The Proms office has just announced that Jiri Belohlavek, chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, has contracted a virus and been ordered to rest for a month. He will miss the concerts on August 14 and 22. We wish him a speedy recovery.
Belohlavek will leave the BBC after the London Olympics next year to resume as chief conductor of the ever-troubled Czech Philharmonic.
Mark Wigglesworth (below) steps in for the first concert, Thomas Dausgaard for the second.
That’s the headline on a Classical Music advertisement for Malko, the upcoming Copenhagen competition for young conductors.
Don’t ask what attracted Mr Maazel to Denmark. Business as usual, is my guess.
But I’m not sure that, for all his many qualities, I’d count Lorin Maazel as the ideal role model for an aspiring music director. Maazel, 81, has been head of many big orchestras and opera houses in his time – Deutsche Oper Berlin, Cleveland, Vienna State Opera, Pittsburgh, Bavarian Radio, New York Philharmonic, Valenica Orchestra, Arturo Toscanini Philharmonic, Munich Philharmonic (from 2012) – too many, some feel, to leave a strong personal imprint on the profession. He has enjoyed immense success without embedding a visible creative legacy. His hard-drive was ego.
But that’s just my interpretation. Here’s what the maestro himself has to say on the Malko website:
“Competitions, like every undertaking designed to identify tomorrow’s leaders, are only worth the effort expended if they are well-organized, honest and produce winners who show the requisite potential for an enduring success in their chosen field.
When asked to be President of the 2012 Malko Conductor’s Competition Jury, I accepted only after becoming convinced that the competition indeed meets the above criteria.
What defines a conductor as opposed to a baton-wielder escapes definition but all of us know a real conductor when we see one. To spot one in the making, however, is not that straight forward? I have joined with the administration of the Malko Competition in selecting jury members who have the experience and instinct to perceive that ephemeral, elusive conducting talent that is a pre-requisite for a worthy career.
Everyone wants to conduct…not many can. Today, excellent orchestras abound but there are woefully few truly great conductors. Eighty years ago, the situation was just the reverse…scores of brilliant conductors, few really top-grade orchestras. In the 1930s there were Toscanini, Furtwaengler, Walter, De Sabata, Reiner, Monteux, Klemperer… to mention but a few… who set stunning standards of excellence that endure to this day.
Our task at the Malko Competition will be to ferret out true young talents as opposed to the clever hacks so many hopefuls eventually become. We will eschew the slick in favour of the genuine. But let there be no mistake. Simply loving music, being devoted to it and being well-versed in its technicalities, will not suffice. We will be on the lookout for the conducting instinct that sets aside the well-meaning music-loving baton-waver from the true conductor who… with a look, a gesture, a thrust… makes music come alive from the printed page, presides over a performance that becomes a vibrant, palpable artistic experience no one in the orchestra or attending public can ever forget.”
The latest outreach coup by the sleepless Los Angeles Philharmonic is to get its music director onto kiddies TV.
Yes, it’s Gustavo Dudamel on Sesame Street, coming up this season on PBS KIDS, date tba (see press release below).
How do they do it? Every orch in the US of A is dying to get a few seconds of screen time for its conductor and only Dude gets out there.
It’s not just that he’s young, cool and Hispanic. It’s that he’s got a vibrant, out-of-the-box orchestra management working behind him – as you may have heard Deborah Borda explain on the Lebrecht Interview.
MEDIA ALERT ** MEDIA ALERT ** MEDIA ALERT
GUSTAVO DUDAMEL TO MAKE AN APPEARANCE ON AWARD-WINNING SERIESSESAME STREET
Sesame Street’s 42nd Season Premieres on September 26
Broadcast Date for Gustavo Dudamel’s Appearance To Be Announced
WHAT: Los Angeles Philharmonic Music Director Gustavo Dudamel will make an appearance on the award-winning preschool series Sesame Street, which begins its 42nd season on September 26 on PBS KIDS (please check your local listings). The exact broadcast date for his appearance will be announced soon.
Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic begin the 2011/12 season at Walt Disney Concert Hall on September 27. In this third season of partnership, the LA Phil breaks new ground, with pioneering productions and inventive stagings of significant works under Dudamel’s leadership. The season’s major projects, with 9 new commissions, 7 world premieres, 4U.S. premieres and 5 West Coast premieres, include a complete Mahler symphonic cycle performed in two countries and the first installment of a three-year Mozart opera project.
Please visit www.LAPhil.com for complete programming details and subscriptions for the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s 2011/12 season.
Sesame Street, beloved by four decades of preschoolers and their caregivers, launches season 42 on PBS KIDS September 26. In an effort to encourage school readiness, especially in the disciplines of science and math, areas where U.S. students are falling behind, the new season focuses on a STEM curriculum, an acronym for science, technology, engineering and math. Other season highlights include original songs and street stories; a brand new segment “Murray’s Science Experiments”; new “Super Grover 2.0” stories and new “Abby’s Flying Fairy School” animations. Also in season 42 are many humorous celebrity moments featuring Elmo, Oscar, Abby and their friends making keen observations and showing their interest in hands-on investigation…all of which reinforce and encourage preschoolers to say: “Let’s find out!”
For more information, please visit www.seasamestreet.org.
Photos of Gustavo Dudamel with Sesame Street characters may be downloaded at http://www.laphil.com/press/image-library/index.cfm.
There’s a world premiere coming up in Tokyo the week after next. It’s Alfred Schnittke’s complete music for glass harmonica.
All right, all right, don’t all rush for the exits. A few moments of glass harmonica wooziness can empty a house like a desert rat at the door, as Mozart discovered with the public response to his seldom-played late Adagio.
But this is not just glass harmonica. It’s glass harmonica with a great movie by a young composer still discovering his voice.
Schnittke resurrected the wacko instrument for an ambitious score he composed in 1968 for an animation short by Andrej Khrzhanovsky. You can see excerpts here and here on youtube. The music is of startling, hypnotic beauty.
The films will be shown at Suntory Hall on August 22, ith the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra conducted by Kazuyoshi Akiyama. Wish I were there.
(Here’s more on Khrzhanonvsky.)
