The Stolen Smells, a comic opera by Simon Wills,  receives its German premiere in Hamburg this weekend. The plot hinges on whether a baker can charge passers-by for savouring the smells from his fresh-bakes. Inevitably, it winds up in court.

The opera, a co-production of Lucerne Theatre and NDR, is conducted by Thomas Hengelbrock.

I’ve attended some hair-raising concerts in my time, but a new biography of Robert Schumann adds a new dimension to the experience.

According to a TLS review, proof-reading is now so lax at Cambridge University Press that the book refers three times to works of Schumann which received a pubic performance, an interpretation I’ve occasionally dreamed about but never actually seen.

Exactly what the learned author has in mind is probably detailed in a footnote. But, for those who find music writing a trifle arid, there is fun yet to be found in the lives of great composers.

In the thick of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Mahler Project, I found myself musing aloud about the great man’s career on the West Coast. He never quite made it there himself – though if he’d lived another couple of years he was planning to take the New York Phil to Chicago, and from there, who knows? – but there is an LA significance in the Mahler legacy, in the sense that it was the place that kept the flame alive during the darkness of the Second World War.

It is often forgotten that Mahler’s widow and his inner circle wound up at that time on the Pacific, attending each other’s cafe klatsches and reminiscing over all they had lost. Not just in reflection – also, in the case of Erich Wolfgang Korngiold and Thomas Mann – in regeneration. I jotted a quick post about it for the L A Phil site.

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.

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.

An NEC insider has sent us this disturbing report:

Just before the Youth Philharmonic’s concert at the end of last week, the first 
without Benjamin Zander, the orchestra had a question-and-answer session with an administrator from NEC. The administrator’s answer to essentially every question posed by the students was “It is for your health and safety.” 

This answer was given, for example, to someone who asked why Zander 
couldn’t have been allowed to conduct the upcoming concert, which he 
had planned and rehearsed with the orchestra. 

It may well be that NEC officials are under legal constraint and unable to say anything substantive about the shameful dismissal of a respected teacher and conductor. But the formula they have adopted is an outright lie and a serious defamation. Zander was not fired for health and safety reasons. The notion that he could have been a risk to anyone is absurd. If students at the NEC cannot trust what their administrators tell them, they will soon consider moving elsewhere.

See here for the full story so far.

The hot young composer takes big risks, both in music and with his titles. So how did his new piece go down? Here‘s a first review.