Picture the scene.

A sun-kissed morning in Vienna, coffee steaming gently. The great composer is at his billiards table when two Mounties ride up with a fat commission for a stirring anthem.

Our friend, composer Michael Vincent, finds O Canada and the March of the Priests from Magic Flute to be absolutely identical.

It’s undeniable. Click here to hear for yourselves.

The kinetic artist and musician Norman Perryman reports: The eminent artist Glyn Uzzell (84), a fine painter and art educator, died on Monday when his house in Portugal exploded. Glyn was Head of Visual Arts at the International School of Geneva from 1957 and helped me develop the International Baccalaureate Visual Arts Syllabus in Geneva in the early seventies. The works of his students were outstanding examples of our aims.

The rich colours of his lyrical abstract paintings were inspired by the Portuguese landscape, where he lived near Lagos since 1979. His partner (Paul Fonck, a languages professor from Luxembourg) also died, his studio and work were destroyed. RIP Glyn.

Press report here.

The violinist Janet Packer died at the weekend, during a course of cancer treatment. She was 64.

Living in Boston, she launched the Pro Violino Foundation and commissioned works from Gardner Read, Vagn Holmboe, Juan Orrego-Salas, William Thomas McKinley, and Edwin London, all of which she premiered.  She recorded McKinley’s Violin Concerto no. 1 (MMC Records) and a Serenata for violin and small orchestra by Vittorio Rieti (CRI); she also made a premiere recording of works for violin and piano by Charles-Marie Widor (Centaur).

Among recent commissions were a Sonata for unaccompanied violin by Andrew Imbrie, and Imaginary Variations for violin and piano by Krzysztof Meyer, which she performed more than twenty times.

Janet was chair of the violin department at the Longy School of Music.

This is a performance of the Aaron Jay Kernis ‘Superstar Etude #1’ at the World Piano Competition in Cinicinnati. The player is semi-finalist Reed Tetzloff, from Minneapolis.

Do not try this at home.

The other semi-finalists are: eng Bian, Moye Chen, Sung-Soo Cho, Sangyoung Kim, Anastasiya Naplekova.

Clean Bandit, the Cambridge string quartet that became a national dance-music sensation, broke into the Billboard Hot 100 today.

In at 97, admittedly, but the Amadeus never got that high, did they?

‘It has come a shock to us,’ say the band.

Monique Barichella has died after a very short illness.

She wrote for Opéra, Opera News, Altamusica.com among other publications, exercising a phenomenal memory for the singer of the past three decades.

Monique leaves a son.

The late opera and festival chief is being showered with honours.

Others bemedalled this year are the Polish theatre boss Krystyna Meissner and the American stage director Robert Wilson.

Mortier, says the Goethe citation, was ‘a unique European protagonist of culture and opera intendant.’

The maestro would have been 81 tomorrow. His family have posted this message:

Thanks to all people, friends of Claudio and all musicians who are thinking of him.

Thanks to all who have supported his projects for prisoners and the child cancer hospital in Bologna.

Thanks to the many towns that uphold the memory of Claudio.

Daniele, Aexandra, Sebatian, Misha, Tommaso, Luigi, Francesca

Manuela Hoelterhoff has a revealing interview with Sheila Nadler, who played Mrs Klinghoffer in the first production of John Adams’s broadcast-banned opera. Read what she says here.

‘ I don’t think I ever told you this, but I met … the real Mrs. Klinghoffer, on Amsterdam Avenue before I sang in the opera….’

The silly season is clicking in.

By way of ‘experiment’, Eivind Gullberg Jensen wore a video camera wound his neck while conducting the Hague’s Residentie orchestra in a concert of Nielsen, Respighi, Debussy, Dukas and Canteloube.

Not sure what scientific knowledge was obtained through the fish-eye lens. Not sure many orchs would agree to it.

The shot that shocked the world on June 28 1914 will be remembered by European leaders in a ‘ symbolic concert performed by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra (VPO)‘ and broadcast via Eurovision.

Official jargon:

The concert conducted by Franz Welser-Möst will feature music by composers from Austria, Germany and France: Joseph Haydn, Franz Schubert, Alban Berg, Johannes Brahms, Maurice Ravel and Josef Strauss.

“We have created a musical programme with strong connections to the historical events of 1914–1918, to invite the audience remember this era-defining conflict,” said Clemens Hellsberg, President of the VPO.

We’ve received two reports that a well-known newspaper critic was seen asleep in the Grange Park production of La Traviata. We won’t name him, or link to his review, but the well-fed man must have been having sweet dreams because his review referred to Claire Rutter’s Violetta with a demeaning and altogether inappropriate porn-industry term.

That, in our view, was more objectionable than a little snooze.

photo: Robert Workman/GP