Lorin has posted what he was about to say at the Davos Economic Forum, had he not been diverted to ER by a bash on the head, and then ordered to stay put for a while.

lorin_maazel_274

Read his full script here.

We didn’t say that. They did.

The Welsh so-called ‘opera singer’ has a a new record deal after being dropped by Warner. And the plan, we hear, is a reversion to para-classics.

 

katherin jenkins itv

 

KATHERINE JENKINS

@KathJenkins

SIGNS NEW DEAL WITH DECCA

RETURNING TO ‘THE HOME OF CLASSICAL MUSIC’ AS SHE CELEBRATES 10th ANNIVERSARY IN THE MUSIC INDUSTRY

 

Today, 20th January 2014, Katherine Jenkins (OBE), announced that she has renewed her relationship with the world’s No.1 Classical label, Decca Records – signing a deal which will see the nation’s favourite songstress release her next album in the autumn of 2014.

 

This significant signing marks the beginning of a new era for the classical artist.

 

Katherine made the announcement at an intimate brunch at The Ritz to celebrate her 10th anniversary in the music industry.

 

Since 2004, Katherine has become one of the most successful classical crossover artists ever, selling in excess of 8 million albums to date and is one of the most in-demand classical concert artists in the world. In 2013 alone she toured in South Africa, China, Japan, The U.S., Abu Dhabi and across continental Europe.

 

Her popularity has earned Katherine numerous accolades including two Classical Brits for ‘Album of the Year’ as well as receiving an OBE for services to music and charity in the 2014 New Year Honours List.

Katherine Jenkins said:  “It feels not only very exciting but very special to be returning to Decca – a decade after they first signed me and to many of the people who helped launch my career. It amazes me to think that this will be my 10th album and for this, it seems the perfect place to be going ‘home’ to.”

 

Like me, Franz Welser-Möst does yoga. Actually, he’s been doing it a lot longer, but I’m catching up…

franz welser-most

We warned that more bits would fall off the troubled agency when Libby Abrahams quit two months ago as v-p. Well, today Libby announces that she’s waltzed off with IMG’s star signing, the French pianist Hélène Grimaud, as well as two conductors – the Sony-spinner Teodor Currentzis and the rising Czech, Tomáš Hanus. Press release below.

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Libby Abrahams launches Keynote Artist Management

 

Keynote Artist Management is launched today by Libby Abrahams who has over twenty years’ experience of artist management in classical music, and brings with her wealth of knowledge and understanding of artists’ and their needs in the 21st century.

 

Keynote Artists Management aims to establish and grow a boutique artist management company based on excellence, and to offer a personalised service to high profile artists with experienced staff.  It will concentrate on the core management business, retaining the independence and flexibility to seek partnerships which benefit the individual artists.

 

Libby Abrahams’ career has included roles at Van Walsum Management, Trittico Ltd, ICM, Harrison Parrott and most recently IMG Artists Ltd where she was Senior Vice President & Director in London for Conductors and Instrumentalists.

 

Keynote Artist Management commences with three artists all of whom Libby Abrahams’ worked with at IMG Artists: pianist Hélène Grimaud and conductors Teodor Currentzis and Tomáš Hanus. All three artists will be managed in association with IMG Artists.

 

Libby Abrahams commented, ‘After many fruitful years working in some of the most prestigious classical music artist agencies, setting up a smaller boutique artist agency was a natural step for me. It offers new challenges and opportunities and I relish the chance to continue to develop relationships with high profile artists and to help both shape and progress their careers. Keynote Artist Management will focus on a personal service offering high quality and excellence.’

I ripped open a new Luto release and there was not a single work I knew. It’s the piano music, very esoteric. But good. It’s my album of the week on Sinfini. Read here.

ewa kupeic

Claudio Abbado ci ha lasciati. Ma alla Scala resterà per sempre.

It begins: Claudio Abbado has left us, but at La Scala he remains forever.

And it continues in the same smug vein, celebrating his service to the ‘eternity’ while ignoring the internal struggle that evicted him in 1986. Perhaps because several of the instigators are still playing. Read here.

abbado young

1956 photo shows Claudio Abbado in a piano rehearsal with Franco Fantini and Mario Gusella.

Seiji Ozawa has posted a short tribute to his comrade:

Claudio and I were good friends from before either of our debuts, all the way to the present. Once we were both inconvenienced by illness, we took to worrying about one another. I had fully believed that Claudio’s gift for looking after himself would lead to his recovery. I am so sad to have lost such a good friend.

Seiji Ozawa

January 20, 2014

 

RECK-CON-OZAWA-E-ABBADO

The man in the middle is conductor Stefan Anton Reck.

A report for Slipped Disc from David Conway in Kyiv (Kiev): 

 

The muzikovedi of Kyiv evidence some black humour in their programming. The evening before the last presidential elections, which brought Mr. Yanukovich to power, the opera house put on Boris Godunov, which opens with the palace guards beating up the population to persuade them to support the establishment favourite for Tsar.

Last night, while the Maidan demonstration simmered a couple of hundred yards away, the Philharmonia offered Shostakovich’s Symphony no. 11 , The Year 1905, which commemorates the St. Petersburg demo almost exactly 109 years ago where peaceful protesters, complaining about government corruption, inefficiency and repressive legislation were attacked by armed guards at the instructions of the political elite.

A couple of hundred yards in the other direction, towards the Parliament, fires and chanting were raging half-an-hour before the concert began, and the militants had set up a trebuchet to fling cobbles at the militia…..

 

trebuchet kiev

 

The mood in Kyiv has swung definitively towards the unpleasant in the last 48 hours, with titushki (provocateur thugs) being shipped in from all over the country – they were being marshalled this morning in the forecourt of Arsenal metro station, just one stop from the Maidan –and the voluntary security guards in the Maidan itself now equipped with baseball bats ……..

But gratifyingly cultural life continues, even if the location of the Philharmonia’s elegant concert hall (which in the nineteenth century was Kiev’s leading gentleman’s club), stranded between two battle zones, means the audiences are presently a little diminished. Not thus diminished, I am glad to say, is the quality of the music.

We kicked off with a change of programme from the anticipated ‘Magic Flute’ Overture and heard instead the Carpathian Concerto, a lively Kodalyesque orchestral piece of 1972 by the Ukrainian composer Myroslav Skoryk (b. 1938). Perhaps this evocation of Ukraine’s Carpathian West may also be interpreted in the circumstances as a gesture in the direction of Europe? Sirenko extracted virtuoso performances from his band in the many passages of instrumental display and this augured well for the next item, the Mozart A major piano concerto K.488 with Gennadiy Demianchuk as soloist. Here the orchestra proved it could also function effectively in chamber mode, with beautiful interplay in particular between piano and wind, gauged perfectly to the fine acoustics of the Philharmonia’s Colonnade Hall. Demianchuk’s reading, of an exceptional clarity, was particularly impressive in the closing paragraphs of the slow movement.

I have heard Volodymyr Sirenko conducting major works of Russian symphonic repertoire – including some memorable performances of the neglected Myaskvosky – and I have never been disappointed. Shostakovich’s 11th  symphony offers many challenges. It was initially criticised in the West as being “film music”– but this may miss a point, as for many Soviet composers, including Shostakovich, film music proved to be a means of getting away with things that couldn’t be done in the concert hall. The film to which it might provide a track would certainly have to be monochrome. The scoring is frequently bleak, sparse, or even minimalist, especially in the first three movements. And we are rarely free from the threatening beat of the drum, or sinister fanfares, which become overwhelming in the final movement, ‘Tocsin’.

Sirenko’s tense and total commitment was palpable throughout, the orchestra at peak attention, the audience enthralled. His long view of the structure minimalized the trivialities to which the score sometimes threatens to descend, and thrillingly conveyed Shostakovich’s messages of heroism, struggle, (and triumph deferred). This may not be Shostakovich’s finest symphony, but everyone in the hall, only too aware of what is taking place in the city, realised that this was a performance close not only to the physical, but to the spiritual knuckle.

 

ukrainian conductor

 

 

UPDATE: After I e-mailed this review, there were some more violent episodes in the night – although things seem peaceful at the moment, everyone is very touchy. Meanwhile, on a note of optimism, the Philharmonia proposes performing Haydn’s ‘Creation’ on Friday…….

The conductor Daniel Harding was a close friend of Claudio Abbado for 20 years. He recalls here, in an exclusive article for Slipped Disc, the unique qualities of an elusive maestro.

 

abbado silence

 

Claudio was one of the wonders of the world. I think in more than 20 years of knowing him I only heard him raise his voice twice. One of those times was, typically, in jest!

He was the master of leading those around him exactly where he wanted them without ever seeming to demand or insist, without ever being too explicit, or damaging the feeling of freedom that he gave each musician.

He created at least 6 orchestras, most of them for young people. Through this he did more than any single person in our time to educate an entire generation, maybe 2 generations, in what it means to play in an orchestra. I doubt there is a single professional orchestra in the whole of Europe without a group of musicians who played at some point in one of the orchestras he founded.

Musicians who will never forget his simple message – Listen! (of course said in barely a whisper) Claudio sought to remove himself from the equation, he talked endlessly (on the rare occasions when he spoke at all!) of all music as being Chamber Music. If he could aid the musicians to play, so to speak, undirected then he could work his magic. Cajoling and inviting, he would then take the performance to unimagined heights He spoke multiple languages perfectly, but always pretended he couldn’t! Especially if the conversation taking a turn he didn’t appreciate!

His wonderful look of total confusion could disarm almost any situation, we all loved him desperately but few dared to risk upsetting him. His acts of generosity were extraordinary and his single-mindedness could be hugely demanding. There is a large group of us who were lucky enough to have been, at one point or another, part of his close circle. This was not always an easy place to be but I know of none of us who would have had it any other way.

daniel harding

 

 

He was, and will continue to be, often imitated. It isn’t very difficult!! Take all the focus out of your consonants, look lost and confused, put your hand on your chest and say ‘beautiful music’ ‘schöne Musik’ What more did he need to say?! He was cheeky, impish, wicked and hysterically funny. He was magnetic, charming and, so I am told, gorgeous!

He was the greatest conductor I have ever seen or heard in person. Not always, not for all repertoire, but when he was in his element and comfortable with those around him then there was nobody to touch him.

In Lucerne, over the last years, once again he built himself a fortress. Everything was on his terms; who played, what was played, when he rehearsed, for how long.. It could be merciless, but in the end the results were unforgettable like almost nothing else. I don’t think the musicians of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra would have done all that for anybody else. There was nobody else like Claudio and there won’t be again.

I will always remember him in the silence that follows the music. There was no moment he treasured more than those seconds of reflection and privacy before the tumult swept the music into the past, into memory. He wasn’t always good at closeness, not good at conversation, not good at taking applause, so he held onto that last moment alone with the music as long as he could. Always listening.

I am deeply saddened by the loss of a great musician, a man who for many decades has marked history in the world of conducting and musical interpretation for international institutions. His work is an immense testimony to the importance of European and Italian culture around the world. I admire him for the strong courage he showed in the face of a long and terrible illness, and for the seriousness and profundity that characterized his life as a musician and as a Maestro.

Riccardo Muti

abbado smile

photo: Chris Christodoulou/Lebrecht Music&Arts

Some tributes from Italy:  President Giorgio Napolitano said that the death of Abbado “is a source of strong emotion and pain for me personally, and a profound loss for Italy and for (our) culture”. Last August, Napolitano appointed Abbado as a Senator for life, a position honouring Italians who have shown extraordinary scientific, social or artistic merit. “From today, Italy is poorer,” said Riccardo Chailly, named as principal conductor for La Scala beginning next year. “(His death) leaves a great void in the history of musical interpretation,” added Chailly, who described Abbado as a mentor. “For us Italians, Claudio has been a landmark…capable of representing the best of our tradition”.

abbado smile

Photo: (c) Chris Christodoulou/Lebrecht Music&Arts

Netherlands Opera director, Pierre Audi: I can’t think of a greater loss to the Arts in my lifetime.

 

Record producer Michael Fine: I recall Abbado once saying to me, ‘Per me, la parola straniero non esiste.’ For me the word foreigner does not exist.’

 

London singer Sharon Eckman:

When Abbado walked into a piano rehearsal, you could feel the energy ramp up – not from him, he was so quiet we could barely hear his instructions to us, and more often than not, these would be in the form of grunts – but because the magic always happened.  For the chorus, in any case.  The orchestra were a little less enamoured, for those very reasons.  He also conducted without a score; a risky proposition for both conductor and orchestra.  But because he never looked down, he was always looking at us.  Or at me, obviously.  Of course he looked at me, I adored him, why wouldn’t he?

Oh those looks…  The ‘I have just ascended to heaven thanks to the string playing at the end of (insert Mahler symphony here)’.  The ‘I asked for a diminuendo, and you have given me braying donkeys, I am now a broken man’.  Or as one ex-LSC member put it today “The look of utter, inconsolable anguish when some phrase or other wasn’t exactly as he wanted it,” as though we’d killed his puppy, or the ghost of Mahler.

And the gestures.  He didn’t need words – finger to the lips and we were as pianissimo as he.  Praying gesture at the end of a concert and it was as though the gods of music were praying with him.

Albanian tenor Saimir Pirgu:

The year was 2003, when someone informed Maestro Abbado of a young Albanian tenor who had recently won two major voice competitions . The Maestro decided to hear me, I do not know exactly why: it could have been a curiosity to hear a tenor in his early twenties or the fact of my actually being Albanian since he was holding auditions for Mozart’s Così Fan Tutte. The two protagonists are called to disguise themselves as Albanians, and perhaps I, too, was intrigued by the strange coincidence of seeing an Albanian interpret the role of an Albanian. I remember it so clearly, as if it were now; after only a few minutes, the Maestro told me that the role of Ferrando was mine. It was one of the first roles that opened doors for me…  Maestro Abbado had faith in me and I’ve always felt that he helped me and sensed with full conviction what I could become.  This was not only valuable for me : there are hundreds of young artists whom Claudio Abbado discovered and guided on the magnificent journey of music and who now play , sing and conduct on the most important stages in the world.

Israeli conductor Noam Zur:

In 2011, I visited the Lucerne Festival and was lucky enough to see the great Claudio Abbado rehearse Mahler’s tenth symphony and to get a photocopy of his score from him (with his handwritten annotations).

mahler 10 abbado marks

He was the most noble, humble, gentle and modest man imaginable, and really took time to talk to me during his intermissions, several days in a row. This week, I am conducting the Adagio from the tenth symphony with the Transylvanian State Philharmonic Orchestra. Today, in the first rehearsal, I told this story to the orchestra while conducting the adagio out of “his” score. In the intermission, the musicians told me that the news had broken about his death, while we were playing his edition of the Adagio. I was so shocked that I couldn’t finish the rehearsal, and went to cry in my dressing room before returning to the hotel. Together with the orchestra, we decided to dedicate not only this piece, but the entire concert on Friday 24th of January to his memory. The rest of the program includes Mendelssohn Midsummer Night’s Dream overture, and Chopin f-minor piano concerto.

Swiss violinist Etienne Abelin:

You always insisted that we call you Claudio, not maestro, not Mr. Abbado, you wanted to be on eye level. But you were in fact always that little, subtle step ahead and ever so gently invited us to join you on that journey, in a way that felt like a catalyst. It needed no words. Your gift was to make us feel like we were fully ourselves, more than ourselves, never controlled from something outside, but gently guided. Guided to see and share beauty and more than that: to live an ethos of interconnectedness, collaboration, balance. For me, you embodied the best the world has to offer and this can and will live on. I’ll do my very best to contribute as much as I can.