Mainstream media were 24 hours behind the web in reporting the disruption of a New York Philharmonic concert by a phone alarm and they are still pedalling hard to catch up.
My pals at thousandfoldecho got pestered by CNN and I was contacted by CBS News, German radio and any number of print outlets all wanting to know what I’ve said I will never disclose – the identity of the hapless offender. And I’m not even in New York.
Sometimes, you do wish the hacks would do their own legwork.
All four major labels have put their name to a lawsuit that aims to force a country to introduce anti-piracy laws and pay damages for past abuses.
EMI, Sony, Warner and Universal are named in the suit.
The country they are pursuing is the Republic of Ireland, where the economy has collapsed in the Euro bust and young people – the ones who use music most – are fleeing the country in numbers unseen since the potato famine.
The biz may be right to stop people stealing its apples, but its timing is skewed and the victim it has picked can hardly pick itself off the ropes. hat do they want of the poor Irish?
Think again, suits.
OK, this I really needed.
I shall be out in Los Angeles the week after next giving seven Why Mahler? talks in as many days during Gustavo Dudamel’s cycle with his two orchestras, the Simon Bolivar Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
I shall also be sending live reports from the cycle (please get in touch if you want to publish it in other languages).
But the prospect is still daunting: how are we to get through the intensity of it sane and alive?
Christian Hertzog in La Weekly publishes a survivor’s guide, including some video advice from Why Mahler?
Sir Simon Rattle has announced plans for the 2013 Baden Baden Easter Festival, which will be the Berlin Philharmonic’s new base after they presumptuously pulled out of Salzburg at short notice.
Top of the rep is Magic Flute – ‘the icing on the cake’, said Rattle – but the casting has already been unsettled by Thomas Quasthoff’s poignant decision this week to call an immediate halt to his singing career. The production will be directed by the Canadian, Robert Carsen, and will star Simone Kermes and Kate Royal.
Rattle will also conduct Mahler’s second symphony with his wife, Magdalena Kozena, and Kate Royal as soloists.
And Andris Nelson’s will conduct Maxim Vengerov’s return to the big time from prolonged injury in the Brahms concerto.
Rattle with Baden Baden director Andreas Mölich-Zebhauser.Photo: Festspielhaus Baden-Baden
Eduardo Strausser has sent me a doctored video of Leonard Bernstein conducting Mahler’s 9th symphony, demonstrating how an ill-disciplined phone can wreck the ending – as it did in New York this week.
The New England Conservatory has announced the immediate departure of its Youth Philharmonic conductor, Benjamin Zander.
No reason was given and Zander was unreachable for comment. His facebook page is starting to show messages of regret from players past and present.
Conservatory officials told AP that its director, Tony Woodcock, had disciplined a staff member who, over the past ten years, employed a videographer to record rehearsals and performances of preparatory school students. The videographer was known to be a registered level-2 sex offender.
Zander, English born, is widely known as a meticulous conductor of Mahler and the late romantics and an inspirational lecturer to business conferences. He is also chief conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra.
I have known him for a very long time and would not suspect him of anything worse than extreme naivety and, perhaps, excessive loyalty to his friends. There is no suggestion that he acted improperly in any way towards students.
Tony Woodcock, also English, is a former head of the Bournemouth and Minnesota orchestras. He, in my experience, is not a man who acts impetuously.
More details as they come in.
