The church of St Martin-in-the-Fields on Trafalgar Square has a long history of helping those who have nowhere to lay their heads. At Christmas, they call in an orchestra – and it’s not the one you’d first expect. More here.

This December the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra will be actively engaging in creative music workshops with the homeless as part of their Christmas Project with The Connection Centre at St Martin-in-the-Fields.
Since 1993 musicians and staff at the RPO have coordinated events with London residents through their Community and Education Department. RenamedRPO resound in 2008, the department continues to promote music education through creatively driven projects. Such projects aim to provide an opportunity for all members of society to access world-class music regardless of their background, to forge partnerships within the community and to promote cross-art form and cross-curricular interactions.

RPO resound has a well-established relationship with The Connection at St Martins, a charity which provides amongst its services; care centres, specialist counselling services, employment and training programmes, resettlement support and housing schemes for the homeless. The Orchestra has directed a diverse selection of workshops at The Connection Day Centre in central London, most commonly during the Christmas period. These sessions involve singing, playing of instruments, creative writing, composition and an exploration of different genres of music.

The Christmas Project comprises creative music workshops co-ordinated by RPO staff and musicians in partnership with The Connection staff. The sessions will culminate in two performances for centre clients and staff at The Connection on 14th December and will include the opportunity to watch the Orchestra rehearsing a variety of Christmas repertoire at the Royal Albert Hall. By working alongside the homeless during the Christmas project, the RPO strives to increase confidence in the participants’ own abilities, to provide opportunities for those who take part to try a variety of instruments and styles of music and to witness the musicians with whom they have been working playing live on stage.

Through the Christmas Project at The Connection the RPO endeavours to provide the centre clients with a sense of accomplishment, a furthered appreciation of music, an opportunity to build confidence and a truly memorable experience.

We shall be resuming our seasonal tradition this weekend by offering free download tracks from unreleased new recordings through the holiday period.

So far, we have wonderful material from Decca, Orchid, Toccata, Somm and more.

If other label owners would like to add to that list, please get in touch by end of work Wednesday.

It’s here, says the Professor.

My friend William Boughton will be having a happy holiday.

His orchestra, the New Haven Symphony, has been left the income on 40 percent of a rich man’s estate, valued at just over $20 million.

William, who is working his way through recording Walton’s original orchestral scores which are archived at Yale, will be able to permit himself the extra rehearsal or two.

Good for him.

… and the judge has to step down from the hearings because she is married to the orchestra’s executive director.

A tale of small town petty crime. Read on here.

$156 million, it says on the press release.

That’s over £100 million, more than any jewellery sale in auction history.

Press release:

MOST VALUABLE SALE OF JEWELRY IN AUCTION HISTORY

MOST VALUABLE PRIVATE COLLECTION OF FASHION EVER SOLD AT AUCTION

CHRISTIE’S FIRST EVER ONLINE-ONLY AUCTION – CONDUCTED IN PARALLEL TO LIVE AUCTIONS – FETCHES OVER $9.5 MILLION

26 ITEMS SELL FOR OVER $1 MILLION; 6 ITEMS FOR OVER $5 MILLION

STELLAR SALE RESULTS SET THE PACE FOR CONTINUING SALES OF FINE ART FROM THE COLLECTION IN JANUARY AND FEBRUARY 2012

New York – The landmark auctions of The Collection of Elizabeth Taylor at Christie’s New York from December 3-17 realized a combined total of $156,756,576 (£100,324,209/ €120,702,563) with every single item sold.  The sale drew unprecedented interest from bidders throughout the world, who gathered in Christie’s flagship Rockefeller Center saleroom to compete in person, on the phone, on-line and by absentee bid to win one of the Collection’s 1,778 lots of jewelry, fashion, decorative arts and film memorabilia. The total far exceeded Christie’s pre-sale expectations for the sale as a whole and for individual items, which were frequently hammered down for five, ten, or even 50 times their estimate in some cases.

As one of the most highly-anticipated sales in auction history, the Collection generated intense interest from bidders throughout the world, with 36 different countries represented during the four days of live auctions. This historic sale set a world record for the most valuable sale of jewelry in auction history, and set a new bar for the most valuable collection of fashion ever offered at auction. It also marked the company’s first-ever Online-Only sale, which ran in parallel to the live auctions at Christie’s New York and generated over 57,000 bids and $9.5 million in additional sales. In total, 26 items sold for over the $1 million mark, and numerous new world auction records were achieved – a testament to Miss Taylor’s expert eye for craftsmanship, rarity, and quality in all of the items she chose for her personal collection.

Of the sales, Chris Wilding, son of Elizabeth Taylor and member of the Elizabeth Taylor Trust said, “My mother always acknowledged that she was merely the temporary custodian of the incredible things she owned. Today, I think she would be happy to know that her collections will continue to enrich the lives of those who have acquired pieces. My family is proud that our mother’s legacy as a celebrated actress, tireless AIDS activist, and accomplished businesswoman touched so many people’s lives that they wanted to have a part of it for themselves. We could not have carried out her wishes this week without the outstanding help of Christie’s. We are most grateful to the incredibly creative and capable team led by Marc Porter, Chairman of Christie’s Americas, Heather Barnhart, Regional Managing Director, and Stephen Lash, Chairman Emeritus.”
All sales proceeds will be directed to the Elizabeth Taylor Trust. A portion of the profits generated by sales of exhibition tickets, event sponsorships and the ongoing sales of select publications will be donated to The Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation (ETAF).  An estimated 58,000 visitors have viewed highlights from the Collection since September, when Christie’s launched an eight-city global exhibition and tour that reached Moscow, London, Los Angeles, Dubai, Paris, Geneva and Hong Kong. The grand finale of the tour was a spectacular 10-day museum-quality public display of the complete Collection that drew thousands of collectors and fans to the company’s flagship galleries in Rockefeller Center and became the ‘can’t-miss’ event of the holiday season.

Steven P. Murphy, Chief Executive Officer, Christie’s International, commented, “The exhibition and sales of The Collection of Elizabeth Taylor in New York have been the crowning achievement to a very strong year at Christie’s. The success of these sales, with bidders participating from all over the world, demonstrated not only a recognition of the taste and style of Miss Taylor, but also the convening power of Christie’s.  I am very proud of our whole team, from all corners of our global operation. Their achievement was successfully bringing this event to fruition in a manner that paid homage to the panache and glamour of Elizabeth Taylor herself.”

Further to the Brussels kerfuffle over French pronunciation, creative consultant Roger Neill has sent me an article he prepared for Vladimir Jurowski on the correct way to deliver an ‘r in German opera and Lieder. I’m delighted to publish it here:

Mahler and the singing of the letter r in German opera and song

Mahler the opera conductor laid particular emphasis on the importance of correctly singing the letter r in German-language opera and song. The question is: to roll the r at the front or the back of the throat? Which did he prefer?

His disciple, Natalie Bauer-Lechner (who wrote down faithfully just about everything she heard him say) reports Mahler as follows: “In singing, everything depends on diction. Interpretation, even from the musical point of view, ought always to be built on the words… The most important thing in a singer is his r; if he can get that right, strange as it may seem, he can’t be entirely bad.”[1]

But Mahler did not elaborate on what, for him, was “right”, what “wrong”. How exactly did he wish the r to be sung? At the back of the throat, the uvular r, as in “correct” spoken German (and French)? Or rolled on the tip of the tongue, as in English and Italian?

It is the great soprano Lilli Lehmann (1848-1929) who gives us the answer. While Lehmann was never a formal member of his tightly-knit Hofoper ensemble in Vienna, he invited her to visit (and perform) for a period each year from 1898 until 1907 to give what Mahler described as her “annual singing lesson” to the company. Lehmann included in her repertoire over 600 songs and 170 operatic roles. She was initially the pupil of her mother, Marie Loewe in Prague, and was coached by Wagner for his first Ring cycle at Bayreuth in 1876.

Her 1902 book, How to Sing, whilst it covers many areas critical to good singing, sheds no light on the topic. However, in the published lectures[2] of French composer, pianist, singer and teacher, Reynaldo Hahn, he describes a visit he made to Lilli Lehmann’s home in Berlin to rehearse Don Giovanni:

“…she welcomed me with a coarse voice, resting solidly on the low register and speaking with uvular r’s of the Prussian variety. I sat down at the piano, and she began to sing. With the first bar she was transformed: ‘Non sperar se non m’uccidi / Qu’io ti lascia fuggir mai.’

“It was a stupendous metamorphosis. Suddenly, her voice became feminine, high, with vibrating resonance. As for the r’s, they were rolled, very Italian and bright, surely just as Mozart heard them pronounced and as he himself pronounced them since he was born in Salzburg.”

Of course the question remains, how did she pronounce the r’s in German-language works? Her recordings, made in 1906 and 1907, when she was nearly sixty years old, tell a consistent story: Lehmann consistently uses the tip-of-tongue rolled r in all the recordings I have studied closely – in the two Constanze arias she recorded from Entführung, in Beethoven’s early setting of Goethe’s “Freudvoll und leidvoll”, in Schubert’s “Erlkönig” and “Du bist die Ruh”, in “Intermezzo” and “Mondnacht” from Schumann’s Opus 39 Liederkreis, and in the extracts she recorded from Die Walküre (“Du bist der Lenz”) and the Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde (“Mild und leise”).

Within his Hofoper company, Mahler’s favourite performer was Marie Gutheil-Schoder (1874-1935), Grange describing her as his “most faithful, talented and conscientious collarorator”.[3] In her 1902 recording of Frau Fluth’s “Verführer!” from Nicolai’s Die Lustigen Weiber von Windsor, she consistently uses the rolled r, really letting rip on “Mein Ritter, mein Ritter”.

Case closed? Perhaps not. Hahn reports that the great Schröder-Devrient (who died in 1860, before Hahn was born), creator of three major Wagner roles, was said to have “gutteralised abominably”.[4]

It looks really eclectic on paper.

Elena Bashkirova, Barenboim’s wife,  brings her classical crew from the Jerusalem Chamber Music Festival, but the big draw is world star Noa  and there are dj kings from Tel Aviv’s clubland, the Arab-Jewish piano Duo Amal, my favourite oud player Yair Dalal, an Ethiopian ensemble and much else of a bewildering diversity.

Happening in Hamburg, second week of February. More here.

A Facebook page has been opened, calling on the London Philharmonic to reinstate the four musicians it suspended in July for up to nine months over their demand that the Israel Philharmonic be banned from the BBC Proms.

I argued, at the time, in favour of the punishment. I also felt that it was too harsh and advocated an early reprieve.

Now is the time for the LPO to temper justice with compassion. It should restore the four players before Christmas. Draw a line under the unfortunate episode. Put the unhappiness of 2011 behind you.

Some weeks ago, the mezzo-soprano Rinat Shaham had a dilemma. Rinat is the world’s Carmen of choice and a director asked her to change the way she pronounced her ‘r’ for a Belgian audience at La Monnaie. He wanted it gutturalised rather than rolled.

Have you any idea how difficult it is to sing guttural and sound beautiful? It’s no coincidence that radio people prefer to roll their ‘r’s, as do most opera singers.

Rinat, being a willing trooper, tried the guttural track in rehearsal and brought it off tremendously on stage, saving her rolled ‘r’s for the high-lying passages where she could feel comfortable and no-one else would notice.  We exchanged a few letters about it, and I was really pleased for her.

This morning, after another production – Massenet’s Cendrillon – some half-arsed reviewer on an internet site has attacked her for singing ‘approximate French’. Just the one comment, nothing penetrative about her performance. One cheap shot.

If I hadn’t known that Rinat worked so hard on her French diction, I might have overlooked that as another bit of internet bile, unworthy of attention. But the comment was xenophobic, possibly racist and intended to hurt. It’s bad reviewing, unamplified and without context.

Opera singers have a right to be respected for the heroic efforts they make to sound credible in several languages. Opera houses should not give tickets to critics who display an anti-foreign bias. If Forum Opera wants to be considered a respectable review site, it needs to remove that remark – and its author. Right now.