Here’s the official medical bulletin from Salvatore Licitra’s website. Keep up those prayers for his recovery.
Update on Salvatore Licitra’s medical condition (August 31, 2011)
Salvatore Licitra remains in Garibaldi Hospital in Catania, Italy, after his accident in traffic riding a scooter on August 27, 2011. Due to his severe head injuries surgery was necessary. The operation was successful. He is in a coma, however, in stable condition.
As the hospital declared for today, no changes were reported regarding the health situation of Salvatore Licitra. In consideration of the symptoms the actual condition remains stable and unchanged (bulletin of the hospital on August 31, 2011 at 11:30 am).
His doctor, dott. Sergio Pintaudi, previously indicated that Salvatore Licitra may have had a bleeding inside the brain, cerebral hemorrhage, immediately before the accident. This could have caused him to loose control of the vehicle.
The website will be updated as soon as new information becomes available
Yeah, that’s him, fresh from the Apple store (remember?)
A small group of musicians has sent a letter to the Independent newspaper calling on the BBC to cancel this week’s Prom by the Israel Philharmonic. The gesture is absurd, almost beyond words. The BBC knew what it was doing when it invited the Israel Phil. Political conditions have nmot changed markedly since the invitation was issued.
To cancel now would constitute breach of contract and leave an empty Prom night – something which has not happened for nearly 30 years (apart from a fire alarm in 2006, as one sharp-eyed reader points out).
So why send the letter? To draw attention to themselves, I suspect.
None is a player of great note and at least one is a permanent pro-Pal activist.
I attach the list of shame:
Derek Ball (composer)
Frances Bernstein (community choir leader)
Steve Bingham (violinist)
John Claydon (saxophonist)
Malcolm Crowthers (music photographer)
Raymond Deane (composer)
Tom Eisner (violinist LPO)
Nancy Elan (violinist LPO)
Deborah Fink (soprano)
Catherine Ford (violinist, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment)
Reem Kelani (Palestinian singer, musician and broadcaster)
Les Levidow (violinist)
Susie Meszaros (violinist, Chilingirian Quartet)
Roy Mowatt (violinist, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment)
Ian Pace (pianist)
Leon Rosselson (singer-songwriter)
Dominic Saunders (pianist)
Chris Somes-Charlton (artist manager)
Leni Solinger (violinist)
Sarah Streatfeild (violinist LPO)
Sue Sutherley (cellist, LPO)
Tom Suarez (violinist, New York)
Kareem [name redacted by request] (Oud Player/Guitarist and Composer)
Miriam Walton (pianist, organist and French horn player)
UPDATE: None of the above musicians has, so far as I am aware, condemned the disruption of the concert by people sharing their views. Here’s a further reflection.
Forced to pull out of an important China tour after a single warm-up performance in Mastumoto, the 76 year-old conductor has reportedly been admitted to hospital with a bout of pneumonia. Here’s Reuters bulletin.
I am thrilled to learn from BBC Newsbeat that a baby announcement on a minority channel broke the twitter record at 8,868 tps (tweets per second, newbies).
I am even more thrilled to learn that it is a new baby in the Mahler family. The singer Beyonce, pregnant at 29, is an eighth cousin of the great composer, four times removed (see Why Mahler?, page 13).
Let’s wish her an easy pregnancy and happy outcome. If it’s a boy, this could bring Gustav right back into the top ten baby names.
(yep, that Alma with baby Anna from http://www.alma-mahler.com)
The Shostakovich Wars – or how US academics ganged up on Solomon Volkov’s book Testimony – is now online and free to read.
The chapter that will excite most interest is a devastating, line-for-line account of the twists and turns that Professor Richard Taruskin has performed to maintain an intellectually untenable position.
Taruskin is not just the Most Brilliant – an accolade bestowed on his by the authors Allan B Ho and Dmitri Feofanov* – but also the most powerful musicologist in America, a maker and breaker of academic careers.
This contrapuntal account of his works makes irresistible reading.
Here’s in the link: http://www.siue.edu/~aho/ShostakovichWars/SW.pdf –
*Allan B Ho has just contacted me to disown the Most Brilliant accolade. It was, he says, bestowed by ‘one of Taruski’ns longtime friends, Rose Subotnik, hence the quotation marks. He or his publisher then used that for promotion purposes on the dust jacket of his book “Text and Act”. ‘
Ahead of tonight’s opening, I had a private backstage tour of Helsinki’s promising Music Centre, perhaps the most auspicious concert hall since Walt Disney in LA – and with the same acoustician. But more of that when I have heard it in action.
Yesterday, I got to see where the two resident orchestras get to hang their bows and bells. Being Finland, the musicians were asked what facilities they wanted backstage. The Helsinki Philharmonic put in for coffee machines and spartan, designer armchairs. The Finnish Radio Orchestra asked for saunas.
And got them. Separate ones, men and women, already in use after sound-test rehearsal by evidence of yesterday’s puddles on the floor.
These are strictly orchestra-only saunas. I guess they might allow an occasional soloist to squeeze onto a crowded bench if he or she asks really nicely. But no conductors. That’s the rule. Unless some musician gets an overwhelming urge post-concert to beat a maestro with birch twigs.
UPDATE: Paul Curran, outgoing artistic director of Norwegian Opera and Ballet, has messaged me to say his new house has backstage saunas, too. I guess they let singers in, disturbing the perfect peace.
LATEST: The conductor Jesper Nordin tweets that the radio hall in Copenhagen installed a sauna (below) for the use of Leif Segerstam when he became conductor. Helsinki, more democratic, has listened to its musicians.
