier Singing Competition, the Wigmore Hall/Kohn Foundation International Song Competition and 2nd Prize at the Montreal International Singing Competition.
It will be an event open to the 250 Scholarship Winners and the general public and will be a wonderful opportunity for the two young singers to present themselves to an international audience.
It will give me great pleasure to be able to pass on the knowledge and experience which I have gained during my long international career and especially the joy I have experienced whilst singing, for almost twenty years, at the Bayreuth Festival.
I would like to especially thank Dr Stefan Specht, Managing Director of the Bayreuth Scholarship Foundation and Dr Horst Eggers, President of the Richard Wagner Verband International for their tireless efforts to fulfil the wishes of Richard Wagner to nurture the next generation of Wagner Artists. My thanks go also to Dr Sven Friedrich, Director of the Richard Wagner Museum and Archive in Bayreuth and the Lord Mayor of Bayreuth Brigitte Merk-Erbe who have kindly made it possible for my masterclasses to take place in this fantastic venue.
They have all welcomed the prospect of my masterclasses taking place in Bayreuth, during the Festival, with wide open arms and great enthusiasm.
The Irish composer Siobhán Cleary has reportedly ‘turned down a large commission from two Arts Council-funded bodies because she was offered 20 per cent less than her male colleagues were in the last four years, for the same commission.’
This looks like a double first.
It may be the first time composer grants are judged on gender basis.
And it’s definitely the first time in my experience that any composer anywhere has sent back a juicy Arts Council cheque.
Read on here.
The Haydntage in Eisenstadt, an annual celebration of the town’s celebrated resident, have been cancelled this summer, possibly for good.
The festival, which has existed since 1986, has apparently run out of funds.
