The international soloist Gabriela Montero, famed for her improvisations, is about to perform her first fully-composed work, titled Ex Patria.

The premiere is in Nuremberg on October 20th with the Academy of Saint Martin in the Fields, conductor Patrick Lange, and the theme is made clear by the title. Gabi has left her home country, disgusted by the excesses of the Chavez regime which, despite chaos and corruption, remains the darling of the world’s political left. She has sent me the text she has written to accompany her concerto. I print it below.

It is her second anti-Chavez manifesto, after decking out her last EMI record in national colours and a political lament.

Tonight, she is appearing at London’s Limelight Club with the Mahler Chamber Soloists. Catch her if you can. She delivers more fun than is legal in a formal concert hall.

“ExPatria”

As an expatriate Venezuelan, it may be of little surprise that I should wish to express, in music, a longing for the beautiful country of my birth.

However, my debut as a composer reaches beyond private nostalgia to a very public cry. ExPatria is a portrayal of a country barely recognizable from that of my youth. It is my emotional response to the loss of Venezuela herself to lawlessness, corruption, chaos and rates of murder among the highest in the world.

The opening chord is intended to jolt the public from silence and apathy. It is the immediate exposure of a tragedy which has accelerated beneath the thinnest veil of democracy with negligeable and inconsequential international scrutiny.

The motifs introduced by the french horn and piano reflect a fleeting recollection of an innocent moment, an ominous calm. The theme is quickly brutalized, corrupted and stolen by an imposing, percussive and militaristic interruption, the “martellato” section depicting the daily gunfire to which Venezuelans have grown accustomed.

Emerging from the violence, soloist and orchestra acquiesce in a slow and rhapsodic dialogue of mourning, culminating in a disconsolate and unison lament. The poetic rhapsody itself is soon subjected to a chromatic and accelerating decay, leaving the audience to glimpse the maddening disorder of a dismantled and suffocated society.

My musical statement is not a political one. I am not a politician. It is my nation’s story. It is my regret.

Venezuela - Venezuela beautiful landscape

Gilbert Kaplan has updated his magnificent Mahler Album with six fresh photographs and several revised captions. There’s also a learned not on Mahler’s spectacles and Alfred Roller’s physical description of Mahler, in my translation.

The Mahler Album: New, Expanded Edition

The Austrian Theatre Museum has also expanded its Gustav Mahler in Wien to GM in Wien und München. Likewise unmissable, if you can find it. The publisher is Christian Brandstätter, but there doesn’t seem to be a web link.

And a book has appeared in Czech and English on the new monument to Mahler in Jihlava, the town where he grew up.

BBC Symphony Orchestra player Keith Gurry has had his violins and bows stolen from his home…

Violins: Francesco Guadagnini (Turin, 1888) Ian Highfield (Birmingham, 1982)

Bows: Malcolm Taylor (Gold-mounted, tortoiseshell) R. Herbert Leicht Matthew Coltman (Silver-mounted) Carbon fibre bow (col legno). If you see them for sale please contact the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

It was not on impulse, nor last minute nerves, that Sir Paul McCartney attended synagogue on the eve of his wedding – on the day of Yom Kippur.

Tomorrow’s JC has the full story. It appears that he booked 15 seats at the Liberal Jewish Synagogue three months in advance to make sure that his bride-to-be, Nancy Shevell, and members of her family did not miss out on the holiest day of the year. And then he joined them himself.

The synagogue had no more than routine security, but that was enough to deter paparazzi.

The party did not stay to break the fast, nor did the happy couple receive a rabbi’s blessing, as reported elsewhere.

"I love her, yeah, yeah, yeah..." Sir Paul and Lady McCartney on Sunday

The Metropolitan Opera’s press department, also known as the New York Times, has filed a report saying the company has enjoyed a record year in fundraising – all the more remarkable an achievement in the depths of recession. The Times calls it ‘astonishing’, ‘whopping’ and ‘bonanza’ – excessive even in press release language.

Whatever, hats off to the development director, Coralie Toevs, who has reeled in the big fishes.

However, my mole in the finance department tells me that the running costs are far higher than previously revealed, with Peter Gelb’s movie spend running up eye-watering bills. Others in the building have been muttering similar things. I am trying to lay hands on hard budgets.

My guess is that Gelb will soon bring out a fully audited set of figures whose red lines will look a lot softer now the donations look so healthy.

This just in from CMU Daily:

JUSTIN BIEBER’S $100,000 HAIRCUT

Justin Bieber new haircut 20111 Justin Bieber New Haircut 2011: Do You Dig The Biebs’ New Hairdo?  2011

Jay Foreman, CEO of Florida toy manufacturer The Bridge Direct, which produces Justin Bieber’s range of dolls, has revealed that when the teen pop star got his hair cut on a whim during a video shoot back in February, it cost the company $100,000. 

“First off, I had no idea what he did”, Foreman says of the moment Bieber tweeted pictures of his new do. “I heard a lot of shrieks around me, and people running in and out of their offices. I got everyone into a conference room and we looked at some images. We weren’t sure what he had done. Then it became obvious that his trademark was gone”. 

With the next batch of dolls already in production ready for this year’s Christmas demand, Foreman was forced to halt the production line and redesign the dolls, costing the company $100,000. Although revenues for Bieber dolls and accessories currently stand at over $100 million, so I wouldn’t spend too long being sympathetic.

Here are some rival classical cuts below. Feel free to send in your personal favourites.

and more… here’s Jacques Zoon, solo flautist (ex Concertgebouw, Berlin Philharmonic)


The younger sister of Noa, Israel’s biggest world music star after Ofra Haza, has launched her own career.

Odeya Nini, 13 years younger, saw her big sister leave home when she was three, she tells Haaretz.

Her work is on another plane altogether – in the contemplative outer reaches of contemporary classical music – long silences, that sort of thing – the Whitney Museum point where post-mod composition meets post-modernist art.

Here‘s a video clip. And here’s another, working with Christian Marclay.

And here are the two sisters together, from Noa’s website:

Various people in Paris maintain it was Barbara, who was performing from 1959, and I’m inclined to endorse that.

But when did Carole King start?

And Judy Collins?

Did Billie Holiday write any of her own?

Either way, Amy Winehouse would never have been what she was without these antecedents. The JC reports today that her father Mitch is speedwriting a biography.

Amy Winehouse with her father Mitch

From our correspondent in Beijing:

The National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing on Sunday announced an emergency recall of tickets because all the seats for the Mahler’s 8th scheduled on Oct 30, including the stall behind the stage, were available for sale.

All of a sudden, they realized that the work requires a chorus.

Actually three choruses. And eight soloists. That’s why it’s called Symphony of 1,000.

Ah well, they’ll get it right next time. The symphony had its Beijing premiere in 2002.

Update: And here’s the most recent Mahler Eighth in Beijing, conducted by Charles Dutoit on October 6 with the China Philharmonic Ochestra at Poly theatre. The concert on the 30th is due to be conducted by Yoel Levi. It’s raining Mahler 8s in Beijing.

And in Tapiei, where there were two performances on the 9th and 10th.

There were five envelopes in the Citigroup mailbox by Wednesday, but there’s word now of a late run by James Caparro, a former Universal Music and Warner flak who has been whiling away his days in distribution.

Caparro’s firm is Yamani Global Equities, and he’s backed by Alliance Warburg Capital Management. In a press release, Caparro said: “This is the first step in the execution of our turnaround plan to guide EMI’s assets through the integration of our five prong revenue model that will lead the company into providing consumers and customers with music and entertainment services utilising 21st century technologies”.

Wassat? He’s even more convoluted than the last rack of EMI suits. Imagine what Sir Thomas Beecham would have made of that load of verbiage.

When the Metropolitan Opera wants to know what’s going on in the world, it does not read the New York Times, which functions part-time as its press department, but tears open the nasty, blue-collar New York Post.

Today the Post reports a looming divorce between Texas oil heir Sid Bass and his formerly dearly beloved Mercedes after 23 years of inseparable opera going. Mercedes has given the Met gifts of $25 million. Any future donations will depend on the size of her divorce settlement.

Here’s the Post story.

Sid and Mercedes Bass

photo: Marina Garner

I’ll be sure to let the Met know when Alberto Vilar gets out of jail. He could be their saviour yet again.

 

The Finnish conductor Leif Segerstam, a Disney shoo-in for Saint Nick, may look like the man from Lapland but he’s not the easiest of household guests. Elemental, organic and all that goes with it, if you get my drift.

Still, no-one’s saying a word why Father Christmas won’t be visiting Bavaria next year. He was down to conduct a run of Rosenkavaliers but he has been replaced by Constantin Trinks, who (I’m told) was said slightly undercooked at his last performance.

There are dark mutterings of ‘political differences’ that no-one will confirm. Leif has probably gone off to write another of his symphonies, number 252 by the latest reckoning. It’s what he does when things don’t go his way.