Franz Liszt’s B minor piano sonata is one of the minefields of keyboard literature, a place where many venture and few emerge intact.

For the better part of 200 years, it has broken the hearts and fingers of piano aspirants. Why would anyone else attempt it? The violinist Giora Schmidt is having a go at Ravinia next month, with some help from his iPad. He explains how and why below.

During a transatlantic flight about ten years ago,

I started hearing in my head the mysterious opening of the B-minor Sonata played on the violin.

I felt it had a special power to it, emphasizing with concentrated energy the diabolical, dark side of the piece.

But immediately I said to myself: this piece cannot possibly be played on the violin, be reasonable!

The impossibility of it attracted me - to develop a new instrumental language on the way to interpreting a familiar masterpiece.

When I first looked at Noam Sivan’s transcription my gut instinct was: this can be done.

And it’s by far the most difficult project I have undertaken in my musical life.

There is an incredible power and storminess to Liszt’s music

– full of wild cadenzas where one can show off technically,

but there is also incredible tenderness and soul-stirring melodic material.

Taking this goliath written for ten fingers and conveying it with four

- the tables have never been turned on the violin and piano

repertoire in this way.

There’s certainly a pioneering element to this.

Thirty five minutes of non-stop music with no break,

no moment to turn a page! I had to think of something.

We solved the problem by using an iPad controlled by Bluetooth,

 wireless foot-switches from AirTurn.

Tickets for the September 10th concert are only $10: www.ravinia.org

Gimmick? Well, it caught my attention, and yours.

The Zurich Symphony Orchestra has booked Boris Mersson to play Mozart K537 in November. He will be exactly three times its age.

There is a sentence in today’s Times obituary of Richard Pulford that he, at his peak, could hardly have bettered. It conveys the minimum of information without telling an outright lie, a Whitehall skill mastered only by the upper echelons of the old school.

Richard, as number two at the Arts Council, devised the plan to save the South Bank Centre concert halls after Margaret Thatcher in 1984 abolished their owner, the Greater London Council. He went on to become joint general director (admin) with Nicholas Snowman (arts), a relationship not exactly made in heaven. Here’s how it panned out, according to the Times:

In 1992 it was decided to change the governance of the South Bank with one chief executive, Snowman. This allowed Pulford to pursue interests abroad.

Brilliant, eh? Basically, Snowman won a power struggle and Richard was pushed out. He wanted, anyway, to have more time to nurse a dying partner. Over the next decade, the South Bank slowly degenerated. Richard eventually became head of the Society of London Theatres.

Although he and I sometimes clashed, it was never with rancor. Richard once wrote a letter to my newspaper disputing 35 different points in a column of mine that detailed the South Bank’s shortcomings. Later, he told me this was a classic Whitehall smokescreen operation. The article had hit the Centre bang on the nose and he needed to perform a face-saving operation.

We once arranged to lunch in Kensington, forgetting that it was the exact date and time of England’s World Cup clash with Argentina. I remember walking with him arm-in-arm up the middle of a deserted Kensington Church Street, to a restaurant where we were the only diners. The fun we had that day is not readily repeatable. Richard was 67 when he died. I will miss him, and so will many more.

It’s never easy to follow a founder, and Helmut Rilling has led the Oregon Bach Festival for all of 41 years. The search for a successor has taken two years and the successful candidate was named today.

He is Matthew Halls, 35, an English harpsichordist, organist and conductor. Halls led the Retrospect Ensemble, which branched out from the King’s Consort after its founder, Robert King, was jailed for indecent assault. Lately, he has been conducting symphony orchestras with conspicuous success. He won the Oregon post fair and square from several impressive candidates.

Here’s the Oregon announcement:

Oregon Bach Festival Names Matthew Halls as Artistic Director
For release August 24, 2011, 1:05 pm Pacific Time


Eugene, Oregon—The Oregon Bach Festival announced today the appointment of 35-year-old British conductor and keyboardist Matthew Halls as its next artistic director.

Halls will assume artistic leadership after the 2013 season, succeeding Helmuth Rilling, the founding artistic director from Stuttgart who will remain with the University of Oregon event as director emeritus.

In his announcement, John Evans, OBF president and executive director, said that Halls was the ideal candidate at the right time.

“In Matthew, we found a candidate who has it all,” said Evans, “a range of repertoire well-matched to the programming needs of the Festival; an international reputation in the worlds of choral and early music, specializing in historically-informed performances; consummate skill as a Bach interpreter; a commitment to teaching and education; and most of all, a figure who is passionate about the music at the heart of the OBF, and charismatic in communicating that passion.”

“I’m absolutely thrilled to have been offered the opportunity to continue and develop my relationship with the Oregon Bach Festival,” said Halls.

“It is a very great honor for me to accept the position of Artistic Director at the festival upon the retirement of Helmuth Rilling—a colossal musical figure for whom I have the deepest admiration,” he continued. “I am looking forward to working closely with John Evans to help preserve everything that makes this festival so special, whilst exploring and developing new ideas that will allow the festival’s musical and educational programs to continue to grow. Above all, I look forward to summer months in Oregon filled with music-making of the highest level as we all make our annual pilgrimage to the Pacific Northwest to celebrate and honor the musical legacy of the great Johann Sebastian Bach.”

Based in London, Halls has made his mark as one of today’s leading young conductors, having made significant debuts with the Houston Symphony, Tonkünstler Orchestra, Bach Collegium Stuttgart, Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte Carlo, Berlin Radio Symphony, Frankfurt Radio Symphony, Iceland Symphony, and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. His 2011 season includes engagements with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, Detroit Symphony, Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra, and the National Symphony in Washington, D.C.

He is the founding director of the Retrospect Ensemble, formed in 2009, though already in the vanguard of performance-practice groups with an annual series in London’s famed Wigmore Hall and appearances ranging from the Edinburgh International Festival to the Krakow Festival of Polish Music and a relationship with the Korean National Opera.

Retrospect’s recent recording of Bach’s Easter and Ascension oratorios on the Linn label, “a disc to make your heart leap” (The Times-London), is a finalist in the Baroque Vocal category as the 2011 Gramophone Record of the Year.

Halls has performed on keyboard for such period-practice luminaries as John Eliot Gardiner, Ton Koopman, and Monica Huggett. A former director of the UK’s famed King’s Consort, he has worked extensively with many of Europe’s foremost early music groups, and in opera houses including The Netherlands Opera, Bavarian State Opera, and Komische Oper Berlin, in venues such as the Megaron (Athens), Lincoln Center (New York) and Wiener Festwochen (Vienna).

On disc, Halls’s 2007 recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations on harpsichord earned the “outstanding” list of the International Record Review. “Halls is a formidably talented young keyboard player, bursting with energy and inspiration,“ wrote the Evening Standard.

Halls graduated from Oxford and taught there five years. His belief in the importance of music education is reflected by his development of Retrospect’s flourishing Young Artist Program, his teaching at summer schools and courses including the Jerusalem Early Music Workshop and the Dartington International Summer School, and his work as a tutor with the European Union Baroque Orchestra, a continent-wide training initiative for young performers.

Halls’s eclectically designed choral programs span centuries, juxtaposing composers as diverse as Byrd and Britten, Gesualdo and Schoenberg. Yet, he has an avowed passion for the 19th century Germanic and 20th century British repertoires.

His opera pedigree ranges from the Renaissance and Baroque to modern works. In addition to European and Asian engagements, he’s been a guest conductor with Colorado’s Central City Opera the last two summers, directing a premiere of his own edition of Handel’s opera Amadigi di Gaula in 2011 and Puccini’s Madame Butterfly in 2010.

Halls made his OBF debut in July 2011 as concert conductor and lecturer-teacher in the conducting master class. His Eugene and Portland concerts met with instant standing ovations, rapturous applause, and critical praise.

He conducted Rilling’s own Bach Collegium and Gachinger Kantorei during the 2010 Stuttgart European Music Festival, an engagement that led to his Eugene debut; the world premiere recording of the reconstruction of Grandi’s Vespro del Beate Vergine taken live from this concert has just been released by Carus.

“I have seen Matthew Halls working and conducting in Stuttgart and Eugene,” said Rilling. “He is an unusually gifted musician with a solid professional grounding and exceptional charisma. I’m sure he will preserve the heritage of our Festival, and will also find new ways to enrich the lives of many people with our music.”

The atmosphere that Rilling and the Festival has created in Eugene was a strong attraction to Halls. “My trip to Eugene this past July ranks amongst one of the most stimulating and rewarding collaborations of my musical career to date,” he said. “I was immediately struck by the extraordinary levels of talent and commitment amongst musicians and staff alike and experienced firsthand the very real sense of pride that the local community feels for this magnificent festival.”

In his announcement, Evans, former Head of Music at BBC’s Radio 3 cultural network for 12 years, outlined a process that began soon after he joined the Festival in 2008.

“The search committee identified twenty potential candidates,” said Evans. “Eight of whom have now appeared here as guest conductors, and we had extensive talks with two others. It’s interesting that Matthew joins the Festival at the same age as Helmuth (Rilling) when the Festival started, 42 years ago. That indicates the Festival and University of Oregon are ready to invest in a rare, young talent, someone with a fresh approach capable of taking this organization to even greater heights.”

Halls will conduct programs in the 2012 and 2013 Oregon Bach Festival as artistic director designate. His 2012 repertoire will be announced at the OBF’s season preview in the last week of October.  Festival dates for 2012 are June 29-July 15.

Every major world orchestra has an Aussie or two in its ranks, often in the front row. The best musicians tend to leave young and return late, never to be heard at home in their prime. Conductor Alexander Briger, an expat (below), had the idea of bringing them together for a single concert in the Sydney Opera House. Simone Young rushed home to conduct. And a hundred others jumped on a plane to make the date.

Here’s an ABC News report of an extraordinary event.

Picture: Alan Pryke Source: The Australian

Planning permission was granted today for a bold £38 million arts centre within penalty-kick distance of Old Trafford, home to England’s biggest football team. Read all about it here.

The University of Salford are the force behind the scheme, which will fit into an area newly dominated by the BBC’s expanded northern hub. Someone ought to start planning those post-match thematic concerts…. Iberia for a Real Madrid visit? A London Symphony for Arsenal and Spurs? Peter Warlock madrigals for Chelsea?

A member of the Wagner family has broken ranks to predict that the Festival would in future be better off in other hands.

Nike Wagner, head of the Weimar festival and a defeated party in the last family war, tells Bunte magazine: ‘One day they’ll get in external experts with lots of new ideas. That would be a good thing.’

Nike went on to say that the notion the family had to run the festival did not come from the composer. It was his widow Cosima who invented the hegemony.

Supporters of Israel Opera have written to its director Hanna Munitz asking her to sack Graham Vick from its production of Lucia di Lammermoor next year. Vick drew accusations of anti-Israel and anti-semitic bias for his production of Mose in Egitto at the Rossini Festival in Pesaro, where the Egyptian slave-drivers were depicted as gun-toting Jews and the suffering Jews as Palestinians.

I have also seen a protest letter that has been sent to the Italian president and prime minister. Graham Vick has maintained radio silence,

The Leipzig artist Neo Rauch was so captivated by Riccardo Chailly’s Mahler cycle that he went home and produced covers for the forthcoming DVD releases.  This is the Resurrection Symphony

and this the Symphony of 1,000, quite the most immaculate performance I have ever experienced..

It is going to be very hard to walk past a record shop window – if you still hve a record shop – without noticing these vivid images. Yet they do seem to belong to another time – not even to Mahler’s time, but to Schumann’s, or even Schubert’s.

Is this faux-naiveté, or something simpler? Judge for yourselves. Rauch, 51, seems to occupy a niche midway between Socialist Realism and Surrealism.

Nielsen Soundscan reports that classical music sales in the US had the biggest rise of any genre in the first half of 2011. Classical is up 13 percent year on year.

Much of the increase is coming, apparently, from small labels. Here’s Variety’s take. I’ll try to find more details.

Written for New York, it’s played by the London Classical Orchestra.

Details here:

Reports have reached me over the past couple of days that players in the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, which makes its UK debut at the Edinburgh Festival tonight, are required once a year to prove their competence, or lose their jobs.

This sounded, at first impression, not dissimilar to the situation at the Brazil Symphony Orchestra, where three-dozen musicians have been fired after refusing to reaudition, provoking an international boycott. But when I discussed these conditions with the music director Myung-Whun Chung, a rather softer picture emerged.

Chung stated the case that Korea had never in its history had a symphonic orchestra of international standing. ‘When the city of Seoul asked me to undertake this task, I said you need four elements: 1 player for player, a certain level; 2 a conductor who can bring the best out of them; 3 continuous financial support; and 4 time.’

All city officials in Seoul receive an annual evaluation. Musicians are not excepted. ‘It’s not a reaudition as such,’ says Chung, ‘but an obligation we have to face.’

Every years, over the past five years, ‘about four percent’ of the musicians have been let go. But rather than getting thrown on the scrapheap like the Brazilians, the musicians are moved to other duties. ‘We take care of them as best as possible,’ says the conductor. Some go on to play in the secondary orchestra, which give free concerts in each of the 25 districts of the capital. Others are employed to assist and encourage young players who are seeking a place in the orchestra. ‘Older players, past their best playing days, still make an important contribution to the orchestra through their transmission of culture, tradition and their maturity,’ says artistic adviser Michael Fine.

‘Every player we check once a year for a few minutes,’ says Chung. ‘I dream of the day that it won’t happen any more. This is an orchestra that tries to improve daily. The day we can’t do that, I will leave.’

The overseas players in the orchestra are of the highest international calibre. The principal trumpet, from Paris, has just been hired by the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. The orchestra has won a 10-CD contract with Deutsche Grammophon.

Chung, it seems to me, is performing a declicate task with great sensitivity. I am in touch with several members of the orchestra and hear few complaints. Others can learn from this model.

I hear that reuaditions are coming in soon at a major European orchestra in dire need of improvement. Watch this space