Nick Gatfield has left the turbulent company suddenly in a cloud of rumour. and boardroom intrigue. All Sony will say is: ‘It was an amicable decision for Nick to leave the company at this time. We wish him the best in his future endeavours.’
It sounds like a sacking. Nick was previously a big gun at both EMI and Universal, as EMI Music president of new music for North America and before that as head of Island Records.
Trimmed with silk, our fashion correspondent advises. The white Rex rabbit cape was ‘manufactured by hand at Rome’s Fendi fur atelier in consultation with costume designer Alessandro Lai’ for her Rome Opera debut tonight in Puccini’s Manon Lescaut. Expect animal rights outrage. And a touch of Alice in Wonderland.
Photo by Silvia Lelli
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:
Harry Manx
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:
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.
