I have just been informed that the Menuhin Competition for young violinists will be held in the great man’s home country for the first time in 2014.
The immediate next contest is in Beijing in April this year, with 230 contestants. The last one was in Oslo, Norway.
The competition is dependent on a host conservatory offering it a base. The 2014 location will be Austin, Texas.
Past winners include Tasmin Little, Isabelle van Keulen, Nikolaj Znaider, Ilya Gringolts, Ray Chen and Julia Fischer.
Yehudi Menuhin was born in New York City on April 22, 1916.
Tommy started out as a radio presenter and has never lost those skills.
Now that he has retired from singing, he will present public interviews with personalities – ‘great and small,’ he says, and from all musical genres – on the stage of the Konzerthaus Berlin. It’s bound to be fun.
Watch him introduce the series here.
The story of the Chilean miners trapped underground for 17 days has been made into a concert oratorio by composer James McCarthy. It makes a lovely noise and will be premiered on February 5 at the Barbican by the Crouch End Festival Chorus. Watch first rehearsal video here.
He’s been the talk of the net for 36 hours, ever since the alarm on his phone went off during the closing pages of Mahler 9 and conductor Alan Gilbert stopped the performance until he was sure the device had been switched off.
The man was quickly identified by New York Philharmonic officials as a long-term subscriber, and they are being very careful not to disclose his name because, they say, it wasn’t his fault and they don’t want to lose his business. Already, there are philistine tabloids baying for his blood.
Here’s the story (and you read it here first): the guy had just bought himself an i-phone. No longer in the first flush of youth, he was not quite sure how the darned thing worked but he knew his etiquette well enough to shut it off before the concert started.
What he did not shut off was a preset alarm. When it gave a marimba ring, he thought it must be someone else and looked around in irritation. Then he found it was him, and the conductor was glaring at him like a schoolboy who’d let off a stinkbomb. Mortified? Our guy didn’t know where to look.
He’s gone to ground, maybe Florida, and will never live down the shame.
I’m not going to be the one to disclose his name.
But it does make a case for concertgoers, especially the over-50s, to be asked to check in their phones with their coats. Right?
It’s reassuring to know how hedge funds work. If they win, they clean up. If they lose, they sue.
Terra Firma, which bought EMI at an inflated price and lost its lawsuit against advisors Citigroup, has just lost a document grabs bid against its accountants. See here. EMI has since been sold by Citigroup to its former competitors, Universal and Sony, and is heading for the breakers’ yard. It’s a sad and shabby episode in the history of the recording business, but the hedge fund makes no apology for its appaling conduct.
I’m surprised and delighted to find that the BBC have kept my Lebrecht Interviews from last summer as free podcasts, for the time being.
Download here for Thomas Quasthoff talking about love, death, disability, relationships, hopes and equanimity. I may never meet a more balanced or agreeable artist.
Luis Sunen, editor of Madrid-based scherzo magazine, has been trying for years to introduce The Master to a Spanish public. He has finally succeeded in the January issue, out now, where the great man talks about Leonard Bernstein, casting difficulties and hearing Sweeney Todd in Catalan.
One of the great baritone’s few regrets was that the world had not seen enough of his versatility. He released two jazz albums through Deutsche Grammophon but neither was well marketed or got wide play.
To get a wider appreciation of this extraordinary artist, and remember his sheer sense of fun, you’ve got to watch these videos.
Bebopping with Bobby
Being himself
I’ve just talked to Tommy Quasthoff and had confirmation of his very sad decision to give up singing, for persistent health reasons, at the age of 52.
‘But I am totally happy with it!!!!” says Tommy, who is one of the sweetest natured men alive.
Tommy told his friend and agent, Helga Machreich-Unterzaucher, that he had always played in the Champions League and was not willing to do anything that was below his phenomenally high standard. I, and all his friends and admirers, will greatly respect that decision.
He is, however, not going to disappear. He will contine to serve as a judge on the Wigmore Hall singing competition and to present his live interviews in a small Berlin concert hall. He is full of life and eager to share it.
Here’s a press statement in English that is just going out from the agency Press Release.
Quasthoff, who was born with terrible disabilities, has been described by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau as the greatest male lieder singer of our time.
Here’s an archived piece I wrote about him 11 years ago.
Here’s the man at his best.
And here’s an extract from something I wrote after spending an afternoon with him last summer.
He is just 1.34 metres tall and has very short arms, the consequence of a drug called Thalidomide that his mother was prescribed during pregnancy. His first years were spent in hospital among cerebral palsy sufferers and he was not expected to live very long. Only the support of a close family and his own innate humour and stubbornness enabled him to transcend his circumstances and find his voice in art. ‘I’m a normal person, only shorter,’ he will tell you, a huge grin stretched across his face.
Remberto Becker, a member of the Buena Vista Social Club, has died aged 101.
His two key songs are “De Ti Enamorado”
and “Como Cambian Los Tiempos”.
A friend mentioned that he’s going to Berlin at the weekend to hear Barenboim conduct Dream of Gerontius with the Philharmonic. Some mistake, surely? I protested.
Elgar is prime Rattle territory. Why would he relinquish it to a local rival?
The answer is more tactical than strategic. Both men are consummate politicians who know how to give a bit here, take a bit there. They have a range of common interests and a need to safeguard their empires.
Knowing that Barenboim learned his Elgar from Sir John Barbirolli and wanted to conduct the Dream in tribute, Rattle graciously consented.
It’s a win-win for him. If Barenboim triumphs, Rattle will be praised for generosity, if he fails the Englishman can show how it’s done next season.
The affinities stretch beyond Berlin. Yesterday, Rattle was announced with Placido Domingo as co-winner of the state of Israel’s biggest arts prize. Barenboim was awarded the Wolf in 2004 and accepted it with a Knesset speech dissenting from the state’s Palestine policies. Will he advise Rattle to so something similar? He has invited Rattle often to conduct at the Berlin Staatsoper. Might he now introduce him at La Scala?
The dance continues, and it’s one of the more entertaining spectacles at a dulled-down classical summit.
