Allan Williams, who sort-of managed the Beatles before Brian Epstein stepped in and got them a record deal, has been spilling his regrets to a Scottish biographer.

After sort-of selling them to Epstein for £9 in unpaid Hamburg commissions – a very small mess of pottage – Mr Williams advised the new manager:  “Don’t touch them with a fucking bargepole, they will let you down.”

But he’s not sorry. Really he isn’t. Read more here.

 

photo: Liverpool Daily Echo

Details here.

 

 

Mahler, Gustav – Caruso, Enrico – Paderewski, Ignacy – Sembrich, Marcella – Signed Menu

SKU: N2262-M2-11

Menu for a dinner by the Musicians of New York in 1909, honoring Marcella Sembrich´s 25th anniversary of her Met Opera debut. Signed by several important stars in the music world: composer Gustav Mahler, star tenor Enrico Caruso (the only one who signed inside the 4-page menu), tenor Aldo Bonci, Marcella Sembrich herself, conductors Walter and Frank Damrosch, star pianist Ignacy Paderewski, conductor Alfred Hertz plus 3 other unidentified signatures.

I am sorry to to be abroad for tomorrow’s London opening at Messum’s Gallery of an exhibition by Zsuzsi Roboz featuring her portraits of some of the best and best-known writers living in the UK. You can have a happy time identifying them from the catalogue cover Zsuzsi Roboz 'Face to Face' … and there’s a prize for the last one to guess the chap with the big hand in the middle of the second row.

News has just reached me from Moscow that the Ministry of Culture has named a successor to the sacked conductor Mark Gorenstein, whose Svetlanov Orchestra rose in rebellion this summer after years of harsh treatment.

According to the Ria-Novosti agency, the new artistic director will be Vladimir Jurowski, who has made his name as music director of the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Glyndebourne Opera Festival.

Jurowski will be leaving Glyndebourne in 2013.

UPDATE: Juro’s agents have asked me to clarify, ahead of their announcement tomorrow, that he will be the orchestra’s artistic director, not music director as Gorenstein was, and thus not his direct successor. He ‘will be closely involved in helping to give the orchestra an artistic direction and vision for the future seasons, and providing stability following Gorenstein’s departure. He will work with the orchestra on a couple of occasions in the coming months.’

The distinction is a fine one, but I thought you’d like to know.

It has long been assumed that the first performance of Mahler’s music in the US was Walter Damrosch’s concert of the fourth symphony in 1904. Damrosch went on to become Mahler’s second biggest enemy in America after Toscanini, as described in Why Mahler, so his preccedence tends to rile loyal Mahlerians.

I can now inform you that Damrosch’s was not the first performance. The diligent researches of Michael Bosworth, who lives in Hanoi, Vietnam, have revealed a performance six years earlier. Hats off to Mr Bosworth!

The concert was at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and it contained the Urlicht movement of Mahler’s Second Symphony. The singer was the contralto Josephine Jacoby and the conductor Louis Koemmenich. So Brooklyn beat New York to Mahler by six whole years. Details below:

U.S. première of “Urlicht”, 4th movement of Mahler’s 2nd Symphony

Brooklyn Academy of Music
12 December 1898, 8:15 PM
Annual Concert of the Choruses and Orchestra of the Brooklyn Sangerbund
Conductor: Louis Koemmenich
Soloist: Josephine S. Jacoby, alto/contralto (the soloist in “Urlicht”, also called “Eternal Light” in the Brooklyn Eagle review).
Here’s Josie….

… a youngish Greek conductor, Constantinos Carydis.

He’ll get 10,000 Euros and a night conducting Offenbach’s Contes de Hoffmann at the Bavarian State Opera next week.

The winner was chosen by two of Munich’s chief conductors, Kent Nagano and Mariss Jansons, and by the opera and orchestra managers, Nikolaus Bachler and Holger Schinköthe (that’s not a name you’re often going to see spelled correctly).

So what’s Constantinos Carydis got going for him? He’s 37, from Athens and, judging by his promo pics, hot.

Here‘s his agent’s blurb.

You can be sure that, whatever he does from now on, he will be labelled the first winner of the Carlos Kleiber Prize. Tough act to follow.