The first post-Soviet print edition of New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians defined David Oistrakh as ‘Ukrainian violinist’.

Only a Kremlinologist could understand why. Until 1991 musicians from the USSR were described as ‘Soviet’, regardless of their heritage or politics. When the USSR broke up, desperate lexicographers reverted to place of birth.

Oistrakh was born in Odessa, a mixed port city with a large Jewish population. He moved to Moscow in his late teens and lived there for most of his life. His internal identity papers gave his nationality as ‘Jewish’.

For Grove, that was enough to make him Ukrainian. At least for a while, until protests prompted a revision. Oistrakh was Russian by language, Jewish by heritage. If he spoke Ukrainian at all, it was as his fourth language. Most people know that by now.

Still the mislabelling lives on. American scholars and journalists, unable to define musicians by race as the Russians did, have reverted to birthplace. In recent weeks, I have seen Leonard Bernstein described as ‘son of Ukrainian immigrants’, likewise Isaac Stern and Bob Dylan. All belong to Jewish families that fled Tsarist pogroms. The reason for their flight was the fact that they were Jewish.

They were as Ukrainian as bagels.

Got that?

The French violinist Augustin Dumay has been injured in a fall.

He is being replaced temporarily on the competition jury by Guillaume Molko, concertmaster of the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra.

An interview with the diva’s voice coach, Mary Callaghan Lynch:

Christopher Florio, 39, music teacher at Harker Upper School and conductor of the California Youth Symphony in Palo Alto, has been arrested on suspicion of internet crimes against children.

Report here.

The soprano Asmik Grigorian, who has scored a huge success as Salzburg’s Salome, was replaced last night at a few hours’ notice by the Swedish singer Malin Byström.

Grigorian is said to be ‘acutely ill’.

We wish her better.

From the Baltimore Sun:

BALTIMORE — Math majors at Goucher College will soon be a thing of the past. Gone, too, will be physics majors, music majors and students in a range of subjects the school is eliminating from its offerings as part of a cost-cutting “academic revitalization” announced Wednesday.

“A small college can’t just keep adding majors,” President Jose Bowen said in a statement to the Baltimore Sun. “Sometimes we need to move resources from one to another and subtract too.”

The liberal arts school in Towson joins a growing number of institutions removing majors such as math and physics to save money. Seven Texas universities began eliminating their physics programs in 2010. The University of the District of Columbia cut 17 degree programs, including physics, five years ago….

 

 

From the Lebrecht Album of the Week:

 

Universally popular in the first half of the 20th-century, the music of Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari has vanished into thin air. A Venetian of German ancestry and education, Wolf-Ferrari rejected modernism and allowed himself to become — along with Mascagni, Repighi, Malipiero and most Italian composers — a cultural poster-boy for the Mussolini regime. This affiliation accelerated his reputational decline after 1945; he died three years later.

But there is nothing ideological about his music. Nor is it in any sense reactionary….

Read on here.

And here.

A first?

RICHMOND, Va. (Aug. 16, 2018) — The Virginia Commonwealth University School of Business has selected the Richmond Symphony as its artist-in-residence for the 2018-19 academic year.

Now in its third year, the VCU School of Business artist-in-residence program supports the school’s strategic plan and vision to drive the future of business through the power of creativity. The Richmond Symphony will be the first musical artist and first organization to serve in the role….

More here.

The German soprano Diana Damrau has pulled out of her BBC Proms concert on August 29 ‘due to illness’. She will be replaced by Miah Persson in the Strauss songs and by Adela Zaharia in the world premiere of Iain Bell’s Aurora.

Damrau has also cancelled Les Huguenots at the Paris Opera. Her replacement will be Lisette Oropesa.

Customs inspectors at Munich airport unscrewed the top of a flute and found a weapon inside, it was announced today.

The secret weapon was being shipped from China to an address in Norway.

A man has been arrested for questioning.

Flute travellers beware: you may be subject to instrument inspections at German airports.

 

Continuing the discussion, it’s because:

1 The worst of them are rigged.

2 Most juries are dominated by teachers who reward precision above passion and cannot recognise personality.

3 The all-shall-have-prizes rule prevails. Juries are too scared to declare that no-one deserves a cheque.

What needs to be done? Competitions must:

1 Try different repertoire.

2 Diversify the juries.

3 Subject contestants to public interview in addition to their performance.

The teenaged cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason, propelled to fame by his performance at the Harry-and-Meghan royal wedding, has just topped 100,000 sales on Decca.

His debut album spent 13 weeks at #1 in the UK classical charts and he is now by far this year’s top-selling cellist on earth.

And still such a nice guy.