The Korean violinist Jiyoon Lee who won the audition for first concertmaster of Barenboim’s Berlin Staatskapelle three months ago has been meeting the local media.
Just turned 26,Jiyoon tells the Morgenpost that her mother studied piano at Juilliard but she decided that, as a classical violinist, ‘you have to live in Europe to know the traditions.’
At 20, she picked a teacher, Kolja Blacher, from the internet. Abbado’s former concertmaster made her rethink everything: ‘I had to completely learn from him how to play the violin – like a beginner. It was exhausting, but it was worth it.’
Read on here.
John Kelly, chef executive of the Irish Chamber Orchestra from 1993 to 2012, has died suddenly in the United States, the orchestra has tweeted.
A violist by training, Kelly is credited with placing the orchestra on a firm financial footing with substantial government funding.
The venerable US baritone Thomas Hampson will play the Emperor Hadrian and and Finnish soprano Karita Mattila the ex-empress Plotina in a new opera of classical Rome by the Canadian singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright.
Canadian Opera Company have scheduled seven performances in October. The opera will be sung in English and Latin.
Message from the Bayreuth tenor:
With deepest regret I have to inform, that I am forced to cancel my Saturday’s performance at the Angelika Kauffmann Hall in Schwarzenberg due to laryngitis. My place at Helmut Deutsch’s side will be taken by a young baritone Benjamin Appl, whom I wish a successful recital. With best wishes Piotr.
The Grand Final of the Eurovision Young Musician of the Year will be broadcast tonight on the following channels:
Albania / RTSH 1
Belgium / RTBF – La Trois
Croatia / HRT – HTV 3
Czech Republic / Czech TV – CT Art
Greece / ERT 2
Hungary / MTVA – M5
Malta / PBS Ltd. – TVM 2
Norway / NRK 2
Poland / TVP Kultura
Russia / Russia Kultura
Slovenia / RTV 1
UK / BBC 2 but only in Scotland (2000 BST)
New talent is clearly of no interest to BBC nationally.
The finalists (reported earlier) are:
Indi Stivín, double bass (Czech Republic)
Mira Foron, violin (Germany)
Máté Bencze, saxophone (Hungary)
Birgitta Elisa Oftestad, cello (Norway)
Ivan Bessonov, pianist (Russia)
Nikola Pajanović, violin (Slovenia)
The judges will be conductors David Watkin and Marin Alsop with composers Anna Meredith and James MacMillan, plus the Edinburgh Festival’s Head of Music, Andrew Moore.
The Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra will perform all ten Mahler symphonies from the Helsinki Music Centre and stream them live on Yle Areena, where they can also be accessed later.
The cycle opens on August 24 with Mahler’s 8th symphony conducted by Hannu Lintu with soloists Camilla Nylund, Anu Komsi, Lilli Paasikivi, Tuomas Katajala, Stephen Gadd and more.
Lintu will also conduct M4, M6, M2 and M9 during the season. The other symphonies will be led by Manfred Honeck, David Zinman, Sakari Oramo, Jukka-Pekka Saraste and Ryan Wigglesworth.
The University of Michigan has announced that David Daniels has taken leave of absence from his teaching position after a tabloid newspaper named him and his partner, the conductor Scott Walters, for the alleged rape of a student baritone in 2010.
Daniels and Walters, pictured at their wedding, have denied the allegation.
A former voice coach for the All-American Boys Chorus has been shipped back to the US after a prolonged fight against extradition.
Roger Alan Giese, 43, has been charged on 19 counts including one of committing lewd acts on a child.
He had been living in England for several years under an assumed name.
More here.
A month ago we carried a post from an American baritone Samuel Schultz, claiming that he had been raped by a well-known power couple in the opera world.
Samuel did not name his assailants, and nor did we.
The alleged rapists are named today in a tabloid newspaper on a website that is blocked to European visitors. Both have issued a statement, denying the allegation.
We have not mentioned the alleged culprits’ names for legal reasons, and we strongly advise commenters not to do so either.
UPDATE: The University of Michigan has announced a leave of absence for David Daniels.
2nd UPDATE: Two months on, Daniels denies all.
Latest video from Elisabeth Kulman and Agnes Heginger, the self-styled Topstars Topless.
Details have emerged of the house arrest conditions under which Kirill Serebrennikov has lived for the past year while a Moscow court ‘investigates’ trumped-up fraud charges against the outspoken Putin critic.
The opera director, 48, is allowed no contact with the outside world. He may only speak to his father and his lawyer and has no access to the internet. He is confined to a small apartment without a balcony in the centre of Moscow and is permitted to take a supervised walk for two hours a day.
His lawyer says: ‘The restrictions of his freedom are very stressful for Kirill. He works around the clock.’
Yun Kim, 22, went to Australia for a year to improve her English and earn some money to further her piano studies.
Tragically, the job she took was in an abattoir. She now has prosthetic fingers.
Full distressing story here.
