The annual Welcome Yule concerts, a big-budget production by the Chicago Symphony and Chorus, are to end this year.

Cost too much, apparently. Read here.

They don’t realise how much of the culture will change when a man from the commercial sector takes the helm of our nanny state in miniature.

Click here for a commentary I have written for the Spectator.

Henley is different from any Arts Council boss I have known over four decades. He was born in Tunbridge Wells, studied at the University of Hull and cut his radio teeth in the deadlands of Kent. He has no truck with metropolitan elites or on-message mantras. He will apply a sound business sense to the ACE structure and a shrewd eye for cost/benefit ratios to the priorities for subsidy.

Running through the files of musicians we have lost this year, we fell to wondering which giants from the past would we bring back from the other side, if such encounters were permitted.

Would it be…

Or

Perhaps

Or (our choice)?

Your call?

…. and more

Lilian Fayer’s father had a photo studio opposite the Vienna State Opera. She began taking portraits of singers in 1942 and stopped only for the couple of years when performances ceased towards the end of the war.

Lilian married the Vienna Philharmonic concertmaster Walter Barylli and had the run of the house. Herbert von Karajan, ever aware of his image, was a particular admirer of her work.

The Fayer Archive consists of some 30,000 photographs, taken at Vienna and at the Salzburg festival.

Long Yu, music director of the China Philharmonic and the Shanghai and Guangzhou symphony orchestras, was awarded the Legion of Honour today by Emmanuel Lenain, Consul General of France in Shanghai. Long Yu has forged close relations with the Orchestre de Paris.

The company may have revived after its last manager, Ian Campbell, declared it dead, but troubles persist.

Karen Keltner, appointed resident conductor Campbell in 1983, is leaving the job. A company lynchpin, she has conducted more than 150 performances of 40 operas over 30 years.

This has the makings of a diplomatic incident in Islamist Turkey.

Charles F. Hunter, US Consul General in Istanbul, has announced he will marry Turkish musician Ramadan Çaysever in a US civil ceremony later this month. Turkish media are awaiting an official response.

The opera house in war-torn Donetsk, which received a million devalued rubles from Anna Netrebko and arranged for her to be photographed with a separatist flag, has now announced it has invited Valery Gergiev to conduct a forthcoming tour.

Evgeny Denisenko, director of Donetsk Opera and Ballet told the Russian News Agency: ‘This man is a hero. When there were events in Tskhinvali (during Putin’s war against Georgia), he went there with the Mariinsky orchestra. For me it was a shock and an achievement. He is a brave man and a world-class conductor. I think he will respond to our invitation.’

Gergiev has supported the Russian president in every military action.

Reports just in from Belfast say that public and private backers are working on ‘a new business model’ to save Northern Ireland’s only orchestra. No details are yet available but we’re hearing that whatever ensemble emerges from the smoke-free room will be a lot slimmer than before.

The orch is carrying a half-million pound debt and has burned up its reserves. An annual general meeting, which might have called for a wind-up order, was suspended to allow talks on a new model to advance. A statement from the orch board said: ‘The board’s representatives are still engaged in discussions with senior officials from the Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure and the Arts Council to consider a sustainable operating model for the future and have made progress. ‘These discussions are continuing, therefore a decision was taken by the board to adjourn the AGM to allow these negotiations to come to a satisfactory conclusion and to enable the directors to make an informed decision on the accounts.’

Details here.