Richard Kanter, who played oboe in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s from 1961 until 2002, died at the weekend, aged 79. With John de Lancie as one of his teachers, he was appointed to the orch by Fritz Reiner and lasted through to the Barenboim era.
phpto: Ray Still, Richard Kanter
The ever-interesting website of Musicians of the Metropolitan Opera tells the story of a young American musician, 20 years old, who won the post of principal bassoon at the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.
Keith Buncke (right in the picture with two ASO colleagues) was so thrilled he forgot to worry when no contract turned up in the months after he won his audition and passed his trial period. Instead, he wrapped up his life and moved from Philadelphia to his Atlanta, ready for the start of his first season.
And was promptly locked out.
Is that why he was never sent the contract? Read on here.
Over the weekend, the conductor Christian Thielemann announced that he was planning a Lohengrin with Anna Netrebko and Piotr Beczala in Dresden and Bayreuth.
This morning, the phone lines went white-hot at Bayreuth.
The dormouse press office has just issued a statement: Not the Polish tenor, apparently.
Alagna’s our Lohengrin in 2018.
Alles klaar?
The Metropolitan Opera has commissioned a series of short films, , using animation, video, and film to illuminate current productions and fill out the HD intermissions. The first release is Macbeth. It’s… crap.
Unsurprising, really. The company that makes these shorts is called Toilet Paper Productions.
There were many reasons I chose a Walton-Hindemith release as my album of the week on sinfinimusic.com. The two composers were closely interwoven for quarter of a century. Their music speaks truth to each other. It is lyrical, reflective and connective.
It takes a master interpreter to identify and develop the dialogue.
Frank Shipway, who was killed in an English road accident this summer, was that kind of thoughtful, cliché-free, clear-sighted interpreter. His final testament on record is an absolute must-hear.
The incoming general music director of Hamburg State Opera has given a bleak prognosis to Der Spiegel on the future of classical music. The audience has grown old, he warns, and is not being replenished. He offers few remedies. Quotes:
– Nach meiner Erfahrung gibt es bereits zwei Generationen von Menschen, die nie mit klassischer Musik in Berührung gekommen sind.
In my experience, there are already two generations of people who have never come into contact with classical music.
– Wenn junge Menschen heute keinen Zugang mehr zu klassischer Musik haben, woher sollen sie dann wissen, ob sie diese Musik mögen oder nicht?
“If young people today have no access to classical music, how will they ever know if they like it or not?
‘Political correctness gone crazy’ is what Australia’s prime minister Tony Abbott thinks of the Western Australia health-kick ban on Carmen.
Mr Abbott, no fan of the arts, went on to say in a Melbourne radio interview that opera is ‘an exaggeration and if we are running around looking to take offence or looking to spread some politically correct message, just about every opera would be forbidden.’
Quite right, but the ban still stands in Western Australia and the state opera company’s manager, Carolyn Chard, sounds quite proud of it. Her statement says: ‘We are about the health and wellbeing of our staff, stage performers and all the opera lovers throughout Western Australia, which means promoting health messages and not portraying any activities that could be seen to promote unhealthy behaviour.’
Meet Jamie Hutchinson, who lives half a mile up the road and is featured in the local rag.
We like her holiday snap from the Falklands (Malvinas, if you prefer).
The audience has attention span issues. Write a headline that will get them to snap to attention.
We read that Gaston Fournier-Facio has been recruited as artistic director of the Teatro Rgio in Turin with a brief to bring back Gianandrea Noseda as music director. Noseda walked out last month after disagreements with the general director Walter Vergnano.
Fournier-Facio, a former artistic coordinator at La Scala, belongs to the opera world’s diplomatic corps.
Victorian Opera has lost both star leads in next year’s Flying Dutchman.
Both Petra Lang and Vitalij Kowalijow have withdrawn due to the ‘challenges of the vocal range of the demanding parts’.
Didn’t they read the score, or even listen to it, before agreeing to sing? Even among opera excuses this sounds fishy.
Their replacements are US aspirant Lori Philips and German trouper Oskar Hillebrandt.
Yo ho, to ho.
In May this year, there was a small demonstration outside Sanders Theatre at Harvard before a concert by Vladimir Spivakov and the Moscow Virtuosi. One young man inside mounted the stage and expressed a view against the Putin regime and its musical allies.
That young man, Dr Roman Torgovitsky, was arrested by campus police and subsequently banned from Harvard. For life.
Two members of the Pussy Riot group, who spent months in Putin’s prisons for peaceful protest, have taken up his cause. If you believe in freedom of thought and civil justice, you should join their protest. Here’s what they write to the Harvard President, Drew Faust:
Dear President Faust,
On September 15, the Harvard Institute of Politics kindly provided us a forum to hold a discussion with students of your university. We spoke about human rights, feminism, freedom of speech, and the fine line that separates democratic regimes from authoritarian ones.
After our lecture, we invited several participants in the discussion to join us for dinner, including Harvard University alum Roman Torgovitsky, Ph.D. While we were leaving the Harvard campus, Dr. Torgovitsky was arrested by the Harvard Police, with no explanation given.
We proceeded with the students to the Harvard University Police Department, where we learned from Roman’s friends that Harvard had banned Roman from university grounds (by issuing him an oral no-trespass order) due to the fact that on May 11, 2014, after a concert by Russian musician Vladimir Spivakov, Dr. Torgovitsky approached Spivakov on stage. There, Roman expressed to Spivakov his concern that Spivakov had signed an open letter from cultural figures in the Russian Federation supporting Russian President Vladimir Putin’s position on the “Ukraine question” that openly supported annexation of Crimea and further violent aggression against Ukraine. As a result, Dr. Torgovitsky was arrested and without any due process banned from coming to Harvard University for life.
It is disconcerting that Harvard University has a policy of banning some of Harvard alums engaged in non violent civil disobedience and political protest on campus without any due process, consideration by the Harvard community or even possibility to appeal such a decision to a special committee.
We hope that the prosecution of Roman Torgovitsky for attending our lecture will be halted. We would like to respectfully ask Harvard administration to lift the no-trespass order imposed on Roman Torgovitsky for life for the non-violent, peaceful expression of his opinion.
Roman Torgovitsky has many excellent and constructive suggestions to offer Harvard administration. First and foremost, it would be a great benefit for the Harvard community to institute a due process for placing no trespass order prohibiting alums from coming to the University property and create an appeal process that involves Harvard community. Second, Roman and his colleague Julia Khodor Beloborodov are spearheading a project to provide urgently needed education to Ukrainian physicians to provide physical and psychological trauma rehabilitation for thousands of Ukrainians who have been injured and scared as a result of the President Putin war in Ukraine. Harvard University could provide invaluable educational assistance in this endeavor.
We call on the Harvard administration to enter into a dialog with civil-society activists, and in particular with Roman Torgovitsky. After all, they and Harvard are pursuing the same goals: respect for human rights, peace, and education without borders.
Sincerely,
Masha Alekhina,
Nadya Tolokonnikova
