Members of the Vienna Philharmonic have voted for a new chairman.
Clemens Hellsberg (pic), who filled the role for 17 turbulent years, will be replaced in September by a fellow-violinist, Andreas Großbauer. It is not clear if the election is contested.
The players also voted to replace their business director. Harald Krumpöck, another violinist, takes over from Dieter Flury.
Any change in the orchestra’s policies on anti-discrimination and full disclosure of the Nazi past is unlikely.
The German Labour Minister Andrea Nahles is pushing through a minimum rate of 8.50 Euros an hour for interns in all sectors of the economy. The rate would take effect after seven weeks’ work.
First to oppose it is the German Music Council (DMR). It calls the wage ‘unrealistic’ and says music organisations would have to get of their interns before they were properly trained. Young people, says the DMR, would be ‘denied a much-needed insight into the professional world.’
That stiff statement may be all the insight they could possibly need.
An astonishingly outspoken assessment from the influential German curator Kasper König, who is about to open Manifesta, the European Biennial of Contemporary Art, at the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg.
It is the first time the great contemporary show is being staged in Russia. Probably also the last.
Says König: The ink on my contract was still wet when that appalling anti-gay law was passed. It became clear to me that I was working in a country where there is no civil society. Practically anyone can make a law and it’s waved through as long as that person has enough money and power. These strategies, in my opinion, are meant to make the people feel insecure so that they don’t think about their future or about change.
Read the full and frank interview here, on DW, in English.
Lorin Maazel, 84, has issued a statement on his future plans, saying that his state of health has obliged him to resign as music director of the Munich Philharmonic a year before the end of his term and that he intends to resume work ‘in the season after 2014/15’.
I would like to thank the literally millions of fans who have, upon hearing of some of my health difficulties I have experienced recently, redoubled requests of my services as conductor, such as the Vienna Philharmonic, the Berlin Philharmonic, London’s Philharmonia et al.
I believe I have always acted as responsible professional person, and have been encouraged by my doctors that I should be fit as a conductor to take up my duties starting the Season following 2014/15 which does not exclude occasional appearances along the way. The same sense of responsibility prevents me from officially accepting any appearances as a conductor until then.
That means that with a heavy heart I am obliged to give up my position as Music Director of one of the finest orchestras in the world, the Munich Philharmonic, in my third and last Season 2014/15.
– Lorin Maazel
We wish him well.
Nicole Paiement, who recently conducted Tod Machover’s Death and the Powers in Dallas, has been named principal guest conductor.
She will work closely with Music Director Emmanuel Villaume, taking on the January 2015 world premiere of Joby Talbot’s opera EVEREST. Her appointment is effective immediately.
Raised in Canada, Nicole runs her own opera company in San Francisco.
How much longer before a woman takes charge at the Met?
Placido Domingo has announced he is giving a concert in Rio during the soccer World Cup finals. It will be the seventh time he has adorned the tournament, going all the way back to the original Three Tenors concert in 1990.
He will be joined by the pianist Lang Lang and soprano Anamaria Martinez.
After mass flight during the year-long lockout, some Minnesota players are coming back home now that peace is assured.
David Pharris, who has playing second clarinet in the Houston Symphony, has returned this week for Mahler’s Fifth.
Also on their way back are principal viola Tom Turner, viola player Ken Freed, trumpeter Robert Dorer, principal horn Michael Gast, and bass clarinetist Tim Zavadil.
pictured yesterday: Pharris, conductor Osmo Vänskä, Zavadil.
The Harry Potter author J K Rowling today donated a million pounds to the Better Together campaign that seeks to persuade voters to reject independence in the September referendum.
The violinist Nicola Benedetti is releasing an album, titled ‘Homecoming – A Scottish Fantasy’. The title and timing cannot be a coincidence.
One artist’s response is pragmatic, the other romantic. Together they represent a dichotomy of head and heart that politicians are forcing voters to pull apart. It is an uncomfortable moment in British history.
BBC Radio’s flagship Today programme committed a howler this morning by referring to Russell Watson, a stadium belter, as ‘an opera singer’. Listeners phoned and mailed in to say that this was unacceptable. An opera singer is one who sings whole operas, not isolated arias. The presenter at fault apologised to some complainants. But that was not enough.
Tomorrow, in the coveted political slot between 8.10 and 8.20, the Today programme will ask Joyce DiDonato to explain to the world what a real opera singer is and does. Nobody can do it better, or more sweetly. Diva Joyce will put them right.
Ivo Vinco has died in Verona, where he made his 1954 debut as Ramfis in Aida. He was 86.
He sang in every major house and with most of the leading conductors of his time. He married the lustrous mezzo Fiorenza Cossotto, with whom he had a son. Although they divorced, she was at Ivo’s deathbed this week.
Gramilano photo: at La Scala, 1959.
Bloomberg’s Manuela Hoelterhoff, in classically combative style, comes down on Peter Gelb’s side in the forthcoming showdown with Met unions, who – she says – get an easy ride and more vacation than she does. She has a point, but it’s not as clear as she thinks.
Before pitching into the interview, Manuela mentions that Gelb plays tennis at 60, despite having had three hip replacements.
Let’s assume the insurance paid for those operations. Every time he went under the knife, Gelb benefitted from past agreements that he signed freely and consesually. Next time he needs a new hip, it might not go so smoothly. The insurers may say ‘Hey, Mr Gelb, we see you’ve been hitting the tennis court pretty hard and wore out or new hips too soon. We want a new agreement at lower cost before we let you walk again.’
That’s not a million miles from what Gelb is saying at this moment to the musicians, choristers and backstage staff at the Met. You had an agreement, it costs too much, I want it cheaper next time.
The unions don’t like it – and Gelb doesn’t seem to understand why.
Read the interview with Manuela here.
Interesting piece by Iain Burnside on the poet and composer Ivor Gurney, who is supposed to have lost his sanity on the Somme. Apparently, his medical records show signs of insanity that predated the War. Read Iain here.
