The five category winners are announced tonight. If I were a betting man, I’d flutter a fiver on the children’s writer Moira Young. Not because her book Blood Red Road is being made into a movie by Ridley Scott. But because she started out as a proper bona fide opera singer who won a Met audition and toured Britain and France with Peter Knapp’s Travelling Opera. Not many writers sing. Fewer still get paid for it. I’m backing Moira.
The five category winners who go forward for the big prize are:
Poet and debut biographer Matthew Hollis, who beats Claire Tomalin’s bestselling Dickens to take the Costa Biography Award for his first work of prose, Now All Roads Leads to France: The Last Years of Edward Thomas
Andrew Miller who triumphs over Julian Barnes, winner of the 2011 Man Booker Prize, to take the Costa Novel Award with his sixth novel, Pure
Debut novelist and former Great Ormond Street nurse, Christie Watson, who wins the Costa First Novel Award for Tiny Sunbirds Far Away, set in the Niger Delta
Carol Ann Duffy who wins the Costa Poetry Award for The Bees, her first collection since being appointed Poet Laureate in 2009
Former opera singer and debut children’s writer, Moira Young, who wins the Costa Children’s Book Award for Blood Red Road, currently being adapted for film by Scott Free, Ridley Scott’s production company
Many, ourselves included, will have first heard of the eclectic Russian composer Igor Raykhelson when he appeared in the 2011 free classical download on Slipped Disc. Well, Igor’s back… and it’s a smoky concerto this year. Download here courtesy of Toccata Classics.
UPDATE: Some people are having trouble with the download. We’re trying to fix it. Meantime, check Igor’s website below for a sampling of the concerto.
He’s the man who convinced Chancellor Angela Merkel in the thick of a Euro crisis to invest an extra 50 million Euros. He has a budget of 1.2 billion Euros to spend on boosting German heritage and identity. He has been in the job six years and has an unrivalled authority in cultural affairs. Last week, he delivered a kicking to the public television networks for dumbing down the arts.
Bernd Neumann will be 70 on Thursday and, to all appearances, going strong. Long may he rule.
Vaclav Havel, dissident playwright, became the nation’s president.
Josef Skvorecky, a dazzling novelist who played a key role in the 1968 Prague Spring, fled to Canada after the Russian invasion. From exile, he published Havel, Vaculik and others in editions that were smuggled back into Czechoslovakia.
Skvorecky died today in Toronto. He was 87.
(Photo: (c) Horst Tappe, 1968/Lebrecht Music & Arts)
His finest novel was named after one of Stalin’s catchphrases, The Engineer of Human Souls.
Among much else, he also wrote Dvorak in Love and was a jazz and film fanatic, writing numerous essays on both arts. He had more dimensions to him than most writers.
It is with great regret that Anna Netrebko must cancel her performances over the next three weeks in order to undergo surgery to alleviate severe pain in her foot. The affected performances include concerts with Erwin Schrott in Baden-Baden (January 3), Hannover (January 6), and Mannheim (January 9), which will all be rescheduled for later in the year, as well as two performances of “La traviata” at the Royal Opera House in London (January 17 and 20). Ms. Netrebko is sorry to disappoint her fans and looks forward to returning to the stage later in January once she has fully recovered from the operation.
The good news is that, for the second year running, the Berlin Philharmonic extravaganza on German ARD television has been overwhelmed in the ratings by the Dresden Staatskapelle on ZDF – and this despite a Netrebko no-show in the Meissen china showcase. Details on intermezzo.
It’s a big win for Christian Thielemann and an embarrassment for Simon Rattle, whose German media appeal is not what it was.
Figures just in show the highest viewer ratings since 2003 for the Vienna Philharmonic New Year’s Day concert, with a 64 percent share of the Austrian viewership at 1.136 million, and millions more around the world.
Just shows what you can do without women in the Philharmonic … The Austrian press makes no mention of the sex discrimination issues.
Next year, unless things change, it will be ohne mich, ohne mich....
In the Times (off-line) today, the long-serving secretary general of the Israel Philharmonic, Avi Shoshani, announces that the orchestra may never return to Britain after last summer’s Proms disruption.
‘I don’t think I really want to return to the UK,’ he tells Neil Fisher. ‘Why should I put my musicians in such an unpleasant situation? We want to make people happy – that’s what music is all about – and if people behave in such an uncivilised way why should we be part of it?’
The stupidity of his statement, in contrast to so many other reasoned arguments, beggars belief. In two sloppy sentences, Shoshani delivers a slap in the face to the BBC, the Times and the British public who supported the orchestra’s right to be heard at the Proms – and an unearned victory to the Boycott Israel campaign which cannot surely believe its luck that Israel’s musical flagship has slunk off, defeated.
His remarks contradict Zubin Mehta’s determination to present the orchestra on every major stage and to make the orchestra more reprsesentative of its multi-cultured country. The IPO has yet to admit its first Arab Israeli player and is losing audiences among the younger generation and the religious sector.
Shoshani is employed by the orchestra as secretary general, a position less authoritative than chief executive. He has taken recently to speaking out in its name.
He has been in the job since 1973 and in that time the world has changed and Shoshani hasn’t. If Israel and its orchestra want to join the 21st century, they may need to nudge Avi Shoshani, 63, towards a well-earned retirement.
A pair of scientists tested participants at the Indiannapolis Competition on whether they could tell a Strad and a Guarnerius apart from the latest $50 lacquer from China. Most, apparently, could not.
I don’t find the results here empirical. Judge for yourselves.