David Stern, New Yorker son of the violinist Isaac Stern, is to be replaced as music director of the Israel Opera after six years in the job.
From the start of next season, the music director will be the Israeli Daniel Oren.
Stern has not done much wrong. Nor did his predecessor, Asher Fisch, who was ousted in 2008 after ten years in the post.
No reason has been given for either switch. The only person who can give cause is Hanna Munitz, the company’s long-serving general director. And she’s staying shtum.
The man himself played a Hamburg Steinway, but at last night’s somewhat contentious finals in Israel five of the six finalists (we hear) chose Faziolis from Italy.
The earth may be about to move.
When I first wrote about him in my Companion to 20th Century Music back in 1991, he was so little known that there was no standard spelling of either of his names. I called him Moisei Vainberg. Nowadays his name is more commonly transcribed as Miecyslaw Weinberg, but he remains a mystery to most music lovers despite a slowly rising tide of recognition.
A Polish refugee from the Nazis, Weinberg (1919-1996) was the composer closest to Shostakovich, in both friendship and style. Each would give the other first sight of their new scores. The trust between them was rare in Soviet Russia.
Weinberg’s opera The Passenger has been staged in Bregenz, London and Houston and is coming to Lincoln Center this summer. But a cycle of symphonies announced by a British label appears to have been abandoned. It’s two steps forward, one step back.
This week, however, Weinberg will be BBC Radio 3’s Composer of the Week, assuring him one of the network’s prime showcases. The microsite is down at present. You can listen to Weinberg tomorrow and every day this week at noon.
The biennial prize was established by the magazine Opernwelt to honour the person who had done most for the art.
When it came to the inaugural award, the judges could find no-one more deserving that the man with his name on the trophy – the flamboyant Belgian director who died in March, aged 70. The presentation, in Garz, was made by the film director Michael Haneke. The award was accepted by Mortier’s long-term companion, the conductor Sylvain Cambreling.
press release:
The magazine Opernwelt and the Ring Award (international competition for stage direction and design) have jointly established a new prize for music theatre – the Mortier Award. The prize is named after the Belgian opera and festival director Gerard Mortier, who died on 9 March 2014 at the age of 70. The name-giver, who is also the first winner of the prize, received the honour posthumously.
The presentation of the first Mortier Award took place on 31 May 2014 at the 7th “Ring Award” finals in Graz. The film director and Oscar prizewinner Michael Haneke delivered the eulogy. The conductor Sylvain Cambreling, Mortier’s long-time companion and confidant, accepted a sculpture made for the Mortier Award by the Berlin sculptor and set designer Alexander Polzin, who recently created the set design for “Lohengrin” at the Teatro Real Madrid – commissioned while Mortier was still in charge of the Teatro Real. The sculpture shows Sisyphus with his boulder.
The Mortier Award will be presented every two years. No prize money was attached to the award at the first presentation. Winning the award gives the recipient the right to nominate the next prizewinner – in close consultation with the initiators. Music theatre that keeps pace with the times is by definition dynamic and processual. For this reason, it is intended that each presentation promote the shared continuance of the thematic and intellectual aspirations embodied by the prize
Gerard Mortier was one of Europe’s most influential opera and festival directors. After starting off his career in Belgium, followed by years of apprenticeship in Germany, Mortier, a trained lawyer, directed the Brussels opera house La Monnaie during the 1980s. In the nineties, he modernised the Salzburg Festival. He was then the founding director of the Ruhr Triennale art festival (2002-2004) before going to the Opéra national de Paris. Until recently, Gerard Mortier was director of the Teatro Real in Madrid (2010-2013).
The magazine Opernwelt has been reporting on the international opera scene since 1960. The Ring Award has been taking place in Graz since 1997.
The video has landed of Joyce DiDonato’s commencemtn speech to the Juilliard School.
And what do you know? It’s ten times better than the script we shared.
Sample: ‘It is there you will find truth. At the bar….’ Just watch.
The Quator Ebène, perhaps the world’s most versatile ensemble, is looking for a new viola player.
Mathieu Herzog has decided, after 15 years, to apply himself to conducting. All four re fantastic musicians. We wish them well.
A message from the quartet:
Fifteen years have passed since the founding of the Quatuor Ebène. In our wildest dreams we had never dared hope for an adventure as rich, creative, intense, full of varied artistic achievements and fascinating encounters as this one.
Today, Mathieu has made the decision to set sail for new musical horizons and to devote himself principally to conducting. His departure will take place over a significant transitional period, during which time we will continue to work together both on stage and in the recording studio. Thereafter the Quatuor Ebène will set out for new beginnings with a new musician.
In fifteen years – a blink of an eye, really – Mathieu’s inspiration, dynamism, and personality have contributed immensely to the quartet’s wonderful successes. We have braved through adventurous paths and sailed exhilarating waves…
Sincere thanks to all of those who support us,
And thank you to our audience.
See you soon at one of our next concerts !
Pierre Gabriel, Mathieu et Raphaël,
Le Quatuor Ebène…
Nick Cooper makes music of his nightmare on fleecy-jet. Nice cello obliggato.
Beware.
Among the small print of English National Opera’s engaging new season is a line informing us that Keri-Lynn Wilson will make her UK operatic debut at the Coliseum in Puccini’s Girl of the Golden West.
Ms Wilson, when she’s at home, is Mrs Gelb.
Ms Wilson, according to her agency page, ‘recently conducted Pique Dame in Stockholm, Flying Dutchman in Montreal and La Traviata in Salerno.’ She has never worked at the Met.
Zoe Keating, the Twitter-star cellist, put her playing career on hold to help her husband who has been diagnosed with cancer in California. Her first battle was with the insurers, who refused to pay for Jeff’s treatment until Zoe went on social media and whipped up a storm.
Now she faces the grim reality that she, the family’s breadwinner, will be silenced for a while.
Zoe has posted the following appeal on her website:
As you might have heard, my husband was diagnosed with stage IV cancer on May 15th. I’ve put everything about my music career – new album, new tour dates – on hold for now.
I support my family 100% with my music and I’ve always been proud of that. But now is not the time for my pride to get in the way. We need help. So for those of you who feel inspired to help us get through this awful time, here is a donation button. I thank you with the deepest possible thanks.
We urge sympathetic readers to respond by clicking the website tag above.
Zoe has 1.2 million Twitter followers and 38,000 Facebook fans.
The actor Karlheinz Böhm, who died on Friday, was renowned first as a film actor, then as a kind of Austrian Bob Geldof, who from the 1980s on raised millions for hunger-stricken Ethiopians.
But he started life as the son of Karl Böhm and never really lost the urge to match his father.
Playing piano as a boy, he was told by the pedagogue Rudolph Backhaus: ‘Not good enough for the son of Karl Böhm’.
In the 1960s, he became his father’s manager for a while.
In return, he was allowed to direct Elektra in Stuttgart. ‘Very nice,’ was his father’s only comment.
He found fulfilment elsewhere, among Africans, far from home.
Slipped Disc reader Andrew Condon was enjoying a concert last night when...
I was watching last night’s Berlin Philharmonic concert on their excellent Digital Concert Hall. Hilary Hahn splendid in Vieuxtemps no 4 and then the Tchaikovsky Manfred Symphony after the interval.
You could tell that the orchestra were having a wonderful time with this great music that they probably have not played that often. One of my favourite pieces.
Imagine my disquiet when instead of the final reflective section with organ, ending pianissimo, the conductor repeats the end of the first movement, so that the whole symphony can end with a spectacular flourish (i.e very much NOT what the great man wrote). Have never heard such butchery to a relatively standard repertoire piece before. The audience needless to say loved it and applauded wildly! The guilty party was Mr Tugan Sokhiev.
Cuts are one thing (e.g. the standard optional cuts in the finale of the Tchaikovsky violin concerto, a cut in the 3rd movement of Rimsky Scheherazade – I think started by Stokowski, but no longer acceptable now) but to cut AND paste as Mr Sokhiev did seems a step too far.
New York psychotherapist Carla Mannino was cycling to work on Wednesday morning when she saw this sad grand washed up by the East Rover, under the Brooklyn Bridge. When she cycled home, it was still there.
Anybody lost a grand last week? (It’s a Mason & Hamlin)
Anybody want to claim it? Play it?
Write for it?
Michael Nyman?
Anyone?
Media interest is spreading.
