The conductor Fabio Luisi, music director at Zurich Opera and principal guest at the Met, has issued a personal endorsement of Gidon Kremer’s attack on the machinations of the classical music industry and its manufacture of fake stars.

I present Fabio’s letter without commentary. His views on the British classical industry in particular will be widely supported. Here’s Fabio:

 

Dear Norman,

It is all about balancing business, audience reception and art – an old issue, if we think of “Wunderkinder” in the past. But now it is not so much about “Wunderkinder”, more about the managers’ (and audience’s) loss of capacity of discerning between talent, appearance and real musical maturity.
Take singers, for example. Could Jessye Norman have become Jessye Norman without her time spent in Düsseldorf as member of the Ensemble, allowing her to deepen the repertoire and to learn new roles away from the “big” (and dangerous) stages, and even making a pause for learning, refusing to sing opera for five years?
Or conductors: Karajan without having been in Aachen, Kleiber in Stuttgart, Thielemann as coach in Berlin and Bayreuth (and then in Nürnberg as conductor), emerging on the “big” podiums of important orchestras and opera houses relatively late.
We are now experiencing an attitude of  “the younger, the better”, insinuating the following message: if they conduct (or sing, or play) with such orchestras, in such opera houses, in TV, on DVD, they must really be geniuses. They are presented as such and the media swallow these PR-strategies, slavishly repeating pre-cooked sentences.
This means profit for PR-agencies, for artist management companies (sorry to say this, Norman – British companies have a lot of responsibility in this) and eventually for promoters and presenters as well.
I don’t blame institutions for being a part (the paying one, actually) in this circus: I probably would act alike, since my priority would be to sell tickets and to have artists in my season whom the public recognise. I blame those who sell as “art” something which is mainly “business”, and those who are not willing to tell (or maybe to see? even worse!) that “the emperor has no clothes”.
We see many young, gifted musicians who reach the most important music places in the world, pushed by managers and sought after by presenters who must constantly offer “fresh meat” to the audience: the next Netrebko, the next Pavarotti, the next Bernstein, the next Rubinstein, the next Oistrakh. They are “the nextes” and they don’t have time to be themselves, to develop to be themselves – many of them will disappear soon (we already have seen how many have disappeared after a couple of CDs, after concerts in Salzburg, Verbier, after productions in Milano, New York or London) although they might have talent and skills for a serious career.
This is the reason I appreciate this wonderful Gidon Kremer letter, because it is fresh, ironical, true and it comes from a real artist which constantly worked on himself trying to improve himself, refusing to be pushed by whomever.
Yours
Fabio
photo: Barbara Luisi

So far, the most talked-about artistic acheivement at the Bayreuth Festival is Katharina Wagner’s loss of weight – 20 kilos since last summer.

That’s her on the right in the dpa picture below. The other one’s her much-loved half-sis, Eva.

Musik - Katharina Wagner mit neuem Selbstbewusstsein

Katie’s been telling the tabs that she had some muscular pains, the medication for which caused loss of appetite. She’s been living mostly off sushi and sashimi, with the occasional glass of white wine and regular gym workouts. See? It’s easy. Any Wagner can do it.
More details here in Focus Online.
This is the same pair, two summers back:
(photo:wikipedia)
Eva, meanwhile, has told the Friends of Bayreuth that if they can’t raise millions more money, she going to shut the place down. Good cop, bad cop.

Events are moving fast in Rio.

O Globo reports that the OSB has invited the 33 sacked musicians to resume their former jobs, under terms to be negotiated. The new three-person artistic committee has taken over planning, sidelining the former director Roberto Minczuk. And the withdrawal yesterday of Minczuk’s mentor Kurt Masur, reportedly for medical reasons, has eliminated one of the last flashpoints in the dispute.

Hopefully, peace might break out soon.

For the moment, the OSB management are saying nothing.

Foreign artists who have faced difficulty in entering Britain have been promised a smoother path, thanks to an initiative of the Arts Council and the TV producers’ organisation. PACT.

Between them, the two bodies have secured 300 visas for people who are “internationally recognised as world leaders in the arts” to stay in Britain for up to three years and four months without having to show that they have somewhere to work. It specifically co0vers artists who want to live in the UK for long period, not concerto fly-by-nights.

More details here. The commendable scheme is designed to curb recent embarrassments.

 

The septuagenarian tenor has just been announced as the new president of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), which represents the interests of labels in protecting copyright and pursuing violators.

He is a figurehead, no more.

Just as he would have been had he been appointed to clean up the corrupt football body, Fifa.

Domingo is not a lawyer, nor an expert in intellectual property rights. Here’s the official justification for his appointment:

IFPI chief executive Frances Moore said Domingo was an artist who ‘speaks from the heart about the issues that matter to him … His forceful advocacy for the intellectual property rights of the music sector comes at a pivotal moment, as governments in many countries consider new legislation to curb piracy and help develop the legitimate digital music business.’

In other words, he’s a celebrity lobbyist. Yuk!

It would be helpful if he first showed an interest in the ruthless exploitation of Russian musicians in his own Operalia contest.

 

The Cincinnati Art Museum has discovered 800 antique musical instruments in its basement. How wonderful.

Some are more than 400 years old. They have been lying there unnoticed for decades.

How on earth?

Museum director Aaron Betsky said there wasn’t enough room for them on the main floor. There had been plans to expand, but the money ran out and the museum laid off staff and everyone forgot about the instruments.

That, for me, is irresponsible curatorship. How can a museum lose a prize collection? Surely there must be an inventory or catalogue that someone scans from time to time. And if the museum is short of cash, shouldn’t be thinking of selling assets, like its historic instrument collection.

It’s a shocking story that needs a lot more scrutiny than it is getting.

Here are some of the objects.

 

I’ve received the following inside story from a US orchestra that, far from the limelight, has been undergoing a similar upheaval to the Brazil Symphony Orchestra with Roberto Minczuk. To what effect? You might well ask. Here’s the letter, all identifying names deleted.

 

Dear Mr. Lebrecht:

I have been following your coverage of events in Brazil with a bit
more than keen interest as a large number of musicians in xxxxx
have suffered the same fate.

After our long time conductor left some 10 years ago, his replacement
was hired after a national search. This very young “maestro” (as he
insisted on being called) did not have his predecessor’s finesse nor
ability to “teach” an orchestra of part-time musicians. Thus, his
first season with the symphony was lackluster at best.

His solution? Fire a host of players and most of the artistic and
eventually management staff. What we are left with is a regional
orchestra (at best) that has to reach wider and wider to obtain
players willing to perform here. Needless to say, in the past ten
years, the orchestra’s staff has ballooned, the budget doubled and the
number of performances decreased. The remaining “local” musicians are
downtrodden at best but continue to play because there is no other
opportunity in the immediate area.

The Board of Directors as well as the orchestra management is
convinced that the orchestra sounds “better than ever” (it doesn’t–at
best it’s the same).

I just wanted to let you know that such problems exist beyond the
reach of major media markets in orchestras devoid of adequate union or
contractual protection.

 

Terrible story just in from Germany.

The Swiss conductor Carl Robert Helg was killed while rehearsing a farewell gala performance in Karlsruhe for the director of Baden State Theatre.

It appars he had climbed up a lighting gantry on Saturday to get a better overview of the choirs and suffered a fatal fall. More details here.

Carl Robert Helg at one of his conducting engagements.  He was formerly choir director in Wiesbaden and many of his commitment to the "L'Opera Piccola" Bad Schwalbach known.  Photo: private

 

I am receiving reports from Rio that Kurt Masur has pulled out of his Beethoven concerts with the OSB.

A mentor of the crisis-stricken chief conductor Roberto Minczuk, Masur initially offered him public support in an open letter, urging the orchestra’s musicians to do as he told them.

But since 33 players were dismissed it has proved difficult to replace them and the venerable German conductor has wisely decided to remove himself from the thick of the controversy.

His cancellation has yet to be confirmed by the orchestra’s management. Minczuk has been stripped of the artistic director title, but continues to describe himself as such on his website and facebook page.

The crisis is no nearer resolution.

Yes, it was Lang Lang – and I was allowed in on condition I did not write a word about it.

So I won’t.

Except to say that those who asked me to refrain from writing had reason to do so.

I am, however, allowed to review the audience which was a crowd of thirty-somethings, eager to jump up and down for 2 amplified cellos and percussion, a little bewildered by Lang Lang. But polite. One lady was kind enough to offer me earplugs during the percussion gig.

You can see pictures of the Roundhouse show here and iTunes is offering it here as a free download.

I was reliably informed that Lang Lang was the festival’s classical virgin. I now hear that guitarist Milos Karadaglic beat him to it by a year. More contenders are flooding in. What’s the point, i-Tunes, of over-hyping the event?

 

 

 

 

 

It belongs to every list of iconic movies: the first sight a mass audience had of modern Greece.

Its director, Michael Cacoyannis, has died aged 89. Obit here.

 

The music by Mikis Theodorakis is profoundly atmospheric, with a theme tune that was later used to whip up crowd support at football matches.

The results are just in:

Soprano Pretty Yende is top lady, tenor Rene Barbera top bloke.

Here’s a full report (in Dutch). Lucky winners, with a 30,000 Euro prize.
The losers, as reported earlier, are the Russian players in the orchestra.