This is not an admonitory New Year’s column on the
dangers of alcohol to orchestral players.
It’s the continuation of an occasional series on musicians in the bath, the ones here being three of the most gifted violinists who ever put bow to string – Jascha Heifetz, Efrem Zimbalist and Fritz Kreisler. Good to see them keeping heads above water.
Their hostess, Alma Gluck, was one of Mahler’s singers in New York.
This is not an admonitory New Year’s column on the
dangers of alcohol to orchestral players.
It’s the continuation of an occasional series on musicians in the bath, the ones here being three of the most gifted violinists who ever put bow to string – Jascha Heifetz, Efrem Zimbalist and Fritz Kreisler. Good to see them keeping heads above water.
Their hostess, Alma Gluck, was one of Mahler’s singers in New York.
First Riccardo Muti, the music director, crashed out of his concerts with what turned out to be nothing more serious than a tummy ache. Now Yannick Nézet-Seguin, the upwardly mobile Canadian, withdraws at short notice from his debut concerts next month for what are described, in the usual classical equivocation, as ‘personal reasons’.
To lose one conductor in a season may, as Oscar Wilde might have put it, be regarded as a misfortune. Two starts to look like a trend. I think we ought to be told why Yannick finds a date he booked three years ago to be suddenly and irrevocably incompatible. Hurt feelings, or something worse? He’s playing Philadelphia the week before, so he can’t be unwell.
The industry speculation is doing the Chicago Symphony Orchestra no good at all. And it won’t help Yannick’s future career if he can’t be more open about his likes and dislikes. Here’s Andrew Patner’s local take on the cancellation.
First Riccardo Muti, the music director, crashed out of his concerts with what turned out to be nothing more serious than a tummy ache. Now Yannick Nézet-Seguin, the upwardly mobile Canadian, withdraws at short notice from his debut concerts next month for what are described, in the usual classical equivocation, as ‘personal reasons’.
To lose one conductor in a season may, as Oscar Wilde might have put it, be regarded as a misfortune. Two starts to look like a trend. I think we ought to be told why Yannick finds a date he booked three years ago to be suddenly and irrevocably incompatible. Hurt feelings, or something worse? He’s playing Philadelphia the week before, so he can’t be unwell.
The industry speculation is doing the Chicago Symphony Orchestra no good at all. And it won’t help Yannick’s future career if he can’t be more open about his likes and dislikes. Here’s Andrew Patner’s local take on the cancellation.
How deep? That depends on the licence-fee settlement, says the man in charge of radio orchestras and choruses. It’s the beginning of a long political wrangle, but the Germans tend to handle these things with more finesse than the Dutch.
How deep? That depends on the licence-fee settlement, says the man in charge of radio orchestras and choruses. It’s the beginning of a long political wrangle, but the Germans tend to handle these things with more finesse than the Dutch.
Tomorrow night sees a new ritual launched on German television, After the ineluctable Dinner for One, a 1920 British comedy skit that somehow feels traditional to Germans, the main channels split for a smackdown New Year’s ratings race.
ARD, the first channel, will carry a live concert from Simon Rattle’s orchestra, the Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Gustavo Dudamel. ZDF, the second channel, will transmit live from Dresden, with Christian Thielemann. Classical music, which rarely gets a main-channel look-in, will saturate the screens at high cost to both channels and no strategic benefit. This battle is all about bruised egos.
It used to be ZDF that carried the Berlin concert while ARD got on with public revelries. Last year, Berlin demanded more money for a contract renewal and ZDF pulled out – only for the premier channel to pay up and take over for three years. Rattle’s media managers rejoiced.
That went down in Mainz, where ZDF lives, like a keg of stale beer. Barely was the ink dry on the Berlin-ARD deal than ZDF signed a five-year agreement with national hotshot Thielemann at his new post in Dresden. With one of those arm-twists by which TV schedulers earn their pay, Berlin kicks off at 5.15 pm, quarter of an hour ahead of Dresden. Which channel is paying most has not yet been disclosed.
Die Welt calls the contest absurd – the more so since both channels will lose out massively next morning to the Vienna Philharmonic, whose New Years Day concert is watched by 45 million people in 71 countries. There is an added frisson to this year’s Vienna event since it is conducted by the new Vienna Opera chief, Franz Welser-Möst. A fourth New Years concert will be beamed from Venice, conducted by Daniel Harding. By the time that glut is over, music lovers will be reaching for sugar-free Schoenberg and Xenakis.
Tomorrow night sees a new ritual launched on German television, After the ineluctable Dinner for One, a 1920 British comedy skit that somehow feels traditional to Germans, the main channels split for a smackdown New Year’s ratings race.
ARD, the first channel, will carry a live concert from Simon Rattle’s orchestra, the Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Gustavo Dudamel. ZDF, the second channel, will transmit live from Dresden, with Christian Thielemann. Classical music, which rarely gets a main-channel look-in, will saturate the screens at high cost to both channels and no strategic benefit. This battle is all about bruised egos.
It used to be ZDF that carried the Berlin concert while ARD got on with public revelries. Last year, Berlin demanded more money for a contract renewal and ZDF pulled out – only for the premier channel to pay up and take over for three years. Rattle’s media managers rejoiced.
That went down in Mainz, where ZDF lives, like a keg of stale beer. Barely was the ink dry on the Berlin-ARD deal than ZDF signed a five-year agreement with national hotshot Thielemann at his new post in Dresden. With one of those arm-twists by which TV schedulers earn their pay, Berlin kicks off at 5.15 pm, quarter of an hour ahead of Dresden. Which channel is paying most has not yet been disclosed.
Die Welt calls the contest absurd – the more so since both channels will lose out massively next morning to the Vienna Philharmonic, whose New Years Day concert is watched by 45 million people in 71 countries. There is an added frisson to this year’s Vienna event since it is conducted by the new Vienna Opera chief, Franz Welser-Möst. A fourth New Years concert will be beamed from Venice, conducted by Daniel Harding. By the time that glut is over, music lovers will be reaching for sugar-free Schoenberg and Xenakis.
The saxophone, a Paris invention of 1841, is a cuckoo in the classical nest, never accorded full membership of the symphony orchestra. The concertos it has acquired are oddities by the likes of Glazunov, Ibert, Villa Lobos – and a Rhapsody that Debussy left in piano score and never completed.
Today’s free download is a sultry piece by Henri Tomasi (1901-71), a Marseilles musician of mystic disposition and a profound attachment to the Mediterranean. It is played, further down the beach, by Greek saxophonist, Theodore Kerzekos, accompanied by the LSO and Yuri Simonov. Lovely stuff.
