The Los Angeles Times has been reading the music organisation tax returns for fiscal 2011. Its chart, published in September but only just brought to our attention, finds two conductors earning over $2 million and six more above $1m.

The chart:

1 Muti (Chicago) – $2.17m

2 MTT (SanFran) – $2.03m

shock – shock – shock- shock

3 Christoph Eschenbach (Washington) – $1.93m

4 Charles Dutoit (Philadelphia) – $1.64m

5 James Levine (Met) – $1.52m

6 Gustavo Dudamel (LA Phil) – $1.43m

7 Alan Gilbert (NY Phil) – $1.34m

8 James Conlon (LA Opera) – $1.18m

How the heck did Eschy squeeze nearly $2m out of Michael Kaiser for heading an orch that’s plainly going nowhere? It tends to confirm that ‘Turnaround King’ Kaiser, the Kennedy Center chief – took his eye seriously off the job in his last years on the job.

Valentina Lisitsa has been making her third album for Decca. It ivolved spending a night in Wales. In a hotel. At the weekend.

Not a good idea. Watch.

Val’s Decca catalogue now reads: Royal Albert Hall, Rachmaninov, Liszt, Michael Nyman.

Michael Nyman? He’s 70 next month. Next question.

Leonard Slatkin has opened the Detroit Symphony’s Florida tour by telling the audience to loosen up.

At the end of the concert, but before the encore, he announced: ‘You’ve heard that we’re the most accessible orchestra on the planet, and tonight you’re going to be the most accessible audience on the planet. For the first time I’d like to invite you to turn your cell phones for a change, and cross the stage’s barrier by capturing this moment and posting your photos to your favorite social media channels.’

So they did.

For the second straight week, the Benedictines of Mary have the two top-selling classical albums in the US, jointly clearing 6,300 copies on  Nielsen’s Soundscan.

The next best are Simone Dinnerstein (543) and Anne Akiko Meyers (321). The recod in fifth place sold fewer than 200 copies.

It’s Zuill Bailey and he was playing in Anchorage, Alaska. Must have sold a Britten to every musical adult in town.

Mine’s a Blue Nun.

Yevgeny Kissin was playing music by forgotten Russian composers at the Kennedy Center, D.C., followed by a stretch of Yiddish poetry.

Reports here from John  Podhoretz and here from Anne Midgette.

There was no yeidel-deedle-deidel charm here, limited sweetness, little light. These were anxious musical pieces and anxious poems, startlingly self-aware and sophisticated. Through both melody and verse, there ran that indelible Jewish blend of skeptical irony and pained humor. But what proved so devastating was how they (and the music especially) seemed to herald in their frightening dissonances and determined lack of satisfying resolution the destruction soon to come. The poems are shot through with an image of nature relentlessly moving on while people stumble about in the dark as death hovers over them, ever-present. 

Kissin has recited Yiddish bfore, but never on the big stage.

This just in from Harry Manx, who endured a nightmare at Chicago’s O’Hare airport. All ended happily:

Do be careful out there.

More of what we already know, from the University of Kent:

The research investigated the effects of what the researchers described as Self-Identified Sad Music (SISM) on people’s moods, paying particular attention to their reasons for choosing a particular piece of music when they were experiencing sadness – and the effect it had on them.

The study identified a number of motives for sad people to select a particular piece of music they perceive as ‘sad’, but found that in some cases their goal in listening is not necessarily to enhance mood. In fact, choosing music identified as ‘beautiful’ was the only strategy that directly predicted mood enhancement, the researchers found.

Oh, gimme a break! Read the rest of it here.

photo: Dr Annemieke Van den Tol

London has been abuzz all week with reports that a well-known conductor allegedly threw a punch at a musician in the London Symphony Orchestra. Details have been printed in a widely-read newssheet. Facebook sites have gone white-hot with past occurences.

We were interested to find out how the e bullient orchestra responded, the more so since they will be working with the same conductor again before the season is out.

The players, it seems, took a pragmatic view. The conductor was ordered to apologise to the player and the orchestra, which he did. In writing. The letter is being kept on file. Opinion remains divided.

‘Incident’s over,’ said one player, a friend of the conductor’s.

‘He’s been given a yellow card,’ said an orchestra source. ‘Once more…’

Lucky we live in 2014. These things used to be commonplace. Especially in the LSO.

Remember Josef Krips?

Yundi Li returns on Saturday to the Philharmonic Hall where he won the Chopin International Comeptition 14 years ago. There has been a last-minute ticket surge after it was announced that the recital will not be broadcast.

Programme: 

Fryderyk Chopin:

• Nocturne in B flat minor, Op. 9 No. 1
• Nocturne in E flat major, Op. 9 No. 2

Robert Schumann: Fantasy in C major, Op. 17

***

Ludwig van Beethoven: Sonata in F minor, Op. 57 „Appassionata”

Fryderyk Chopin: Andante spianato et Grand Polonaise Brillant in E flat major, Op. 22

Paco de Lucia has died in Cancun, Mexico, aged 66. He was reportedly playing with his grandchildren on a beach when struck by a heart attack.

The son of a gypsy guitarist, Antonio Sanchez, he was acclaimed in Spain as its most universal flamenco interpreter. He was equally adept at classical and jazz.

We’re excited by reports of a rare upcoming production of Weill’s last opera, Lady in the Dark. It opens May 17 in Mainz, a farewell show by outgoing director Matthias Fontheim.

It opens with the editor of a fashion magazine on a psychoanalyst’s couch.

What’s not to love?

Kurt Weill, NY, 1946 (c) Stone

Staatstheaters Mainz Premiere 17. May 2014, 19.30. Also: 22.May, 3, 13, 15, 19, 24. June, 2, 5 July.

We have been accused at times, quite unfairly, of being a tad harsh on that derivative, soporific, life-draining operation known as Classic FM. ‘Never a good word to say about us,’ we’ve heard its bosses complains.

Well, here’s one.

On Tuesday, April 15, Sir Neville Marriner’s 90th birthday, all music broadcast on Classic FM will be conducted by him. Prior to that, from Saturday March 29 Classic FM will relay Neville Marriner at 90 Week, climaxing with a broadcast of Sir Neville’s 90^th birthday concert from the Royal Festival Hall with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields – the ensemble he founded in 1958.

Well done, Classic FM.

Neville is the most recorded conductor after Herbert von Karajan and the kindest man that ever set foot on a podium. It is fit and proper to honour him in this way. Good programming, too. Press release follows.

Classic FM, Global’s national classical music station, has announced a major celebration of Sir Neville Marriner to mark the British conductor’s 90^th birthday.

For the first time in its 21-year history, Classic FM will play one conductor’s recordings for an entire 24-hour period. On Tuesday 15^th April – Sir Neville’s birthday – every single piece of music broadcast on Classic FM will be conducted by him, as the station honours this remarkable musician.

Preceding this unique takeover, from Saturday 29^th March Classic FM will devote a week of special programmes to the conductor.Neville Marriner at 90 Week will culminate in an exclusive broadcast of Sir Neville’s 90^th birthday concert on Friday 4^th April from the Royal Festival Hall with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields – the ensemble he founded in 1958. Sir Neville has worked with the Academy for over fifty years and remains Life President.

The celebratory week will include an interview with Sir Neville and his son, the clarinettist Andrew Marriner, both of whom will be guests onCharlotte Green’s Culture Club on Sunday 30^th March (3pm to 5pm). The programme will also feature an interview with the current Music Director of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, violinist Joshua Bell. Later that evening (7pm to 9pm), David Mellor will present an affectionate tribute to the conductor with some of his finest archive recordings.

From Monday 31^st March, Jane Jones will host five special Full Works Concerts (8pm to 10pm), dedicated to profiling the Academy of St Martin in the Fields. On Monday, Jane begins with an exclusive broadcast of a concert recorded for Classic FM at London’s Cadogan Hall in January, which sees Joshua Bell lead the orchestra in Bach’s Violin Concerto in E and Beethoven’s Symphony No.3 (‘Eroica’). From Tuesday to Thursday, many of Sir Neville’s most acclaimed recordings with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields will be played, whilst on Friday the celebrations continue with the broadcast of the conductor’s 90^th birthday concert, recorded on Monday 1^stApril at the Royal Festival Hall with the Academy.

Further celebrations during the week will include a special edition of Saturday Night at the Movies with Howard Goodall (5pm to 7pm) in which the film score discography of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields will be profiled, while Classic FM morning presenter John Suchet will feature the orchestra’s brand new recording of Mozart’s Piano Concertos Nos. 14 and 27 with pianist Ingrid Jacoby, conducted by Sir Neville, as Classic FM’s Album of the Week.