The Royal Northern College of Music announces today it has hooked the  French violinist Renaud Capuçon on a one-year contract as International Chair in Violin. Class act.

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Carnegie Hall, hustling round for a second replacement for the indisposed Lorin Maazel, followed the old dictum: always ask a busy man. It looks like the LSO get short measure from his translatlantic rescue mission, but that was never likely to bother their outgoing chief. Release below.

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VALERY GERGIEV TO CONDUCT MUNICH PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA

IN ALL-RICHARD STRAUSS PROGRAM AT CARNEGIE HALL ON

FRIDAY, APRIL 11

Lorin Maazel, Scheduled to Conduct on April 11 and 12, Unable To Appear Due to Illness

As Previously Announced, Fabio Luisi To Conduct April 12 Program

Carnegie Hall today announced that conductor Valery Gergiev will step in for Lorin Maazel on Friday, April 11 at 8:00 p.m., leading the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra in the first of two all-Richard Strauss programs this week at Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage. Due to illness, Maestro Maazel with deep regret has cancelled his professional engagements in Munich and New York this week. As previously announced, Fabio Luisi will conduct the orchestra on Saturday, April 12 at 8:00 p.m.

The two programs are unchanged, with Mr. Gergiev—the Music Director Designate of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra—leading a program of Strauss’s Also sprach ZarathustraTill Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche, and joined by pianist Emanuel Ax for Burleske. The following evening, Mr. Luisi conducts the orchestra, with soprano Karita Mattila singing the composer’s Four Last Songs on a program that also includes Ein Heldenleben and Der Rosenkavalier Suite.

Carnegie Hall and the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra are very grateful to Mr. Gergiev and Mr. Luisi for agreeing to conduct these concerts on short notice. Mr. Gergiev, who altered his schedule to fly from Europe expressly for this event before immediately returning to London to conduct on Sunday, has been appointed to succeed Mr. Maazel as the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra’s Music Director in 2015. Mr. Luisi is currently in New York leading rehearsals of La Cenerentola and appears at Carnegie Hall courtesy of The Metropolitan Opera.

Brian Wise reports that Klavierhaus has gone. Yet another victim of midtown developer greed.

Brian notes: The transaction is the latest in a series of moves that signal the downsizing of the midtown piano retail district, which sits between Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center and for decades has drawn piano buyers from around the world. 

Sic transit….

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Anthony Field was Finance Director of the Arts Council of Great Britain from 1957, when its budget was under £1 million, to 1985 when he was handling £300 million a year. Over that period, the field he tended matured from pro-am to world rank. Anthony, who died on Sunday aged 85, was an apolitical nurturer who sought only the best for civilisation. He went on to become a successful consultant. Tribute follows.

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ANTHONY FIELD

Anthony Field Associates announces with deep sadness the passing of Anthony Field CBE, FCA, D.Litt.,DFA.  Aged 85, Tony died peacefully in his sleep at home on the morning of Sunday April 6th,following a protracted struggle with an untreatable heart condition, cardiac amyloidosis.  Although this condition sapped his physical energy enormously, and made it necessary in recent months for Tony to use a wheelchair to get to the office, he maintained his rigorous schedule of work commitments coupled with the responsibilities of caring for Ted, his 92-year old civil partner who survives him (the longest “run” of any of Tony’s many achievements, lasting 65 years).

Trained as an actor, he fell into accountancy as a more steady career, and rose rapidly. Within a short time, at the Comedy (now Harold Pinter)Theatre he established the New Watergate Theatre Club which hastened the demise of censorship of theatre productions, bringing “banned” new work such as A VIEW FROMTHE BRIDGE, CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF and TEA AND SYMPATHY to eager London audiences.  He began a 28-year tenure as Finance Director of the Arts Council of Great Britain in 1957, and oversaw its development from holding a budget of under £1million to over £300million at his departure.  He was the leader in developing the successful collaboration between subsidised and commercial theatre, with an acute understanding of the fluidity of relationships between these worlds.

Deeply involved in every strand of the arts, he fostered lifelong friendships and close creative links with musical stars such as Dame Cleo Laine and Sir John Dankworth,  inspirational theatre leaders both onstage (Sir Derek Jacobi, Sir Antony Sher, Sir Paul Scofield) as well as offstage (Richard Pilbrow, who virtually created the language of contemporary stage lighting), as well as supporting the early stages of the careers of creative visionaries such as Sir Cameron Mackintosh and Thelma Holt, not to mention being a practical supporter of newer generations of producers such as David Babani at the Menier Chocolate Factory and David Pugh and Dafydd Rogers.

Tony was always passionately aware that the greatest investment of all types had to be in education, to support the leaders of tomorrow , and so excited was he at the vision of Mark-Featherstone-Witty he collaborated closely to make the dream of Sir Paul McCartney’s Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts a reality, raising millions of pounds to create the school which each year now  brings highly-skilled actors, musicians, technicians, directors,  producers and manager s to fuel the future of our business. Tony always adored visiting LIPA, and the sense of his excitement of being there was palpable to those of us fortunate enough to work with him.  Tony always made time to talk to any aspiring producer, to help them in whatever way he could, and was for decades a leading advocate of ISPA, the International Society for Performing Arts, which recently awarded Tony its Unique Lifetime Achievement Award. Tony created- and taught- the first ever arts management courses in the late 1960s, also lecturing at Harvard University for ten years. Also a prolific columnist, lecturer, producer – and so much more.

His brilliantly sharp, witty and enquiring mind was thankfully undimmed by the condition which finally felled him, and our team loved working with him as much as he loved working with us, right up to the end. He is utterly irreplaceable. A man who made theatre history on so many levels in so many ways is finally history himself. So many of us owe him so much, and we are all the richer for having the privilege of having known, respected and loved him.

John Causebrook, Gary Donaldson and Darren Black

Lluís Andreu, director of the Liceo in Barcelona (1981-90) and the Maestranza in Seville, has died at the age of 79. Under fire for paying high fees to big singers, his proudest day was bringing Luciano Pavarotti to his home town. ‘No promoter ever lost money on me,’ Big Lucy assured him.

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Edward Yatsun was working out in the pool at the gym, doing laps, when a heart attack caused him to go under. He was hauled out by lifeguards and doctors arrived quickly on the scene but they could not resuscitate him. Edward, 45, had played in Mikhail Pletnev’s orchestra for 19 years. He leaves a wife and small children.

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This list comes with the welts of experience. Read here.

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john shirley quirk 4We have been notified of the death last night, in Bath, of the glorious bass-baritone John Shirley-Quirk. John was 83 and still teaching at Peabody in Baltimore and at Bath Spa University in England. A colleague there writes: ‘He was very generous to students and they appreciated his wry sense of humour, to say nothing of his vast and remarkable performing experience.’

After a 1961 Glyndebourne debut, John joined Britten’s English Opera Group until the composer’s death in 1976. He recorded many Britten roles and appeared in Michael Tippet’s operas, besides. He was convivial, collegial and intense where it mattered – a fine singer who played a notable role in a generation when British singers strode tall on the world stage.

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UPDATE: Official notice:

John Stanton Shirley-Quirk CBE

Born 28 August, 1931   Died 7 April, 2014

John passed away peacefully, surrounded by his family.

Beloved of wife Teresa, children Kate, Peter, Benjamin & Julia, grandchildren Edward, Alice, Hannah & Joe, and step-daughter Sara.

With thanks to all the wonderful people at Dorothy House Hospice in Winsley.

Funeral private, Memorial concert to be announced.

English baritone John Shirley-Quirk enjoyed singing and playing the violin as a child, but his true vocal talent did not become apparent until he was already studying chemistry and physics at the University of Liverpool. After several years of teaching those subjects at a British Air Force station, he began to study with the baritone Roy Henderson (1957). In 1961-1962, he sang with the Cathedral Choir at St. John’s in London; during the same time he made his debut at Glydebourne in 1961 as Gregor Mittenhofer in Henze‘s Elegy for Young Lovers.

In 1963, Benjamin Britten recruited him to join his English Opera Group; with that group he sang the premiere performances of Britten‘s Curlew River, The Burning Fiery Furnace, The Prodigal Son, Owen Wingrave, and Death in Venice (between 1964 and 1973). During that time, he also sang Guglielmo in Così fan tutte and, later, Golaud in Pelléas et Mélisande at the Scottish National Opera. He created the role of Lev in Tippett‘s The Ice Break at Covent Garden in 1977.

Though his career centered around British venues and the music of English composers, Shirley-Quirk‘s career was by no means provincial. He sang his first performances of Wozzeck in St. Louis, and debuted in Berlin with Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle in 1969. Milan’s Teatro alla Scala engaged him as Rangoni in Boris Godunov, and in 1974 he made his Metropolitan Opera debut in Britten‘s Death in Venice. Other important roles in his career were the Speaker in Die Zauberflöte and the Music Master in Ariadne auf Naxos.

Shirley-Quirk had equal success as a recital and concert singer. He was highly regarded for his interpretation of the major choral works of Bach and Elgar and sang Mahler‘s Des Knaben Wunderhorn on many concerts in Europe, North America, and Australia. His recitals usually included songs by his mentor Benjamin Britten as well as those of Vaughan Williams and Butterworth.

John Shirley-Quirk‘s lyric baritone voice commanded a wide dynamic and expressive range; he had a wonderful sense of phrasing. It was as an interpreter that he was best known; his intellectual curiousity allowed him to explore the inner world of the works he sang. His recordings, particularly of the works of Benjamin Britten, document his fine artistry. In 1975 he was named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire.       (Artist biography by Richard LeSueur)