One of the year’s amazements was a recording of the Mendelssohn concerto by a Canadian violinist. I never thought I’d use those four nouns in close conjunction. The Mendelssohn is the sweetest of concertos – a speciality of Heifetz, Milstein, and the rest of the Odessa odyssey – and Canadians are not famed either for their sentimentality or for their fiddlers.

Before James Ehnes came along, I cannot easily name a Canadian violinist of world rank – except for Leila Josefowicz, maybe. But Ehnes is a case apart and in this recording he stakes a claim to join the greats. See what you think when you click here:

http://www.onyxclassics.com/normanlebrecht/ONYX4060-3.mp3.zip

Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto in E minor op.64 – III Allegretto non troppo –
Allegro molto vivace

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He is accompanied by Vladimir Ashkenazy and the Philharmonia Orchestra; the companion piece on the Onyx disc is Mendelssohn’s marvellous Octet.



For Christmas Day, a special treat – a new recording that has not yet been released.
Coming up from Orchid in February is a pair of Russian seasonal landscapes, played on a virtuosic squeeze box.
Hmmmmm …. goes well with the mulled wine.
Click here:
www.orchidclassics.com/bmw.htm
Preview: ORC100016 – WINTER SKETCHES
Prokofiev: Scherzo
Mussorgsky/Mogensen: In the Village
Bjarke Mogensen (accordion)






For Christmas Day, a special treat – a new recording that has not yet been released.
Coming up from Orchid in February is a pair of Russian seasonal landscapes, played on a virtuosic squeeze box.
Hmmmmm …. goes well with the mulled wine.
Click here:
www.orchidclassics.com/bmw.htm
Preview: ORC100016 – WINTER SKETCHES
Prokofiev: Scherzo
Mussorgsky/Mogensen: In the Village
Bjarke Mogensen (accordion)






Showing the new Mahler statue and Mahler park, on the site of the desecrated synagogue. More details here and here (or here).
poukarovi1.JPG

Yeah, I know, these things happen. 

In his last blog of the year, the London Symphony Orchestra’s principal flute, Gareth Davies, notes his surprise on tour this year at seeing a well-known conductor come on stage with a gun in his hand, aiming it at the heart of the audience.
The conductor in question has had anger management issues in the past (don’t they all?) and the concert was taking place in Palermo, Sicily, where men with guns may be a more common sight than in Chelmsford, England, and are taken with deadly seriousness.
I won’t ruin the story: read it for yourselves in Gareth’s blog.
As I said, these things happen. Among the many reminsicences shared of Maurice Murphy, the LSO’s principal trumpet player who died last month, was the one when, faced with a waffly rehearsal conductor in a contemporary symphony, no-nonsense Maurice pulled a replica Colt 45 from his trumpet case and fired at the conductor. ‘That’ll shut him up,’ said Maurice. And so it did.

That’s Maurice above, at full blast (credit: Suzie Maeder/Lebrecht Music & Arts).
The new issue of Classical Music magazine takes the tale one stage further with a picture from Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival of Isabelle Bozzini, cellist of the Quatuor Bozzini, aiming a pistol at one of her violinists. That’s her below, I think, ducking from retaliation.



My advice to musicians: wherever you’re playing next year, do be careful. 



Or you could end up like this, fish food:


 
 

Yeah, I know, these things happen. 

In his last blog of the year, the London Symphony Orchestra’s principal flute, Gareth Davies, notes his surprise on tour this year at seeing a well-known conductor come on stage with a gun in his hand, aiming it at the heart of the audience.
The conductor in question has had anger management issues in the past (don’t they all?) and the concert was taking place in Palermo, Sicily, where men with guns may be a more common sight than in Chelmsford, England, and are taken with deadly seriousness.
I won’t ruin the story: read it for yourselves in Gareth’s blog.
As I said, these things happen. Among the many reminsicences shared of Maurice Murphy, the LSO’s principal trumpet player who died last month, was the one when, faced with a waffly rehearsal conductor in a contemporary symphony, no-nonsense Maurice pulled a replica Colt 45 from his trumpet case and fired at the conductor. ‘That’ll shut him up,’ said Maurice. And so it did.

That’s Maurice above, at full blast (credit: Suzie Maeder/Lebrecht Music & Arts).
The new issue of Classical Music magazine takes the tale one stage further with a picture from Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival of Isabelle Bozzini, cellist of the Quatuor Bozzini, aiming a pistol at one of her violinists. That’s her below, I think, ducking from retaliation.



My advice to musicians: wherever you’re playing next year, do be careful. 



Or you could end up like this, fish food:


 
 

The bicentenary of Chopin’s birth changed none of my perspectives. There have been some interesting recordings, not least by the miraculously restored Janina Fialkowska, and some teeth-gritting horrors from various former winners of the Chopin competition, not to mention some ear-tweaking interpretations on creaky pianos of the composer’s time. None prompted me to regard Chopin from a fresh aspect.

There were, however, hidden gems and whispered secrets, one of which was Leon McCawley’s account of the Fantaisie Impromptu on the Somm label, which is today’s exclusive free download on Slipped Disc. Click here: 

A runner up in the Leeds piano competition, McCawley is a young British pianist with exceptional tone control; he teaches at the Royal College of Music in London.
Chopin - Piano Works
Somm is a one-woman boutique label run by record industry veteran Sika Oke, who chooses artists and rep that she feels have something different to convey. One of my records of the year was her pairing of the Copland and Finzi clarinet concertos, with Sarah Williamson and the Orchestra of the Swan, based in Shakespeare’s birthplace town.
Enjoy your farewell to Chopin…. there’s Mahler to come.

Yes, you read it right. A real-life classical conductor is going on prime US network television at the start of the New Year. He might even get to talk about music (perhaps not at symphonic length). When, since Leonard Bernstein in 1943, has any young conductor received such national exposure?

It’s a huge step-up for Gustavo Dudamel to the next celebrity rung. I reckon he can handle it.
Here’s the press release, hot off the email:

 

LOS ANGELES PHILHARMONIC MUSIC DIRECTOR

GUSTAVO DUDAMEL TO APPEAR ON NBC’S

“THE TONIGHT SHOW WITH JAY LENO”

 

TUESDAY, JANUARY 4, 2011, AT 11:35 PM

 

 

WHAT:              LA Phil Music Director Gustavo Dudamel guests on NBC’s “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno,” Tuesday, January 4, 2011, at 11:35 p.m. In his first appearance on the national late-night program, Dudamel discusses, among other topics, LA Phil LIVE, which sends full-concert performances of him leading the Los Angeles Philharmonic at Walt Disney Concert Hall to more than 450 movie theaters across the U.S. and Canada.

 

Dudamel is currently in the middle of his second season leading the LA Phil. The LA Phil’s 2010/11 season presents a vast spectrum of imaginative concerts – welcoming back old friends, while continuing the tradition of introducing rising artists and composers – a European tour and expansion of YOLA (Youth Orchestra Los Angeles), Dudamel’s signature music education program.

 

“The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” is from Big Dog Productions in association with Universal Media Studios.  Debbie Vickers is the executive producer.

 

For artwork from “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno,” please visit the NBC press website at www.nbcumv.com or contact julie.true@nbcuni.com.  For embed codes from “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” please visit http://www.nbc.com/the-tonight-show/video/.

 

Please visit www.LAPhil.com for complete programming information.

An orchestral manager has directed me to an article on alcohol in the performing arts, published a year ago by the UK Medical Council on Alcohol. It contains some shocking statistics, among them an international survey showing that 70 percent of orchestral musicians suffer from levels of anxiety that lead to medication, alcohol and drug use.

I don’t remember the report being discussed much among musicians when it was published. As usual in the classical music world, it was swept under the carpet.

Meanwhile, private respondents to my previous post cite the case of a London viola player seen urinating on the concert hall steps in full concert dress as the audience was leaving, and report that two British orchestras have now banned alcohol use on their premises.
Here’s the link to the M-C-A report: http://www.m-c-a.org.uk/documents/Dec_09
photo credit: http://thehitman-cthemusic.blogspot.com/2010/08/top-10-drunk-songs.html

An orchestral manager has directed me to an article on alcohol in the performing arts, published a year ago by the UK Medical Council on Alcohol. It contains some shocking statistics, among them an international survey showing that 70 percent of orchestral musicians suffer from levels of anxiety that lead to medication, alcohol and drug use.

I don’t remember the report being discussed much among musicians when it was published. As usual in the classical music world, it was swept under the carpet.

Meanwhile, private respondents to my previous post cite the case of a London viola player seen urinating on the concert hall steps in full concert dress as the audience was leaving, and report that two British orchestras have now banned alcohol use on their premises.
Here’s the link to the M-C-A report: http://www.m-c-a.org.uk/documents/Dec_09
photo credit: http://thehitman-cthemusic.blogspot.com/2010/08/top-10-drunk-songs.html

Free classical downoad #4 is the Dream of Solomon from the Onyx recording of Respighi’s Queen of Sheba. It is played by the Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra and, unless you were specifically looking for the piece, you would never know it existed.

To say it has an eastern flavour is like questioning the Pope’s Catholicism. Seldom has an orchestra sounded more attuned to the work in hand.
Here’s the link:
http://www.onyxclassics.com/normanlebrecht/ONYX4048-1.mp3.zip

Respighi: Belkis, Queen of Sheba – I The Dream of Solomon
Borusan
Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra, Sascha Goetzel




The next music director of the Czech Philharmonic will be a conductor first appointed under communism, thrown out by the players in an act of free market madness and standing ever since as a living reproach to the orchestra’s collective misbehaviour.

It has been announced in Prague that Jiri Belohlavek will resume his duties in September 2012 at the helm of the only Czech cultural institution of international standing. He will succeed the Israeli, Eliahu Inbal, the last of a long run of fix-it conductors who fixed nothing.
Belohlavek, meanwhile, founded a rival Prague Philharmonic and earned worldwide acclaim as the foremost living Czech conductor. He presently heads the BBC Symphony Orchestra. 

His return is outstandingly good news for music in the Czech Republic. He is clean of all political connections and corruption, past or present, and he ought to raise the Czech Phil from deepening demoralisation. Earlier this year the orchestra launched legal action against the country’s culture minister, its own former manager, alleging criminal misuse of funds.
It speaks volumes for Belohlavek’s integrity that he is prepared to stake his reputation on so murky an enterprise. Czech reports say he will quit the BBC after the 2012 Proms to devote the greater part of his work to rebuilding the national orchestra. The BBC has not confirmed his departure.
Here’s the local report. 
Photo credit: C Christodoulou/Lebrecht Music & Arts