Over the past couple of months I have been hearing of orchestras taking longer and longer to pay musicians on return from overseas tours. One of the culprits was the London Mozart Players, an excellent chamber orchestra based in the southern satellite town of Croydon. 

LMP are now telling us why. In an interview with Gigmag, managing director Simon Funnell issues an emergency £50,000 appeal for private philanthropy to stave off a budget shortfall caused by Croydon council cuts. The Arts Council were typically unhelpful.
Prince Edward is leading the cash campaign. I hope he comes up with the goods. LMP, conducted by Gerard Korsten, with Roxanna Panufnik as composer in residence, is the only orchestra serving the southern London conurbations. If LMP were out of action, Croydon should know there would be little point in going ahead with a planned refurbishment of Fairfield Halls. It will have so many dark nights, it might as well be boarded up.
Press release below:

PRESS RELEASE
After more than 60 years the London Mozart Players announces that it is today launching a campaign to secure its future.
The orchestra has worked hard to replace the loss of its Arts Council core funding in 2008. But more is needed. The LMP’s Managing Director, Simon Funnell, said: “This campaign is urgent and vital – if we don’t succeed it is highly likely that the board will have to take the decision to close the orchestra later this year so the stakes are very high indeed. The LMP is one of the finest chamber orchestras in the country and it is crucial that we protect this part of our heritage.”
Simon Funnell continued: “Many arts organisations face challenging times in the coming years; thanks to the deep impact of the recession, Government cuts to the Arts Council, low interest rates and a gloomy outlook on the economy, the orchestra is facing a squeeze on every side: there are more organisations chasing smaller and smaller pots of money.
“Every time we lose a cultural institution like the LMP, we lose something of our humanity and we cannot allow this to happen. The sums of money the LMP need to survive are relatively small but vital if the orchestra is to survive. The government is calling on philanthropists and companies to do more to support the arts, and now the LMP is asking directly f

or that support.”

Over the last two years, the LMP has embarked on an ambitious programme of development, appointing an outstanding music director in Gérard Korsten who has already taken the LMP to new heights, as well as a new Associate Composer, Roxanna Panufnik. The orchestra continues to garner critical acclaim for the almost one hundred concerts, tours and recordings it undertakes each year:
The orchestra’s work off-stage, LMP Interactive, is also highly regarded, with over one hundred projects run each year. In Croydon the LMP has worked with around 30 schools and last year reached almost 3800 children and adults through its community and education work. The orchestra has pioneered cross-generational projects involving both young people and the elderly, was nominated for an RPS award for its “Orchestra in a Village” project at the Cambridge Music Festival and has worked this year with the Princes Foundation for Children & the Arts as well as Orchestras Live and Turner Sims Concert Hall on projects for young people. It was recently nominated for a South Bank Sky Arts Award for its work with Portsmouth Grammar School and the composer Tansy Davies.
The orchestra’s principal funder Croydon Council has continued to support the orchestra through these difficult times and the orchestra’s management cannot thank the Council highly enough for its generosity. The orchestra realises that it cannot expect the council, or the tax payers of Croydon, to be the only funders of an orchestra which works across the country and abroad. The LMP is delighted to have an ongoing relationship both with Croydon Council and with Fairfield Halls both of whom are strong supporters of the orchestra. But the LMP recognises the need to complement this with broader philanthropic support.
The orchestra’s formal appeal will be launched by the orchestra’s Associate Conductor Hilary Davan Wetton at the orchestra’s concert at Fairfield Halls, 7.30pm on Wednesday 20 April 2011.
– ENDS –
For more information contact Simon Funnell, Managing Director, London Mozart Players on 020 8686 1996 or email simon@lmp.org
Press tickets for Wednesday night’s concert are available by emailing Caroline Molloy: caroline@lmp.org

The city of Hamburg is planning a big climax for its two-year Mahler cycle. It’s the eighth symphony conducted by Christoph Eschenbach, with some 500 performers in the O2 arena on May 20.

Before the Creator Spiritus gets moving that night, the audience will hear a new commission from American composer Nathaniel Stookey. Titled Mahl/er/werk – a German word meaning ‘grinding mechanism’, it is made up entirely of fragments of Mahler’s music, all in their original key, tempo and instrumentation. 
Stookey has dedicated the score to Alfred Schnittke, once a citizen of Hamburg, who created many works of out of shards of other men’s music (see Why Mahler?). I’m curious to hear it. There will be a broadcast on NDR.
Logo "Mah/ler/werk": Eine Auftragskomposition von Nathaniel Stookey für den NDR © NDR

One of Deutsche Grammophon’s top producers, Rainer Maillard, has taken up a new venture recording music live to vinyl. It’s not just the sound that gets better, he says on this promo video, it’s the way the musicians play, knowing there can be no second take.

Maillard is a serious man. He’s currently head of the Emile Berliner studios, formerly owned by DG.
Take a look here

                                 Millard, with Alice Sara Ott. photo: DG

Norio Ohga, the Sony ex-chairman who has died aged 81, tended to dismiss claims that he was somehow the ‘father of compact disc’.

The facts are these. CD technology was developed by Philips in Holland. Ohga, recovering from a car smash in 1979, saw a prototype of the badly-launched Philips Laservision and put the squeeze on the Dutch to share an accelerated development programme, or else Sony would go it alone. He set tight deadlines and made the Dutch dance to his tempo.
Ohga told me how he persuaded engineers to extend CD capacity from 60 to 90 minutes so that one CD could contain Beethoven’s ninth symphony, his wife’s favourite. When he played a protoype disc to Herbert von Karajan, the conductor said ‘all else is gaslight’, pressuring Philips (which owned his record label Deutsche Grammophon) to invest 100 million German marks in a Hanover pressing plant. Ohga spent $30 million on a parallel facility in Japan
That was the extent of his involvement. He made that plain, on the record, several times. Yet the myth grew that CD was somehow the product of Ohga’s genius and many of today’s headlines are calling him ‘father of the CD’. If anyone deserves that title it is the Dutch team leader Kees A. Schouhamer Immink.
photo: wikipedia
It would be interesting indeed to hear his memories of the hard-driving Ohga.

English National Opera has ingathered a galaxy of chums on June 26 to sing out a fine farewell to Sir Charles Mackerras, who died last summer. Charlie had a short and torrid time as music director at the Coliseum. This bash is sure to wipe away any lingering aftertaste.

press release below

Sir Charles Mackerras
Concert – Stars of the classical music world mount a special tribute at ENO on
Sunday 26 June 2011

 

Lesley Garrett, Sir
John Tomlinson, Sir Mark Elder and others join ENO to celebrate the career of
world renowned conductor and former ENO Music Director, Sir Charles
Mackerras

 

One year
after his passing, a concert led by extraordinary conductors and singers and
including the ENO orchestra and chorus will celebrate the musical talent of
Charles Mackerras. Described as one of the great polymath music directors of the
20th century, Mackerras conducted some of the world’s most famous
orchestras and held the position of director of music at ENO from 1970-1977.

 

On the stage
of the London Coliseum, acclaimed international artists, most of whom worked
with Sir Charles and all having a close association with ENO, will create a
unique musical event in celebration of Sir Charles’ exceptional life and
contribution to music. The evening will include performances by singers
including Sir John Tomlinson, Dame Felicity Palmer, Lesley Garrett, Rebecca
Evans, Janice Watson, Catherine Wyn Rogers, Diana Montague Jonathan Summers and
many others.  ENO Music Director Edward Gardner, together with past Music
Directors Sir Mark Elder and Paul Daniel, will conduct ENO’s acclaimed Orchestra
and Chorus. The evening will be presented by BBC Radio 3 In Tune presenter, Sean
Rafferty.

 

The evening’s
programme reflects the repertoire championed by Mackerras and includes operatic
arias and choruses from Handel’s Julius Caesar, Mozart’s Marriage of
Figaro
and Idomeneo, Gilbert and Sullivan’s Pirates of
Penzance
and The Mikado, Verdi’s Falstaff and Don
Carlo
, Beethoven’s Fidelio, Britten’s Peter Grimes, Puccini’s
Tosca, Janá?ek’s Jen?fa and Strauss’s
Rosenkavalier.

 

Edward
Gardner said, “We’re delighted to be celebrating Sir Charles’ work at ENO with
this special concert.  Many of the singers Sir Charles loved working with will
be performing, including Sir John Tomlinson and Dame Felicity Palmer, and three
Music Directors of ENO, Sir Mark Elder, Paul Daniel and I will share the
podium.  The programme, put together with the Mackerras family, will explore the
extraordinary breadth of Sir Charles’ work with the Company for over 60 years”.

 

Mackerras
grew up in Australia, emigrating to Britain in 1947. He began his brilliant
career as a director at Sadler’s Wells Opera of London, now ENO, conducting,
among others, Janá?ek, Handel, Gluck, Bach and Donizetti. During his life, he
was also a noted authority on Mozart and Sir Arthur Sullivan’s operas. He was
appointed principal conductor of some of Europe’s most celebrated orchestras
including BBC Concert Orchestra (1954-1956), Hamburg State Opera (1965-1969),
English National Opera (1970-1977), Welsh National Opera (1987-1992) and
Scottish Chamber Orchestra (1992-1995). He worked with some of the world’s most
influential orchestras including the Metropolitan Opera of New York and San
Francisco Opera’s in house orchestras, as well as the Sydney Symphony Orchestra
and Czech Philharmonic Orchestra. Mackerras was a champion of musical direction
and wrote regarding his strategy for working with an orchestra: “I believe it’s
very important to edit orchestral parts explicitly and as thoroughly as
possible, so that the musicians can play them without too much
rehearsal”.

 

The concert
in honour of Sir Charles Mackerras will take place at London Coliseum on
Sunday 26 June 2011 at 7pm.

 

Booking
Information

Tickets: £8 –
£45
All proceeds of this charity concert going to ENO Benevolent
Fund

 

For
further press information please contact:

Elizabeth
Barrett

Head of
Press

ebarrett@eno.org

The standoff in Rio – where half the musicians in the Brazil Symphony Orchestra have been sacked – has yet to be noticed in North American media. Le Monde, however, has a refined nose for trouble and its report grasps the cultural implications for all concerned, especially the conductor.

Here it is.

Roberto Minczuk est un maestro sans musiciens. Les membres de l’Orchestre symphonique brésilien (OSB), basé à Rio, qu’il dirige depuis 2005, refusent de jouer sous sa baguette, à la suite de plus de trois mois de conflit.

Les relations entre ce chef brésilien, âgé de 44 ans, et son orchestre, ont toujours été tendues. Dès 2008, les musiciens demandent son départ. Ils le jugent“cassant”“autoritaire”. Ils lui reprochent aussi ses absences, ses engagements à l’étranger. Il dirige notamment l’Orchestre philharmonique de Calgary (Canada).

Le malaise au sein de l’OSB – fondé en 1940 – éclate le 6 janvier quand les musiciens sont informés qu’ils devront passer des tests. Objectif officiel de cette procédure : “Monter un orchestre d’excellence.” Refus immédiat des musiciens. Testés lors de leur recrutement, ils peuvent être évalués à chaque répétition.

La Fondation OSB, contrôlée par la banque publique de développement BNDES et le géant minier brésilien Vale, se range du côté de Roberto Minczuk. Sur les 79 musiciens qui réclament le départ du chef, 44 boycottent les épreuves et 32 sont licenciés fin mars pour “indiscipline”.

Nouveau rebondissement le 9 avril, lors de l’ouverture de la saison au Théâtre municipal, l’Opéra de Rio. Pour remplacer l’orchestre, le chef a mobilisé 80 jeunes musiciens de l’OSB. Entrés en scène avec leurs instruments, ils la quitteront après que Roberto Minczuk aura tenté en vain de les diriger sous les huées du public. L’un d’eux essaie de lire un manifeste. Peine perdue : la sono du théâtre est débranchée, le concert annulé. Les jeunes iront rejoindre leurs aînés licenciés qui, en signe de protestation, jouent devant l’Opéra. Plusieurs grands artistes brésiliens, dont le pianiste Nelson Freire et la danseuse étoile Ana Botafogo, ont annulé leurs représentations par solidarité.

“UNE CERTAINE INDOLENCE”

L’OSB a-t-il progressé depuis que Roberto Minczuk est au pupitre ? Les avis sont plus que partagés. Mais les salaires ont nettement augmenté et le chef justifie ses exigences au nom d’un vaste projet de renouveau artistique, et où les musiciens travailleront 27 heures par semaine, au lieu de 21. En contrepartie, ils seraient les mieux payés d’Amérique latine. Il dénonce “une certaine indolence” au sein de l’OSB : “Très peu d’interprètes étudient leurs partitions chez eux avant la première répétition.” Plusieurs grands chefs invités à Rio s’en sont plaints, dit-il.

Pour sortir de l’impasse, la Fondation propose de réintégrer les musiciens licenciés, tout en maintenant les tests. Bel effort. Mais on voit mal comment l’Orchestre pourrait retrouver, avec le même chef, son indispensable harmonie.

Jean-Pierre Langellier (Rio, correspondant)Article paru dans l’édition du 24.04.11

Norio Ohga, the Sony co-founder who turned all its gadgets black and was driven by his classical obsession to own and music and film industry, has died aged 81.

I met him on several occasions and interviewed him once, at length, in his Tokyo office. Rigidly polite under close questioning, flicking between German and English, the only emotion he showed was when I got him to talk about the death of his friend, Herbert von Karajan.
Ohga had met Karajan, while a singing student in Berlin, through the Japanese wife of the grocery magnate, Julius Meinl. Maestro and young industrialist had three common interests – music, technology and aviation. Karajan, for Ohga, was something close to a god. Ohga, for Karajan, was a means to an end – a chance to be first with the latest audio inventions. 
Karajan was the only artist whose advice the future Sony chief followed. He encouraged Ohga to take a stake in CBS Japan, eventually to buy the whole company. It was in a bid to sign Karajan to Sony Classical that Ohga happened to be with him at his death. I told the story in full here and here.
It was in Karajan’s model that Ohga indulged his own desire to be a conductor, an ambition that enabled him to conduct the Boston Symphony and the orchestra of the Metropolitan Opera in exchange for million-dollar donations. Not, however, the Berlin Philharmonic.
Not in public, anyway. I am told by someone present that he conducted the orchestra in a private performance of Beethoven’s 9th symphony on June 14, 2000. The soloists were Julia Varady, Uta Prieuw, Roland Wagenführer and Eike Wilm Schulte, with the Berlin Singakademie, augmented by a Sony Philharmonischer Chor. A disc was produced on the Sony Classical label but was never issued for sale.
A stickler for design detail, Ohga was responsible for turning Sony products black. He had been known to cancel a product launch because he did not like the shape of a button. His whim was greatly feared across the company.

                                           Ohga, with two inventions

The composer Peter Lieberson, who died today in Israel aged 64 while undergoing cancer treatment, was the son of a musical legend and the husband of another. He took a while to establish his own voice but, when he did, the wait prove worthwhile.

His father was Goddard Lieberson, head of Columbia Records when it was known as the Tiffany Label, the man who recorded the complete works of Stravinsky, Rodgers & Hammerstein and Webern without a flicker of aesthetic discrimination. Goddard, who signed his letters ‘God’, knew the value of good music. Peter’s mother was the dancer Vera Zorina.
After 20 years of studying and teaching Tibetan meditation, Peter turned to composition full time in the 1990s. He met and married the exquisite mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt and, with her, formed a couple of devoted tranquility until her death from cancer in 2006. Soon after he, too, was diagnosed with cancer.

The late works that he wrote for Lorraine – Rilke songs, Neruda songs – are rapturous masterpieces, a world apart from his earlier, Buddhist-inflected contemplations. Three concertos – for viola (1992), horn (1998) and piano (2003, his third piano concerto) – reward repeated listening, as does his marvellous Six Realms for Cello, heard here.
And here’s Lorraine at Wigmore Hall, singing two Rilke Songs.
His music will not fade. Hers neither.

                               photo: boston.com

The long-awaited album by offbeat violinist Anna Karkowska is ready to ship. The website‘s running, there’s a new video clip and record critics everywhere are undergoing advanced neurological tests before addressing their reviews.

So confident is the artist that you’re going to love her work, she has posted this on the website:
We do NOT accept any returns or exchanges so please make sure to listen to our music samples available on line first before ordering. In case of a lost or damaged package please contact your carrier directly.

 
 anna karkowska
                                               photo: www.annakarkowska.com
 

My little dickie-bird in Tenerife tells me that the government is trying to scale down the music conservatory in order to spend more money on Anna Netrebko and friends at the high-profile music festival.

Here’s a local press report in Spanish. And here’s another. It would be pretty awful if this sort of thing were allowed to go through. We’d all have to go looking for another island paradise.

Tenerife is supposed to be Europe’s Capital of Culture in 2016. Might have to rethink that, too.

Max Vernon Matthews, one of the first musicians to extract coherent sounds from a computer, has died in San Francisco, aged 84. Matthews was important less for original compositions as for the path that he lit for others to work with the infernal machine. He was a significant influence and facilitator for Pierre Boulez in the early years of IRCAM.

Here is his pitch for posterity:
Computer performance of music was born in 1957 when an IBM 704 in NYC played a 17 second composition on the Music I program which I wrote. The timbres and notes were not inspiring, but the technical breakthrough is still reverberating. Music I led me to Music II through V. A host of others wrote Music 10, Music 360, Music 15, Csound, Cmix, and SuperCollider. Many exciting pieces are now performed digitally.

“The IBM 704 and its siblings were strictly studio machines–they were far too slow to synthesize music in real-time. Chowning’s FM algorithms and the advent of fast, inexpensive, digital chips made real-time possible, and equally important, made it affordable.


Photo: http://www.csounds.com/mathews/
Here’s a further comment from Holland Festival director, Lieven Bertels
 

I have fond memories of writing countless (and often nightly) hours in Csound at Durham university’s palace green music studio, then send off the lines of code to the computer department to only hear back the resulting fragment of electronic music the next morning. Frustrating at times, because if you disliked what you heard, you could only rewrite the code (more countless hours) and rerun the program. Csound was a direct development of Max’s work. His name lives on in IRCAM’s most influential piece of software, still going strong after 25 years and in use in almost every single concert using real-time control of sound (or often these days, video), aywhere in the world: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_(software)