There’s an odd piece in the Telegraph by the US pianist Jonathan Biss, in which he seems to be arguing that, since it’s impossible to convey music in words, everybody ought to just shut up and listen. I hope he’s writing tongue in cheek, though I fear not. The piece sounds like a publicist working overtime on Biss’s Beethoven cycle. See what you make of it.

Myself, I can hardly bring myself to write about the Biss cycle after reading his strictures.

A survey by the German Orchestra Union (DOV) shows that 36 orchestras have been forced out of business in 20 years, since track was first kept after reunification. The number of orchestra jobs fell even more steeply from 12,159 to 9,844, a reduction of 19 percent. More here.

The decline comes in marked contrast to an increase in public spending on classical music, announced recently by the Culture Minister.

Things are so bleak in Bell town that the orchestra has allowed its chief executive’s contract to lapse. Allison Vulgamore’s term has been extended by just four weeks. And no-one else will be rushing in for the job. More here.

Camilla Williams was the first African-American to play a star role with a mainstream US company when she played Madam Butterfly with New York City Opera on May 15, 1946. She has died in Bloomington, Ind., aged 92. Her memory will live on as a blessing.

Camilla Williams Dies

Where Beyonce sang it sweet and nice to the Obamas, Aguilera gave the late diva’s signature song the rage treatment at her funeral.

On Sunday morning, Gustavo Dudamel conducted a rehearsal of Mahler’s ninth symphony. At 2pm, he led a public performance of the sixth. At 7pm, he held sway over a choral rehearsal of the eighth.

That is a work rate of which Mahler at his most manic would not have been ashamed. But Gustavo, when I caught him five minutes before the afternoon concert was his usual beaming self, available for a last-minute chat, oblivious to well-meant suggestions that he could do with a shave.

After a week of Dudamel’s Mahler in Los Angeles, with two orchestras – the Simon Bolivar and the LAPO – I got the impression that he’s on one of those all-you-can-eat phone contracts, applied to the musical process. He just loves what he does and cannot get enough of it.

He conducted Mahler’s sixth from memory, having learned it from Leonard Bernstein’s score, with the legend ‘Mahler Grooves’ pasted across the opening pages. It was a daring, aleatory performance in which the order of the middle movements was not decided until the very last minute and no-one except the percussionist knew until he lifted his hammer whether it was going to be two blows in the finale, or three. In the event, the blow was so heavy it broke the specially-built anvil.

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After the Saturday night concert, I informed the audience in a q&a session that we had heard a historic interpretation of Mahler 6 – less doom-laden than usual and at times positively sunny, but an approach that reflected its place and time: California in the second decade of the 21st century. Dudamel, 31 last week, will conduct it differently in other times and places. This interpretation, however, will live on in memory and legend.

Wonderful animated Russian film on the life of a great composer. Credits: Julia Titova and Dmitri Surinovich.