This clip is from the New York Philharmonic’s production of Sondheim’s musical thriller, which airs this Friday on PBS.
The Van Cliburn competition has asked Leonard Slatkin to be its next jury chairman, succeeding John Giordano who held the seat for 40 years.
That much is – or is about – to become public knowledge.
Behind the scenes, we understand that Slatkin and others are working hard on the jury process to reduce the influence of powerful teachers on the selection and progress of contestants. Fort Worth is aware of the Indy debacle. It will not be allowed to happen elsewhere.
Slatkin, 70, is music director of the Detroit and Lyon (France) symphony orchestras… and a clean pair of hands.
First Gianandrea Noseda blows out of Turin.
Then Welser-Möst quits Vienna.
Next Han-na Chang dumps Qatar the morning after their Proms debut.
Now Naples has been left headless. Nicola Luisotti has announced he will leave the San Carlo after the opening night, December 12. He has been music director there for just three years. He holds the same post at San Francisco Opera.
It’s starting to look like a lemming phenomenon.
He was the foremost composer in Poland when he fled to England in 1954.
Like many exiles, he struggled to rebuild his reputation. English lefties who had fawned upon him when he represented Stalin’s heaven now cut him dead in the street. He took a conducting job in Birmingham and got on with his life. Slowly, slowly the symphonies began to flow.
Happy birthday, Andrzej Panufnik. We miss you. We need to hear more of you.
This is the ever-inventive Brno Philharmonic Orchestra, in the Czech Republic.
If you won’t come to them, they’ll come to you.
Post by Filharmonie Brno.
The orchestra has published what purports to be its negotiating position, beside that of the musicians.
However, the table below represents the musicians’ starting position, not the compromises they had offered at the point they were shut out. It is, therefore, a wilful distortion – indicative of a company that has lost the capacity for reasoned thought and discussion.
A Slipped Disc reader points out:
Supporters of this year’s Indianapolis Competition’s results are using Ms. Cho’s previous wins at Montreal and Buenos Aires to support and prove the integrity of the Indianapolis Jury. However, looking back on her previous wins, there is a clear trend.
2006 Montreal competition – 1st prize Jinjoo Cho. On the jury was Paul Kantor, her teacher from 2001-2012
2010 Buenos Aires competition – 1st prize Jinjoo Cho. On the jury was David Cerone, president of Cleveland Institute of Music 1985-2008, where Ms Cho graduated.
No reflection on ms Cho or her abilities, rather on a system that is compromised almost beyond redemption.
The more we learn about these competitions, the more they reek of nepotism, protectionism and potential corruption.
We have also received the following letter from the eminent virtuoso and teacher, Aaron Rosand:<
Dear Norman,Thanks for always printing the truth. It’s a pity that the Indianapolis Competition was marred in the earlier rounds. All of the finalists performed admirably. The Korngold and Walton Concertos performed by the top 2 prizewinners were exceptional and certainly worthy of winning.I will continue my battle to “clean up” international competitions and establish a rule that jurors cannot have a student past or present participate except being on the panel. This system works well in the law courts and I cannot see why the same rule cannot be applied to competitions.
Please do continue your enlightening reporting that I have followed for many years.
Warmest Regards,
Aaron Rosand
In a statement just released, the musicians say that talks have resumed with the management but make no mention of the involvement of a mediator. The players are angry that the ASO won’t let the season start while negotiations continue – the play-and-talk option.
Release follows.
Atlanta, GA September 23rd, 2014
The ATL Symphony Musicians deeply regret management’s unnecessary decision, instead of ending the lockout, to cancel opening night and the first six weeks of the ASO’s 70th Anniversary season. ASO management has returned to the bargaining table with the musicians and refused to even discuss a play and talk agreement as the musicians proposed. They clearly aim to starve out the musicians and break our will.
The ATL Symphony Musicians will respond to this cancellation in the manner we know best – with world-class symphonic music – the type that won Atlanta 27 Grammy Awards.
Beginning this Friday evening, September 26th, the musicians will begin to hold free concerts for Atlantans. The concert this Friday night will be at the Kennesaw State University’s Bailey Performance Center. We will hold two back-to-back concerts, at 7:00 pm and 9:00 pm. These concerts will replace a previously planned concert of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra at KSU on the same night. (See program details below)
The public concerts of the ATL Symphony Musicians will welcome guest conductors and guest artists from around the world who stand in solidarity with the Musicians in their struggle to preserve Atlanta’s world-class, Grammy award winning Orchestra.
In addition, the ATL Symphony Musicians Foundation http://www.
This Friday’s program will include works of Dvorak and Beethoven conducted by renowned Maestro Michael Palmer, a familiar and beloved part of the history of the orchestra, having started his career in Atlanta with Robert Shaw over 40 years ago. The Musicians are grateful for the opportunity to perform in the face of the WAC’s unconscionable effort to put a lockout in place rather than the Orchestra in its place on stage for its 70th season.
The ATL Symphony Musicians will also perform a dress rehearsal at 4pm on September 26th in the Bailey Center, exclusively for the students and staff of Kennesaw State University.
Admission is free; donations will be gratefully accepted for ATL Symphony Musicians.
The New York Phil and Bryn Terfel are still getting over the shock of his visit. Will he do it again at ENO?
(Click the word ‘Post’ if video does not pop out.
Breaking news on SFCV: the Met’s scenery has not been fire-proofed.
The house is having to take on extra firemen to protect the backstage area, at considerable cost.
Read here.
image from the Met’s Ring
We reported last month that Sacramento, capital of California, is the largest US city without a functioning orchestra or opera house.
One man cares. A lot. Gregg Wager, a local music critic, explains for Slipped Disc readers how the music died in his town.
Sad Sac Swan Song
By GREGG WAGER
Is there anything more horrible than curbing your enthusiasm about the arts, lest you offend the locals who believe their paradise is beyond reproach? I’ve lived in Sacramento long enough to have learned how to artfully indicate to even its most stubborn provincials its genuine world-class accomplishments (such as being the city that founded Tower Records).
Then again, when two of this city’s mainstay arts organizations have all but gone precariously and simultaneously belly up, artful words seem less appropriate than that more immediate form of communication called blowing raspberries. Combining such skills as a music critic, I tried six years ago to warn, prophesy, naysay, finger-wag, and even augur about what might be to come, in light of the Philharmonic’s then checkered recent past and timid news coverage from the city’s only remaining albeit quickly disintegrating metro daily newspaper, the Sacramento Bee: http://www.newsreview.com/
Then last year, the Sacramento Philharmonic and the Sacramento Opera joined forces in a shotgun marriage of sorts called Sacramento Region Performing Arts Alliance (SRPAA) and brought in a capable ringer working in Europe named Rob Tannenbaum to serve as its general director. This ringer would oversee a combined budget of over $2 million, and actually took over artistic direction last February when a production of Il trovatore required it. Last January was also a moment of optimism when a private donation of $500K promised to continue SRPAA, even if few Sacramentans even knew of this arcane acronym, let alone how to pronounce it.
Then the dominoes fell. In April, Tannenbaum resigned. Last August, SRPAA “cancelled” its “Fall Season” (leaving open the possibility of one collaborative concert in May 2015 by the Philharmonic with Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute, although the program and exact dates remain unannounced). All was attributed to there being only $131K left in the SRPAA coffers.
Philharmonic member Thomas Derthick laments a long string of misfortunes, at times resembling an undisciplined food fight. “Everyone’s afraid to talk while the patient is still breathing,” he explained in a telephone conversation, providing insider analysis as to why the Bee might have been sitting on the ongoing death spiral of these organizations, as well as to why no donor is really ponying up now to save them. “Whether you should now write a requiem or obituary, I can’t really say.”
Well, I’d blow a raspberry, if I knew how to spell it. Otherwise, resquiat in pace.
… about Mozart, apparently.
Can’t be sure.
Click here for video. Or not, if you’re sane.
