1 The film is a helluva lot more elegant.
2 The playing is p.d. good.
3 The first person to give him a dime is a busy young woman.
4 The sound is better on the Paris Metro than in DC.
5 People actually stop and listen.
The violinist is Renaud Capucon. He is playing Gluck’s Orpheus melody on a Stradivarius, two years after Joshua Bell’s Washington stunt.
Simon Lelouch’s sensitive film received a fraction of the attention directed towards Bell.
7:57 Am-Pm, 11′ from Simon Lelouch on Vimeo.
The colourful British violinist has lent his services to the instrument dealership, J&A Beare, who – after a century of deliberation – have finally decided to taken in Sotheby’s and Christie’s in the auction market.
Bids open tomorrow (Monday) on the Beare’s site here.
Nigel is pumping up the product right now. Who’d have guessed he was a capitalist at heart?
From the press release:
Europe’s leading purveyor of antique stringed instruments launches its first online auction
Bidding open: Monday 20-Tuesday 28 October
“A great violin opens up your parameters and gives you access to sounds you never imagined you had access to before. On the other hand, you need a great player to show what a great instrument can do, so it’s like a partnership really.” Nigel Kennedy, October 2014
For the first time in its 122 year history, the internationally recognised stringed instrument dealer J & A Beare will offer players and investors from across the globe the opportunity to buy fine instruments and bows in an online auction.
With over 35 instruments – 30 violins, including a Stradivarius dating from 1698 and two Guadagninis (from 1767 and 1782); 3 violas; 4 cellos – and 10 bows, Beares’ auction is the largest sale of fine instruments, in playable condition, to be available on the market at the same time.
Unique to the field of auctions, instruments sold will be accompanied by a J & A Beare Certificate of Authenticity, recognised internationally as authoritative documentation of an instrument’s origin. As well as authenticating their instruments, Beares offer an after-sales care which is econd to none, yet with a total estimated sale value of up to £8 million, the starting estimate for an early 20th century French violin begins as low as £4,000.
We informed you a couple of weeks back that the irrepressible mezzo Joyce DiDonato was about to appear late at night in a Brooklyn ballroom where no diva foot had ever trod before.
Well, here’s the video evidence – just in.
Nothing quite like it since Pierre Boulez threw his rug concerts.
Reports from Paris say that a couple from the Gulf were asked to leave the Bastille in the middle of a performance of La Traviata after the woman refused to remove her face covering.
The pair were seated in the most expensive seats, costing 231 Euros each.
Jean-Philippe Thiellay, deputy director of the Opéra, said the woman had entered the auditorium unnoticed. He was obliged to take action because a French law, enacted in 2011, forbids full facial covering in public. Offenders can be fined 150 Euros and forced to attend a course in citizenship.
Thiellay said he sent an official to speak to the lady, whose husband spoke on her behalf. The husband agreed that they should leave and did not ask for a refund.
He was prompted to act, apparently, after a complaint from chorus members who did not like performing for a faceless audience member.
You wonder how they get through Ballo in Maschera.
Opponents of John Adams’s opera The Death of Klinghoffer, which opens tomorrow night at the Met, are jubilant at the capture of a trophy march leader. Rudolph Giuliani, who has signalled his participation in the protest, acquitted himself with proficiency and sympathy as Mayor of New York during the 9/11 attacks.
His opposition to the opera is vested in his investigation of the case it dramatises. ‘As United States Attorney, I investigated the Leon Klinghoffer murder by Yasir Arafat,’ he is on the record as saying. ‘I knew, in detail, the Americans he murdered. I went over their cases.’
Some, however, contest his claim to have investigated the case.
Austrian media are reporting the death, aged 84, of Wolfgang Hutter, a fantasy artist whose 1974 designs for Mozart’s Magic Flute are among the most memorable ever imagined.
His stage designs were seen at the Vienna Staatsoper, the Volksoper, Theater an der Wien, Graz Opera and Theater in der Josefstadt
Gregor Gysi, the former East German middleman who is now head of the Left party in the German Bundestag, has been hired by members of the Wagner family to protect their rights on the board of trustees at Bayreuth.
His principal client is Nike Wagner, presently head of the Beethoven Festival in Bonn, along with other disenfranchised Wagners who are paying Gysi to keep an eye on the old farm once Katharina Wagner assumes sole control a year from now.
The poisoned legacy lives on.
They give you plenty of meds to numb the pain during and after an operation Some of the meds have unfortunate side-effects.
Try listening to music instead, is the advice from the Anesthesiology 2014 conference in New Orleans.
Dr. Flower Austin, D.O., anesthesiology resident at Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, reported on a study of 56 patients undergoing elective hysterectomies. Half chose to listen to jazz after the operation, the other half to wear noise cancellation headphones.
Heart rate, blood pressure, pain and anxiety levels were surveyed over half an hour. Both groups’ heart rates dropped significantly. The jazz lovers’ heart rate was lower after 20 minutes than the noise cancellers.
Why didn’t they try Classic FM?
Talk to your doctor.
The Berlin Jazz Festival is has a new artistic director. He is the retiring chief sports writer of the Guardian, Richard Williams.
Richard, 66, has one of the most diverse careers in UK print media. He has been head of artists and repertoire at Island Records, editor of Time Out and Melody Maker, assistant editor of the Times and sports writer for the Independent and the Guardian.
He said of his new appointment: Ich frage mich nicht, was Jazz war, sondern was Jazz ist und was Jazz werden kann. Für mich stellte das Jazzfest Berlin immer eine Plattform von Möglichkeiten und Provokationen dar.’ I don’t ask myself what jazz was, rather what it is and what it could become. For me, the Berlin Jazzfest has always been a platform for possibilities and provocations.
Further proof that there is life after print media.
Message from Sonya Yoncheva:
“Dear all, my husband and I are delighted and extremely happy to inform you that our little Mateo was born on the 6th of October, in Switzerland! We feel all very well.” Sonya
“Chers tous, mon mari et moi sommes enchantés et extrêmement heureux de vous informer de la naissance de notre petit Mateo, le 6 octobre dernier, en Suisse ! Nous nous portons tous à merveille.” Sonya
She expects to be back in December.
An alert reader has directed us to an interesting post on the Opera-L list.
The Metropolitan Opera, writes Michael Liebert, has a donation that funds 200 cheap on-the-day tickets on a first-come, first-served basis. The Rush Ticket program (usually $25 for an auditorium seat), does not publish the names of lucky winners. But it does inform on them to the tax man. Read Terms and Conditions:
The drawings are open only to natural persons who are United States citizens or legal residents of United States or Puerto Rico, are at least 18 years of age and who submit an entry from within the United States or Puerto Rico….
The Winner is solely responsible for reporting the prize as required by law and making all federal, state, regional and local tax and other payments, including without limitation, income taxes and sales and use taxes in connection therewith. The Met will file a Form 1099-MISC with the IRS disclosing the fair market value of the prize if required under federal tax law.
(Who’s being watched by that man in the overcoat?)
When Rossen Milanov was named last month as the next music director of the Columbus Symphony Orchestra, we assumed he’d be giving up his ensemble at Princeton to take the Ohio job. A polite note from Columbus corrected that misapprehension: on the contrary, Mr Milanov, 49, planned to maintain his Princeton commitment, as well as his jobs at the Symphony in C at Camden, New Jersey, and the Orquesta Sinfónica del Principado de Asturias in Spain. Our eyebrows rose a little higher.
This morning they shot right up through our vanishing hairline on learning, from our friend Mary Kunz Goldman in Buffalo, that the busy Bulgarian has added a fifth band to his bulging lunch pack.
Rossen Milanov has been named music director of the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra, in upstate New York, starting next July. He said: ‘I am very excited and honored to be collaborating with the musicians of the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra, to catalyze the artistic growth, introduce new ideas, diversify the programming and connect with all of the Chautauqua community in a meaningful and inspiring way.’
Thinks: If it’s Wednesday, this must be Chautauqua…
We wonder what they’re thinking in Columbus.
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