Denis Matsuev has been ordered to stay home, cancelling concerts in Russia, Israel and Carnegie Hall. An ebullient character, we wish him a swift recovery.

Carnegie Hall today announced that the recital by pianist Denis Matsuev—scheduled for nextThursday, January 30 in Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage—has been postponed to Sunday, June 15 at 8:00 p.m. Mr. Matsuev is currently being treated for pneumonia and has been forced to cancel or reschedule concerts in Russia, Israel, and the United States. He is currently in Moscow under doctor’s care and not permitted to travel.

Click here to watch an epochal performance from August 2010.

In October 2013, we reported that the winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine, Thomas Südhof, had said that he owed it all to his bassoon teacher. On the basis of that reported comment, Dr Südhof has given an exclusive interview at Stanford to Ryan Romine of The Double Reed, discussing his own musical education and the importance of music in training the scientists of the future. With Ryan’s permission, we publish the following extracts:

Ryan Romine (RR): In comments you made in the Lancet in 2010 and others recently

posted by Norman Lebrecht of Slipped Disc, you credited your bassoon teacher with

teaching you valuable skills for your career. Can you expand on those earlier comments

about your musical training and its impact on your research skills?

Thomas Südhof (TS): The qualities I learned from my training in classical music, in

particular in bassoon, are multifarious and varied. Let me list a few. First, the value of disciplined

study, or repetitive learning, for creativity. You cannot be creative on a bassoon if

you don’t know it inside out, and you cannot be creative in science if you don’t have a deep

knowledge of the details. Second, the value of good mentorship. A good teacher challenges

and criticizes, but does not chastise or put down a student, no matter what. !ird, the role

of performance in a profession. As a musician, you practice for thousands of hours to play

for a few minutes—but when you play, you have to not only recapitulate the learned material,

you have to expand on it and you have to communicate it to the audience. In science, it is

basically the same thing—it is in the end a process which also depends on communicating

with an audience and accepting and responding to its feedback. Finally, I learned to value

traditions as a musician, but at the same time the importance of trying to transcend tradition.

The tradition is the basis that allows you to progress, the starting point, but it cannot

become a limitation, because then both in music and in science creativity and progress end.

*

RR: How do your children’s musical experiences in the US compare with your own childhood

musical experiences in Germany?

TS: I think the US offers terrific opportunities for young children to learn classical music. I only

wish there were more opportunities [for them] to go to concerts and to perform in concerts.

RR: Do you feel there is a cultural/temporal/geographical/neurological difference in

how art music is perceived and valued in the present society in comparison to when you

were growing up?

TS: Absolutely—in the US at the present time, classical music is fundamentally a dying art.

There are few people who are willing to pay for it and its importance is miniscule compared

to that of popular sports. Musicians earn a fraction of what even a mediocre athlete earns.

There is no vibrant musical culture at present—everything is geared towards being commercially

successful, not towards content. However, I think the same trend is observed in

Europe, and we need to accept this trend and look for components in popular culture that

are not boring (sometimes quite hard for me).

RR: Would you encourage your children to become musicians, scientists, both, neither?

TS: Only if they have a passion for it—it is a lot easier to have a stable life and to support a

family in other professions. Being a musician or a scientist is a sacrifice, and only worth it

if you truly enjoy it and consider it a privilege.

*

RR: The American education system has in the past few years invested heavily in STEM

(Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) subjects, which place a significant

emphasis on your career field. Yet, your earlier published statements place significant

value on arts training. Do you see any way to integrate these two seemingly disparate

ideals?

TS: I personally think that training in the arts prepares a growing child just as well for a

scientific or technical career as [does] training in STEM subjects, if not better, because the

arts train a person in discipline, independent action, thinking, and in the need for attention

to detail without becoming a prisoner of that detail. I absolutely don’t think there is a need

for earlier math training—there is only a need for training the mind so it becomes fertile

for future learning.

*

RR: Do you still own/play a bassoon?

TS: I still own my bassoon—upstairs in a cupboard—but I don’t play it any more….

RR: Who is the maker?

TS: Hüller, a former East-German company.

*

RR: Thank you so much, Dr. Südhof, for your time and your thoughts. Bassoonists (and

musicians in general) worldwide are surely proud to count you as one of their own.

TS: I wish I could still be a bassoonist—it was a lot harder than being a scientist.

The fabulous Ingrid Fliter, Gilmore Artist of 2006, is one of dozens of artists who were left homeless by the abolition of EMI Classics. Unwanted by the dormant new owners, Warner Classics, and unable to sign to Universal which was forbidden by the EU to take on EMI artists, Ingrid like many others has been searching frantically for a new home.

She’s one of the lucky ones. Linn Records, a boutique label based in Glasgow, has recorded Ingrid in the Chopin concertos with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, conductor Jun Märkl. Watch.

The next music director of the Barcelona Symphony and Catalonia National Orchestra (OBC) will be Kazushi Ono. He starts in 2015, succeeding Pablo González Bernardo. Before him, the chief conductor (2006-2010) was Eiji Oue.

Two men walked into a luthier’s shop in The Hague today, offering to sell a violin. The luthier called police, who arrested them with a 1731 Landolfi, stolen a week ago in a burglary at Abcoude. The instrument is worth several hundred thousand dollars. Two men are being detained for questioning.

The Lottery

By Henry Fielding

A tale of seduction, delusion and financial corruption.

Musical Director: Žak Ozmo with L’Avventura London

Stage Director: Harry Fehr

Bury Court Opera presents the modern premiere of The Lottery, Henry Fielding’s smash hit

ballad opera of 1732.

The Lottery is the outrageous tale of Chloe, a beautiful but foolish country girl who is

seduced by the bright lights of London. Among other things, Chloe is defrauded by a

crooked stockbroker and taken in by a confidence trickster. The story is brought vividly to

life by L’Avventura London under music director Žak Ozmo with stage direction by brilliant

young director Harry Fehr.

Ballad opera was the most popular form of musical entertainment in C18 England and the

origin of today’s musical theatre. Witty, satirical and subversive, it was opera for the

common man and typically its stories mocked the high moral values of the Italian opera of

that period. Its music was lifted from the most popular operas, pantomimes, and ballad

tunes of the day, reworked to fit funny, satirical plays performed by the public’s favourite

actor-singers.

Novelist and satirist Henry Fielding (1707-1754) wrote eleven ballad operas that are among

the best examples of the genre. The Lottery was one of the most popular of ballad operas,

and still in the repertory well into the C19th. In 1727 Fielding’s family were almost

bankrupted by a dishonest stock-broker, so, the humorous depiction of such a stock-broker

in The Lottery was Fielding’s way of publicly shaming cheats in that profession. Coupled with

the financial success of The Lottery, revenge must have been sweet for Fielding.

Žak Ozmo is a Music Director, lutenist, and scholar in historical performance. He is the

Director of period instrument ensemble L’Avventura London, and the Director of Early Music

at the University of Hull.

Dates for 2014: The Fairy Queen, by Purcell. Sat 22 Feb, Wed 26 Feb, Sat 1st March

The Lottery, by Henry Fielding. Fri 28 Feb, Sun 2nd March

Too Hot to Handel, Sun 23rd Feb.

www.burycourtopera.org

We’ve been notified of the death of James Preiss, who worked with the composer all the way back to the premiere of Drumming.

While looking for interested percussionists to play his new piece, Reich called Paul Price at the Manhattan School of Music. Price referred him to James Preiss, who soon became a member of his ensemble. (Reich also took some informal marimba lessons from him.) This was about the time when he was contacted by Russell Hartenberger for guidance on Russ’s upcoming trip to Ghana. Hartenberger, in turn, introduced Reich to Bob Becker, and the four percussionists were soon practicing bongos together.

‘By the time I got to the end of the piece,’ explains Reich, ‘I noticed that those pitches were in the middle register of the marimba and thought it would be interesting to expand to a wider pitch scope because I had been limited to these four notes for 20 minutes. So I went through a similar process: getting a marimba and playing against tape. Then I began to hear women’s voices, like an aural hallucination, and I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful if there were women singing—kind of like Ella Fitzgerald scat singing.’ That grew into ‘Drumming, Part II.’

photo: international.contilia.de

More pictures here.

Fred Bertelmann, 88. RIP.

Key fact: He discovered swing music as a POW in Alabama.

Our friend Andrew Patner reports that two musicians have been co-opted onto the small group that is searching for a successor to Deborah Rutter at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

This is a welcome and progressive development, engineered by board chairman Jay Henderson, a vice chair of accounting giant PricewaterhouseCooper LLP. It is very much a sign of the times.

Little over a decade ago, leading US orchestras appointed a music director without bothering to consult the musicians. Today, especially in the wake of the Minnesota disaster, sensible organisations have become aware that musicians must have a say in all senior appointments.

The new season announcement from the London Philharmonic Orchestra downgrades what ought to be its most important role to that of little more than passing traffic. Vladimir Jurowski will conduct just ten concerts in the season. How do they justify that? Either the rising Juro’s on his way out, or the title has become meaningless. Or both.

The power behind the LPO sits behind a desk. His name is Timothy Walker and his title is Chief Executive and Artistic Director. Maestros need not apply.

Press release below.

London Philharmonic Orchestra announces 2014/15 Royal Festival Hall season

Season at a glance:

• Rachmaninoff: Inside Out is the most extensive celebration of Rachmaninoff’s music ever undertaken in a season with 11 concerts including the complete symphonies & piano concertos (in all versions), the opera The Miserly Knight, the choral masterpiece The Bells, rare performances of the cantata Spring and orchestral songs as well as a selection of other much-loved and rare orchestral works

• Magnus Lindberg announced as new Composer in Residence with premieres of two important new works, including a specially-commissioned piece for soprano Barbara Hannigan and a second piano concerto

• Other major commissions and premieres are by out-going Composer in Residence Julian Anderson, Harrison Birtwistle(in his 80th birthday year), double-Oscar winner James Horner, BASCAwinner Colin Matthews and Emmy-nominated Benjamin Wallfisch

• Ten concerts with Vladimir Jurowski, Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor, including most of the premieres as well as many programmes focussed on Rachmaninoff and his contemporaries

• Distinguished visiting conductors include Marin Alsop, Christoph Eschenbach, Andrew Manze, Juanjo Mena, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Vasily Petrenko, Jukka-Pekka Saraste, Vassily Sinaisky and Osmo Vänskä

• ·         Robin Ticciati makes his LPO debut at the Royal Festival Hall consolidating the Orchestra’s relationship with new Music Director of Glyndebourne

• Strong showing for pianists includes Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Yefim Bronfman, Katia and Marielle Labèque, Piers Lane, Nikolai Lugansky, Maria João Pires, Lars Vogt and nonagenarian master Menahem Pressler

• Outstanding young talent includes pianists Behzod Abduraimov, Narek Hakhnazaryan, Pavel Kolesnikov and Igor Levit; violinists Alexandra Soumm and Ray Chen; and conductor Ilyich Rivas

• Author Michael Morpurgo and composer Colin Matthews team up for major new work for children, The Pied Piper of Hamelin, conducted by Jurowski, plus other brand new works for children by Benjamin Wallfisch on Roald Dahl’s Dirty Beasts

Timothy Walker, Chief Executive and Artistic Director, said:

“Through uncompromising live performances of Rachmaninoff’s major works for orchestra, given by the best imaginable conductors and soloists, I think audiences will not only take pleasure in the much-loved melodies, colourful orchestrations and powerful atmosphere of this great Russian composer’s music, but also really experience its sincerity, impeccable craftsmanship and brilliance.

I’m delighted that Magnus Lindberg, one of today’s most inventive and inspiring creators of orchestral music, becomes our new Composer in Residence and we continue our commitment to new music with premieres of two new works by him, alongside others by Julian Anderson, Harrison Birtwistle, Colin Matthews, James Horner and Benjamin Wallfisch. I’m also pleased to welcome back so many distinguished artists and to introduce so many young and talented performers.”