A Swedish design team conducted a Metro station experiment to see if a visual and musical alternative to the escalator would encourage travellers to take more exercise.
It did. What’s more, it gained more than 20 million viewers on Youtube. Watch.
Karen Stone, the experienced intendant at Magdeburg Opera (previously at Graz and Dallas), has drawn a furious response by accepting that budget cuts may be necessary in the coming years. The opera bosses at Dessau and Halle, where the cuts are kicking in right now, says Karen is only supporting cuts because Magdeburg has been exempted. Read about the row here.
The pair have been concerned by a number of Times reports about Alan Doggett, an alleged member of the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE) who was their early mentor at school. Doggett committed suicide in 1978 after being accused of indecent assault on a pupil ten years earlier. Here’s the Lloyd Webber-Rice statement:
photo (c) The Times
‘Alan Doggett was the music master at Westminster Under School, where he taught Andrew’s younger brother Julian. He became a friend of the Lloyd Webber family when Andrew was twelve.
‘Doggett asked Andrew in 1967 whether he and Tim would write an end of term concert piece for the preparatory school Colet Court. The consequence was “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat”.
‘Doggett had a track record of success with schools music. His choir had recorded previously the Daniel Jazz and the Jonah Man Jazz which were considered successes in the schools music field in the mid 1960s.
‘At the time of his death we had not seen him for some time. His suicide in 1978 and the fresh allegations that were made around that time came as a complete shock to us.
‘Neither of us had ever heard of the Paedophile Information Exchange until very recently and obviously had no idea that Alan Doggett was connected with it or that he could be a danger to children.’
The Minnesota Orchestral Association Board has lost eight of its 77 members since it was announced that the president, Michael Henson, would be leaving in August. ‘I may never know the real story of how the Board got from a strong vote of confidence for Henson on February 28th to showing him the door on March 20th,’ wrote John P. Whaley to board chairman Gordon Sprenger.
Very true. But a board of 77? No wonder the MO is dysfunctional.
The conductor’s support of Vladimir Putin has not yet jeopardised his next job with the Munich Philharmonic. But the city’s ruling coalition (which funds the orchestra) is letting the orchestra council know that it will be monitoring its prospective music director’s statements in support of the Russian president’s expansionism:
“Im Philharmonische Rat wurde heute intensiv und differenziert über den persönlichen politischen Standpunkt des künftigen Chefdirigenten der Münchner Philharmoniker diskutiert. Dazu gehörte auch das Verhältnis zwischen der garantierten freien Meinungsäußerung und der Verantwortung in einer exponierten Position im Münchner Kulturleben. Der Philharmonische Rat hat sich einvernehmlich verständigt, den Kulturreferenten der Landeshauptstadt München Dr. Hans-Georg Küppers und den Intendanten der Münchner Philharmoniker Paul Müller zu bitten, mit Maestro Valery Gergiev bei seinen nächsten Aufenthalten in München ein Gespräch zu führen. Ziel ist es, ihm die aktuelle Diskussion über seine Äußerungen darzustellen und ihn für die daraus resultierende Situation des Orchesters zu sensibilisieren.”
Sotheby’s are hyping up the late Peter Schidlof’s Stradivarius for a $45 million sale, with uncritical assistance from the New York Times and other unquestioning mass media. The instrument’s history has The Dutch composer Leo Samama has contacted Slipped Disc with the viola’s family history. Here’s his account:
The MacDonald viola by Stradivarius was purchased by my late father in 1961 at Max Möller’s in Amsterdam for some 300,000 Dutch guilders (US$ 82,872 in 1961 values) and given on loan to be used by Peter Schildlof.
In those days my parents owned several Stradivarii, which were used by some of the great Dutch musicians of the day. Later, in the seventies, Peter asked my father as a friend since many years to sell the instrument to him, which my father did for the same price as he had paid Möller….
As I said: just to put the records straight. My father died in 1992, Peter in 1987. So someone had to tell the story….
On these figures, this ‘priceless’ and ‘finest viola in existence’ changed hands for less than $100,000 around 40 years ago. How is it possible that it should now be worth $45 million? It makes no economic sense at all.
Lucas and Arthur Jussen are the label’s latest novelty act.
Lucas studied with Menahem Pressler for two years and is now with Dmitri Bashkirov in Madrid. Arthur, in his final year of secondary school, studies with Jan Wijn.
Our youngest daughter is about to get married and the flutters are taking over.
Here’s what I’m using as musical benzo: a Piazzolla four-hand piece, played in Singapore. How holistic is that?
Shut your eyes, give in to the music. The players are Lori Kaufman and Albert Tiu.
