US musicologists who persist in denying that Solomon Volkov’s book Testimony was based on extensive interviews with Dmitri Shostakovich mantain that the critic had hardly any contact with the great composer – at most, three meetings.

A forthcoming book, The Shostakovich Wars, by Allan B Ho and Dmitri Feofanov, soon to be posted online, brings fresh evidence of authenticity from an unexpected source – the pianist Vladimir Krainev, who shared first prize in the 1970 Tchaikovsky Competition with the Englishman John Lill and who became, soon after, Volkov’s roommate.  I have only just begun to read a pre-press version of Ho and Feofanov but what strikes me immediately is the disingenuous basis of some of the academic arguments, the desire to discredit Volkov overreaching the search for truth.

Here’s an exclusive extract from Ho and Feofanov:

Just as this book was about to go public, we learned of still another revelation
worth documenting.  This ‘bombshell’ came from Vladimir Krainev, who shared First
Prize with John Lill in the International Tchaikovsky Competition in 1970 and was one of
the most distinguished pianists in the world.  In his book Monolog Pianista (A Pianist's
Monologue), p. 106, published in 2011, Krainev confirms that ‘regular’ meetings took
place between Volkov and Shostakovich, after which Volkov told him about the content
of those conversations:
Then Zhenya [Yevgeny Nesterenko] moved to Moscow.  Both he and I
knew Solomon Volkov well.  The latter had been suggesting that we
perform duets.  I met Volkov during the Fourth Tchaikovsky Competition
— Solomon wrote a lot about it, did an extensive interview with me,
which he published in the Riga press.   We also met in Leningrad, where I
played often, and later Volkov moved to Moscow.  I lived in a three-room
apartment, with my mother, and she did not object for Solomon to stay
with us for about three months.  That was during the time when he had his
meetings with Shostakovich, which was the basis for the writing of
Testimony.   The authenticity of it, at a certain time, was contested, but the
fact that Volkov and Shostakovich met regularly is undeniable.  During the
nights, Solomon excitingly told me about their conversations, and also
advised me to join forces with Zhenya Nesterenko.


			

Last week, I reported that Glyndebourne had totted up a 99.18 ticket sale for the current season, ending tonight.

Tonight, Glyndebourne chairman Gus Christie announced at the end of The Turn of the Screw that the final tally was 99.3 percent. Must have been a late rush at the turnstiles.

He also revealed that 40,000 watched the live online screening of Britten’s opera via the Guardian website, an event that actually trended on twitter.

 

He’s meant to be conducting Beethoven’s Ninth in Tanglewood and Toronto.

Tanglewood’s been called off because of the hurricane.

Toronto is threatened by a murmurous chorus.

Not Lorin’s best weekend of the summer, then.

An 81 year-old writer who goes under the name Adonis (also Adunis) was handed the 50,000-Euro award in Frankfurt today. Report here.

 

Born Ali Ahmad Said Asbar, he did prison time in Damascus for not joining the ruling party, taught in Beirut 1970-85 and fled the civil war to Paris, where he became professor of Arabic at the Sorbonne.

Here’s a youtube video of Adonis reading a poem in Arabic.

Reports are coming in from Italy that Salvatore Licitra is in critical condition in hospital after a road accident.

Licitra, 43, a favourite at the Met since he stood in for a sick Pavarotti in 2002, is in hospital in Catania after a smash-up on his Vespa. He suffered cranial injuries and underwent emergency surgery. ANSA reports that the accident happened at 2230 Saturday night. Licitra’s Chinese girlfriend (unnamed) escaped with light bruises.

Say a prayer for his recovery.

Here’s La Reppublica‘s report.

Grave il tenore Licitra ferito in un incidente

LATEST: A statement has just appeared on Licitra’s website:

Dear friends of Salvatore Licitra,

Here is to inform that Salvatore Licitra suffered a severe traffic accident late Saturday night, August 27, in Modica (Ragusa, Sicily). He was brought to Garibaldi di Catania hospital where he is treated for his serious injuries.

When the Brazil Symphony Orchestra announced its plan to upgrade by sacking lots of players and holding international auditions, none was more up-front about the policy than its music director, Roberto Minczuk. Here was his open letter to me five months ago, inviting further questions about the controversial situation.

Well, it appears Mr Minczuk has apparently undergone a change of mind. A Canadian journalist who asked to interview him, ahead of a new season with the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, found the conductor was refusing to address the big issue in his life. Here’s Colin Eatock’s story.

 

Over recent years I have breakfasted with several chairman and chief execs of English National Opera, trying to persuading them to relax the company’s founding purpose of singing only in English. My reasoning was, in 21st century conditions, irrefutable.

ENO prides itself as a people’s opera. When London was monoglot, it sang in English. But London today is multicultural and has large cultural communities – half a million Poles, for instance – to whom English is, at best, a second language.

The Coliseum, where ENO moved in the 1970s, has a very deep stage and the words tend to get lost i singers are no well to the front. The present generation of singers has also lost the old technique of clear articulation. The house now has surtitles. Why reduce great opera to cod-English, when the original is superior and the words can be read, bright and clear, above the proscenium?

There is no case to answer. All I was told was that it would never get past the board – change the board, I said – and in any event could not be contemplated while George Harewood was alive. The Earl of Harewood, cousin to the Queen, was strictly ancien régime where use of language was concerned. Sadly, George died last month.

 

 Now, in this week’s Lebrecht Interview, ENO’s music director Ed Gardner, comes cautiously round to my point of view, as the Independent reports.

“I wonder if in a few years we might possibly look at doing an original language opera,” he ventures. “There is something lost – I’m not going to deny. It’s a compromise. The allure of the language, especially Italian can get a little bit lost, and you’re hopefully replacing it with something more immediate.” He suggested breaking the ice by doing Ariadne in two languages – comedy scenes in English, the opera itself in German.

This is slow progress, but progress nonetheless. The Little England policy makes no sense at all in 2011.

On other matters, Eton-educated Ed tackled his prevalent image among some orchestral players as Tory Boy conductor and talked frankly about having to deal with a tabloid frenzy over a break-up in his private life. The Lebrecht Interview is tomorrow at 9.45 pm.

A new iPad application has gone up giving downloads from this summer’s Tchaikovsky Competition – and it’s free, I’m told.

Here’s the link – itunes.apple.com/en/app/id441739995?mt=8 – and there’s more to come.

It shows all the performances (some 200 videos) which were filmed at the Competition, as well as behind the scenes videos, information on the competitors, in 7 languages.

Something for Steve Jobs to enjoy in retirement.

There’s been trouble at the Creek all summer – the Black Creek Festival in Toronto, where many events have been cancelled for lack of public interest.

One performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the LSO under Lorin Maazel will go ahead this weekend. The chorus say that their contract is not being honoured for the other dates.  At least three members have refused to sing. There is talk of possible strike action. Here’s their statement:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:    
POTENTIAL WORK STOPPAGE AT BLACK CREEK FESTIVAL
 No “Ode to Joy” at the Black Creek Music Festival
When Garth Drabinsky’s Black Creek Summer Music Festival announced in July that several concerts in late August were being cancelled due to a lack of ticket sales, they forgot to inform a group of performers who have played a vital role in the organization’s inaugural year:  the Chorus. It wasn’t until August 2nd that the Black Creek Festival Chorus, an auditioned ensemble made up of many of the finest singers in the Toronto area, was informed that the dates they had been contractually obligated to keep open for the Festival would not be used.
Adding insult to injury, Drabinsky met with the Chorus at a rehearsal on Tuesday night to explain that the Festival would not be paying any cancellation fee, disregarding the language of the Chorus Agreement. “For our purposes, this is how we interpret the contract”, Drabinsky stated. “If you don’t like it, well, you don’t have to be here.”
Ticket-holders for the Festival’s final performance, featuring Beethoven’s 9th Symphony with Lorin Maazel and the London Symphony Orchestra, may find themselves watching an 80-member chorus rising for the “Ode to Joy” with very little to be joyful about.
Ensemble singers are not strangers to being on the lower rungs of the performing arts ladder, but the Black Creek Festival has set a new low with such blatant disregard for the language in their own Agreement. It is difficult to understand how the most egregious of their breaches of contract could be justified, considering the unambiguous nature of clauses such as: “For cancelled Performances, You will receive one-half of the Performance Compensation”.
Garth Drabinsky may have bitten off more than he can chew in his grand plan to reinvent York University’s Rexall Centre as a major summer concert venue in Toronto. He should be applauded for his efforts, but it’s too soon for Toronto to pat him on the back for a job well done. Maazel and the London Symphony players will get their cheques, to be sure. But when the locals go unpaid, and are still expected to smile for the JumboTron on Saturday night, supporters of this new Festival should be asking themselves if this is really a step forward for Toronto, or just another feather in Drabinsky’s infamous cap.
Chorus members will take time during the scheduled rehearsal Wednesday evening to discuss their options. Recent labour disputes in North American performing arts organizations have provided many examples for the Chorus to consider in deciding how to make their voices heard- either in song, or in anger.
Requests for information can be made to the following address, to which all members of the Black Creek Festival Chorus have access:
BlackCreekChorus@yahoo.ca

 

Berry Gordy’s sister Esther has died, aged 91. She mentored Stevie from age 14.

Esther’s seen here with Smokey Robinson. Here‘s the Rolling Stone appreciation.

These are raw figures from today’s press release and I don’t have 2010 to hand, but it looks like a slight dip on past years.

Visitor totals reached 251,000, revenues Euro 24.8 million.

Some of it went to charity:

  • Following the appeal to donate for the victims of the hunger catastrophe in Eastern Africa after the dress rehearsals for Le Nozze di Figaro, Cosi fan tutte, Don Giovanni, Macbeth and The Makropulos Case, many audience members responded, donating an overall sum of  € 25,791.13 (for Nachbar in Not).

Angela Denoke and Ryland Davies in The Makropulos Affair?a>” width=”300″ height=”199″ /></a></p>
<ul>
<li>July 25: Benefit dress rehearsal for<em> Jedermann</em> for a project for street children in Alexandria (Caritas) <strong>€ 40,000</strong> for the hunger catastrophe in Eastern Africa (Nachbar in Not) <strong>€ 40,000</strong>, and for the SOS – Children’s Village ClearingHouse <strong>€ 10,000</strong></li>
</ul>
<p> </p>
<ul>
<li>July 29: Benefit dress rehearsal for <em>Prometeo </em>for Kollegienkirche renovations,</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>€ 11,505</strong></p>
<p> </p>
<ul>
<li>August 13: Salzburg Festival helps Japan / Kawasaki, Salzburg’s partner city,</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>€ 158,065</strong></p>
<p> </p>
<p>I know, not as good as<a href= Glyndebourne.

Battle is about to resume over the ideological legacy of Dmitri Shostakovich.

One side believe that Solomon Volkov’s book  Testimony consists essentially of the great composer’s thought and present him as a brave resistant to Soviet tyranny.

On the other side, the American musicologist Richard Taruskin and his international allies dismiss Testimony as fraudulent and maintain that Shostakovich was a cowering lackey who did as he was told by the regime.

The battle has gone quiet in the last couple of years, but for  much longer. A document titled The Shostakovich Wars is about to be posted by Dr Allan B Ho on his university website in Illinois. The anti-Testimony side can expect a blasting. One chapter is titled:

Richard Taruskin: ‘America’s Most Brilliant Musicologist’, or Just Another ‘Neuvazhai-Koryto’?  I think the Russian phrase (from Gogol) means ‘a pig who disrespects his trough’.

I will let you know as soon as the Dr Ho document goes online.