The New Russian Quartet gave their support to yesterday’s huge demonstrations in Moscow. The offered to pay from the main stage, but the sound would have been too thin. Instead, they played on the open balcony of a house nearby.
You can see and hear the demonstrations marching by as they play a movement from a Borodin Quartet. Watch the video here.
The NRQ are the resident quartet at the Moscow Conservatory.
It’s always dangerous for a foreigner to attempt to make sense of Hungarian politics, but the events that follow are widely corroborated. It appears the the Mayor of Budapest, under attack from professionals for appointing an extreme right-wing actor Gyorgy Dorner as director of the New Theatre, has bolstered his position with a notorious anti-semitic writer, István Csurka, as artistic director.
A former member of Parliament, Csurka has described the 9/11 attacks as a response to ‘the genocide in Palestine’ and has employed a range of euphemisms to attack Jews and ‘non-Hungarians’ as being responsible for all the country’s economic woes.
The conductor Christoph von Dohnanyi., grandson of a famous Hungarian composer, cancelled two concerts in Budapest, saying he refused to perform “in a city whose mayor entrusted the direction of a theater to two known, extreme right-wing anti-Semites.”
There have also been mass demonstrations, but the Mayor, Istvan Tarlos, is standing by his rabid pair, who will assume office in February. It might be a good year to stay away from Budapest.
Here’s analysis (in German) from Vienna.
UPDATE: And here’s a fuller account in English of the present state of Hungarian racism. These people claim to be the New Europe. The Old Europe has yet to do anything about them.
At the Alte Oper, Frankfurt.
The retired pianist, 80, is giving a lecture on ‘Character in Music’. 
He previews it here in the FAZ.
Maybe when I retire, I’ll start giving piano recitals.
Dear Richard Branson
As a man who is quick with legal writs to protect his reputation, you’ll be interested in my reason for charging you with robbery.
On Friday, I boarded a Virgin Train from Liverpool to London. I had booked my ticket well in advance and carried both a seat reservation and an online proof of purchase. Unfortunately, I could not find the actual ticket for the journey.
Despite having paid for it once already and showed email proof of purchase, I was charged full fare for the journey. You know full well that I could not possibly have reserved a seat without having bought the ticket. Any airline (except perhaps Virgin) would have let me fly on the papers I presented. But you have trained your staff to extort money with menaces.
This, Branson, is highway robbery. Making someone pay twice for the same product or service when proof of ownership is presented may not be illegal under UK jurisdiction but it is unethical by any code you might pretend to follow from the Holy Bible to Harvard Business School.
Robbing people is wrong, Branson. Didn’t they teach you that at school? From the reactions of other passengers, I gather you do it all the time on Virgin Trains. Your ticket inspectors take great satisfaction in extracting double payment.
How a man who robs innocent travellers is allowed to own a bank is a matter only this Conservative Government can explain.
You’re a robber, Branson. Admit it. Then go bury your head in lawyers.
Yours faithfully
Norman Lebrecht
Liverpool reached the end of its Mahler cycle on Thursday night with a ninth symphony so taut and thoughtful that its dying fadeout felt more like a climax than a slipping away.
Vasily Petrenko has magnetised the city and its orchestra more than any conductor since Libor Pesek in the 1980s and the turnout, in a filthy Atlantic gale, filled the house and more. My own seat turned out to be double-booked. This was a night to remember.
The opening movement was oddly hesitant, the heartbeat uncertain. The ensuing Ländler took a few moments to find bucolic warmth. But the concentration throughout the house was absolute; I have seldom heard fewer coughs in a December audience, none at all once the drama took hold. Orchestra and audience were at one in wanting to find out how the story would end.
The Rondo Burleske was an object lesson in controlled fury, the helplessness of humanity against its ultimate fate, and the finale amplified the tension with a pregnant question – resistance, or resignation? There were ten full seconds of silence before the conductor dropped his hands and the applause raised the roof.
The Phil in Liverpool just get better and better. James Clark’s concertmaster solos in the finale were sweet with strong yearnings; Jonathan Aasgard drove the cellos with intense determination. It would be unfair to name any of the woodwind or brass; all were top class (oh, all right then: Katherine Lacy depped brilliantly on clarinet).
This orchestra is going places and Petrenko 
(photo (c) Mark McNulty) is going nowhere: he’ s signed up for another three years, at least. The Boston Symphony Orchestra, if they’re as keen as reported, will have a long while to wait.
Nor is Vasily finished with Mahler. A chat over a pint from the Liverpool Organic Brewery, 
the concert sponsors, touched on plans for more next season and beyond. Can’t wait.
I have been reading about a composer in Stuttgart, Florian Käppler, who, to commemorate the deportation and murder of 959 Jews one day 70 years ago, has created a sound installation with the notes arranged according to the intials of the victims names. He calls it The Symphony of Names.
My novel is called The Song of Names 
It centres on a similar act of musical commemoration, though in a subtler, more adhesive form.
Coincidence? I guess so. There’s no ownership of an idea and I’m quite curious to hear Mr Käppler’s installation.
2 http://www.artsjournal.com/slippeddisc/2011/12/tragic-death-of-rising-cellist-28.html
3 http://www.artsjournal.com/slippeddisc/2011/12/just-in-simone-young-calls-time-on-hamburg.html
4 http://www.artsjournal.com/slippeddisc/2011/12/classical-covers-to-cry-for-2.html
