The rest of the National Chorus of Spain went on strike this weekend over pay and conditions. There were 66 absentees as the Madrid performance.

 

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Joanna Wallfisch is a versatile member of a well-known family of London musicians. Her breath control is prodigious.

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h/t: London Jazz News

Leon Spierer, who was a concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic from 1963 to his retirement, is giving a Father’s Day concert at the University of Houston. Appropriately enough with his son. He has been talking to local media.

Spierer, Berlin born, grew up in exile in Argentina, before studying the Max Rostal in London. Before getting the call from Berlin, he was concertmaster in Nuremberg, Bremen and Stockholm. ‘My 26 years with Karajan were the best of my life,’ he has said.

 

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The golden years for Berislav Klobucar, who has died in Vienna aged 89, were the brimful sixties.

One year he conducted Placido Domingo’s triumphant Vienna debut. The next he stepped on for Herbert von Karajan in Walküre at the Met. A Croat from Zagreb, Klobucar studied with Lovro von Matacic and Clemens Krauss.

He was an ever-reliable pit master who, away from Vienna where he conducted 1,133 performances between 1953 and 1993, he was also chief conductor in Graz and Stockholm.

He has earned his rest.

 

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