Andris Nelsons conducts Beethoven 7

Music director Andris Nelson will not be leaving the city of Birmingham unremembered. Norman Perryman has completed a wall portrait for Symphony Hall to be unveiled next Wednesday. Read the artist’s version here.

photo (c) Norman Perryman/Lebrecht Music&Arts

While we were away, another foundation stone crumbled at the disintegrating artists management firm.

Libby Abrahams, senior VP and director of artist management in IMG Artists’ London office, has taken a walk. ‘The time has come to create a new venture within performing arts management,’ says her side of the statement. Which of her artists will go with her into the unknown?

Her list includes the violinist Sarah Chang; conductors Kristjan Järvi, Claus Peter Flor and Teodor Currentzis; pianist Helene Grimaud (whom she poached from Harrison Parrott) and the cellist Julian Lloyd Webber.

Libby’s resignation comes a month after conductors’ manager Sara Hunt decided to follow a different beat.

Who’s next?

 

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Many readers have written in to ask what Christian Zacharias did after breaking off his concerto when a cellphone rang. Well, the concert continued. Video of the encore has just been released. The enterprising pianist reaches deep down into his resources – and totally changes the atmosphere. Watch.

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In the obituaries section of the East Hampton Star, their local newspaper, Laurie Anderson has posted the following loving notice:

What a beautiful fall! Everything shimmering and golden and all that incredible soft light. Water surrounding us.

Lou and I have spent a lot of time here in the past few years, and even though we’re city people this is our spiritual home.

Last week I promised Lou to get him out of the hospital and come home to Springs. And we made it!

Lou was a tai chi master and spent his last days here being happy and dazzled by the beauty and power and softness of nature. He died on Sunday morning looking at the trees and doing the famous 21 form of tai chi with just his musician hands moving through the air.

Lou was a prince and a fighter and I know his songs of the pain and beauty in the world will fill many people with the incredible joy he felt for life. Long live the beauty that comes down and through and onto all of us.

— Laurie Anderson

his loving wife and eternal friend

 

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November 2012. Photo (c) Marion Kalter/Lebrecht Music&Arts

 

Here’s a fuller version in the new Rolling Stone.