This could be another of those musicians vs cheap media sagas. Watch this space.
The first victims of the Dutch givernment cull are about to sign off with a flourish. Here’s a last look at the web-page.
We reported last week that lawyers for two major German newspapers had run amok, demanding heavy fines and costs from artists who quoted from favourable reviews on their websites. It’s the newspapers’ valuable copyright, you see.
Well, it has just got one degree worse. According to a comment on a German chat site, the Frankfurt Opera is facing demands of 7,000 Euros for blazoning quotes from reviews in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. I have sought clarification, but none has yet come through.
Perhaps Roland Gerschermann, the newpspaper executive behind these measures, might like to come clean on Slipped Disc.
At a time when newspaper sales are going through the floor, one can hardly think of a cleverer way of alienating core users and readers.
(Here’s one where the quotes have already been blanked out)
One of the world’s leading conductor agents has received a major promotion, and the former editor of Gramophone is embarking on a significant career change.
Kathryn Enticott, head of conductors and instrumentalists at IMG Artists, has been appointed joint managing director of the company’s European division. An agent of rare dedication who regularly burns midnight oil for such clients as Franz Welser-Most, Joshua Bell, Alan Gilbert and Hilary Hahn, Kathryn has been the focus of some heated head-hunting in recent months. So IMG moved fast to lock her in to a new position.
We also hear that James Inverne, who left Gramophone abruptly in October and has been freelancing vigorously in various fields, has decided to enter artist management. His new agency, with several influential backers and clients, will go live in a couple of months. One of its key strategies will be to combine career guidance with professional image management (formerly known as PR). We wish him well.
Members of Boston’s Youth Philharmonic Orchestra, past and present, have posted a petition calling for the reinstatement of their conductor, Benjamin Zander, who was sacked by the NEC for employing a videographer with a sex-crime in his distant past. Zander has admitted his naivety and apologised.
The New England Conservatory has admitted no responsibility. Its president, Tony Woodcock, had fallen out with Zander before the videographer mater came to light.
The petition is up and running here. Anyone who believes in natural justice for Benjamin Zander is encouraged to sign.
Call to Reinstate Benjamin Zander as Conductor of YPO
David Conway has written a thoughtful book for Cambridge University Press about how Jews, long excluded, were admitted to the music profession in the early 19th century. It is called:
and it does what it says on the cover.
However, when David tried to post his new title as a page on Facebook, the Zuckerberg censor cut him off. ‘Jewry’ is a no-no word on fb, apparently. Like the Saxon words for certain body parts and things the Republicans call President Obama.
It’s an arbitrary thing, and there’s no getting around it. So David has been forced to call his page ‘JIM: Entry to the Profession from the Enlightenment to Richard Wagner’……..’
That seems ever so slightly mad.
‘It has taken 12 years of negotiation,’ said the Ukrainian agency that announced the great tenor-baritone’s engagement. I wonder what the sticking point was.
Repertoire, no doubt. PD doesn’t know that many Ukrainian arias.
Or maybe he wanted them to find two more tenors to join him. Whatever.
Here‘s the story in the Kiev press.
Here‘s a fulsome tribute to the Hungarian artist, who died this week.
This, so far as we can tell, is the very first performance of the Johannes Brahms Albumblatt that Christopher Hogwood claimed to have discovered. The premiere was given eight or nine months before that ‘discovery’.
The pianist is the excellent Craig Sheppard. More about it here. It’s a lovely performance.
She’s said it before: ‘Israel is the energy centre of the world’. More here.
I had to rub my eyes twice on reading it, but the Guardian dance critic Judith Mackrell, dismissing the La Scala starvation scandal as old news, appears to link the unnatural thinness of dancers to their very meagre wages.
Anorexia? That’s a social problem, she says, to be found in all walks of life. But low pay: that’s a ballet issue.
I was going to include her article in the popular Criticising the Critics series, but it’s so off the scale that it would risk defaming other well-meant efforts.
She appeared yesterday on NPR’s All Things Considered show (listen here) and lo0k what happened. Anne-Akiko Meyers’ Bach album is now in the US amazon top ten, two behind Bob Dylan (watch your back, Bobcats).
Like Heifetz, she plays both parts of the double-violin concerto. Unlike him, she plays it on different Stradivarius instruments.
That’s what you can afford when you hit #8 on amazon music.
UPDATE: Since I first posted, she has risen to #6. Must be the power of Slipped Disc.