There are many Philharmonic Orchestras in the world, full of pomp and circumstance, but there’s only one Phil – and that, as any well-educated child will confirm, is Liverpool. The Royal Liverpool, if we’re being formal.

There’s a musical spirit on the Mersey unlike any other and I’m always chuffed to go and hear the Phil even when, as for much of the past two decades, they’ve been down in the dumps. But they’re right back on top form now with young maestro Vassily Petrenko and there’s no telling how high they might fly.
Which is why I’d like to drop a little word of caution in your ears, guys and gals.
Thelma Handy, Joint Leader
There’s a new conductor coming your way next month, apparently for his UK debut. His name is Roberto Minczuk and he’s music director of the Brazilian Symphony Orchestra, which – if you’ve been reading this space as attentively as I know you do – you will be aware has just summarily sacked half its players for ‘insubordination’. The other half are being made to reaudition for their jobs. Meantime, the youth orchestra is being substituted for adult players.
This process appears to be the bright idea of Mr Minczuk and it is totally at odds with modern practice in civilised orchestras. As soon as Mr Minczuk is finished with you lot next month, he’s heading down to London to try and recruit some hungry freelancers to fill the gaps he has caused in the OSB. They, like you, should be aware of what this chap is up to.
Now far be it for a deskbound southerner like me to advise the working classes of Liverpool on matters of industrial relations. But, purely as a matter of pride and solidarity, I thought some of you might like to send a message to Mr Minczuk – either through your management, or via this space – on what you think of his show so far… and whether you want to play with a bloke from the other side of the world who has so much musician misery on his conscience.
And if you’re short of a tango conductor on May 12, I’m sure I can find a local substitute.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not asking you to boycott Minczuk, as many others are already doing. Just let him know your feelings and maybe he’ll think twice.
That’s it, guys and gals. I’m so looking forward to be with you later this year.
Love to Jayne, Vasily, Ed and all the ex-Brummies.
Ta-ra for now.
Norman

The premier Brazilian pianist Nelson Freire has announced his withdrawl from concerts with the Brazilian Symphony Orchestra, which has sacked half its musicians in a reaudition dispute. His withdrawal follows that of Cristina Ortiz yesterday.

The soloists appear to be starting a solidarity movement with the orchestral musicians.

I received the following note indirectly from Freire’s office:

This morning, pianist Nelson Freire cancelled his concerts in August 2011 with Orquestra Sinfônica Brasileira. “Having followed the sad news about mass dismissal of musicians, Nelson Freire has cancelled his appearance in August with Orquestra Sinfônica Brasileira”. 

Nelson, whose first appearance with OSB was in 1956, arrived this morning in Paris, where he plays three times this week – on Wednesday, in a benefit concerto for Japan; an two times at Salle Pleyel.
 

http://www.deccaclassics.com/ontour/?ART_ID=FRENE

 
 
 
 
Nelson Freire, o pianista com a mais longa história com a Orquestra Sinfônica Brasileira: 55 anos ( com a orquestra pela primeira vez em 1956) acaba de cancelar os concertos desta temporada.


 

Tendo companhado as noticias através de todos os jornais, o pianista Nelson Freire decidiu cancelar os compromissos com a OSB em 2011, chocado com a demissão em massa dos músicos. Ele chegou hoje (4/4) a Paris, e se apresenta três vezes nesta semana – na quarta, num concerto em benefício das vitimas do terremoto no Japão; dia 8, um concerto na Salle Pleyel (tocando o Concerto n. 2 de Chopin) e dia 11, um recital na mesma Salle Pleyel; e nas próximas semanas em Genebra, Grenoble, Lyon e na Itália.

It looks like it …

According to this breaking story, they could be playing again as soon as next weekend.
The reporter’s name, by the way, is Stryker. He is studiously neutral.
LATE EXTRA: This from the Detroit musicians’ site within the past hour
MDSO wishes to announce that it has reached tentative agreement with DSO management. The orchestra will meet to discuss the offer and take a ratification vote in the next few of days. Please stay tuned.

LATE EXTRA: This from the Detroit musicians’ site within the past hour

MDSO wishes to announce that it has reached tentative agreement with DSO management. The orchestra will meet to discuss the offer and take a ratification vote in the next few of days. Please stay tuned.

The reconstituted Classic (formerly Classical) Brits have announced their first award.

The Artist of the Decade is… sound of envelope ripping …. Il Divo!!!!!
Apparently they have sold 25 million records worldwide and are signed to Simon Cowell’s label.
Cowell pulls most significant strings in the sad old music business these days.
So the four boys in bland are crowned as epochal artists.
Emigrations to another planet are expected to rise exponentially.

                              Cowell and his boys. Picture: Daily Mail. all rights reserved

The Salzburg summer festival is suffering the first of its annual embarrassments with a spate of allegations linking the man invited to give its opening lecture, Swiss sociologist Jean Ziegler, to the tottering Libyan dictator.

Ziegler, an anti-globalisation activist who was invited to speak at Salzburg on the topic of hunger, founded the Gaddafi Human Rights Prize in 1989 and was awarded it himself in 2002.
Ziegler, 76, describes the attacks on him as slanderous and linked them to the festival’s major sponsors, Nestlé and Credit Suisse. ‘That’s how fat cats operate,’ he told Austrian Radio.
Ziegler now describes Gaddafi as a psychopath and mass murderer.
The invitation, however, has been withdrawn. 
Given the past record of the two Swiss sponsors, hunger might not have been the cleverest theme for Salzburg to choose. And given Ziegler’s pronounced anti-Americanism, he was pretty much guaranteed to infuriate an influential audience sector.
Sound like a complete collapse of curatorial intelligence in the festival office.

This is Mr Ziegler.

This is the Salzburg audience.
And this is what they won’t be discussing.

The chequebook’s still open. Sony Classical have signed David Greilsamer, the Israeli pianist and conductor on a three-year deal, he has told y-net.

Music director of the Geneva Chamber Orchestra, Greilsamer has cut some pretty good tracks for the Naive label.
He’s Sony’s third signing in a week, after Leif-Ove Andsnes and the Emerson Quartet.
Here’s the y-net story (in Hebrew)

Gustavo Dudamel is a daddy.

His wife Eloise gave birth to a boy Friday night.
It made the Los Angeles TV news.
Now that’s celebrity….

The birth was announced to the media by Deborah Borda, president of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
It’s a boy, named Martin, 6 pounds 13 ounces.
Dude cut the Ernest Fleischmann memorial concert Tuesday night to await the birth. He’ll be back in action in a month.
Congratulations to both parents. Welcome to the real world.
Farewell gilded youth.

The city of Buenos Aires has fired half of the musicians in the Teatro Colon for going on strike over late payments.

The musicians, who won support last week from the visiting Placido Domingo and accompanied his concert for free, are taking their case to court. See here for details. And here for a softer version.
It is impossible to ignore parallels with the brutal dispute being played out in Brazil. Foreign artists and managers are starting to put both orchestras on an international blacklist.

There’s a wonderful letter in the Guardian today criticising its recent review of Dorian Lynskey’s fine history of the modern protest song, 33 Revolutions per Minute.

From an address in Pantin, France, the reader objects – reasonably enough – to the book’s anglo-centricity, its tight focus on the American folk uprising of the 1960s and its British and Commonwealth echoes. 
‘France has a tradition of setting protest to music that goes back as far as the 18th century,’ he argues, naming Boris Vian, Jacques Brel and Georges Brassens among recent song protesters. I would add Barbara’s Sida song to that list, but I’m about to make a documentary about her, and therefore biased.
I would also add the protest singers of Prague 1968 and many samizdat songs that circulated elsewhere in the Soviet Bloc. But in all of these instances, including the French, the protest was localised. In the songs that Dorian Lynskey discusses it was universalised by the force of the global music industry.
So much, so fair criticism.
But the cherry on my pleasure from reading this letter was the name of its signatory: Bernard Besserglik. Which, in Yiddish, basically means: better luck next time.

The international Brazilian pianist Cristina Ortiz has cancelled her concert this month with the strife-torn Brazil Symphony Orchestra, which has sacked half its musicians. So has her conductor Roberto Tibirica, who has a long association with the orchestra. 

Cristina is married to Jasper Parrott, head of the London-based HarrisonParrott agency. Her gesture is likely to set a trend for other artists.


The international Brazilian cellist Antonio Meneses has published an article today, declaring his distress and perplexity at the way musicians are being treated and calling on the management to retract the sackings. A more humane and diplomatic solutuon must be pursued, he argues. Here’s the link (in Portuguese). 

Wikio UK, which measures web usage of blogs and social networks, has sent me an April chart showing Slipped Disc at number 8 in the general music listings, up from 17th in February and 12th in March.

It is also the highest ranked blog in classical music.
Thanks for reading. More to come.

And charts to follow.
1 SoulCulture.co.uk
2 Musicrooms.net
3 St. Peter’s View
4 Lil Wayne HQ
5 Alter The Press!
6 Matrixsynth
7 No Rock And Roll Fun
8 Slipped disc
9 Word Magazine blogs
10 LondonJazz
11 uncarved.org blog
12 Live4ever – The Brit Rock Daily
13 Intermezzo
14 Song, by Toad
15 Tom Service on classical music
16 We Plug G.O.O.D Music
17 Sweeping The Nation
18 Stereoboard.com Music & Tour News
19 Popjustice
20 Raiding The Vinyl Archive

Ranking made by Wikio.co.uk

I’ve just heard from the jury room in Toronto.

Leonard Cohen is the 9th winner of the C$50,000 Glenn Gould award.
That’s made me go all weak at the knees. Susanne, take my hand…
Report follows









Past winners include Oscar Peterson and Pierre Boulez. This time Stephen Fry was one of the judges. I guess he’ll claim credit for the choice and some brotherhood in gloom.

Here’s the CBC report.

And from the press release, just landed:

Jury Chair Paul Hoffert said, “The jury was unanimous in selecting Leonard Cohen
as the Ninth Glenn Gould Prize laureate.  His poetry and music transcend
national boundaries and cultures by touching our common humanity.  His unique
voice is nonetheless the common voice of people around the globe telling our
stories, expressing our emotions, reaching deeply into our psyches. Like Glenn
Gould, his work touches audiences far outside his main genre. 
Hallelujah!”

The illustrious jury for the Ninth Glenn Gould Prize
included singer/songwriter, indie producer and UN Goodwill Ambassador Dadawa
(China); screenwriter, film and opera director Atom Egoyan (Canada); actor,
screenwriter, author and director Stephen Fry (UK); celebrated pianist, teacher,
author and music administrator Gary Graffman (United States); film producer,
founder and director of DHC/ART Foundation for Contemporary Art and PHI Group
Phoebe Greenberg (Canada); singer, educator and vocal producer Elaine Overholt
(Canada); and recording industry executive Costa Pilavachi
(Canada/UK/Greece).