The author is a former head of music at London’s South Bank, notorious for its inadequate sound. He’s not too impressed by the Nouvel hall. Read Marshall Marcus here.

The conductor and composer Russell Stanger, longtime music director of the Virginia Symphony Orchestra, died today aged 90. Obit here.

He assisted Lenny 1960-62.

David Caines Burnett reports the death of Harold Jones:

Born in Chicago Illinois, Harold Jones began his musical education as a violin student at the age of ten, but when he heard another student play thepiccolo, he decided that the flute was the instrument he wanted to play. He studied flute with David Underwood while attending Dusable High School in Chicago. He then became a member of the Chicago Civic Orchestra under conductor George Schick.

Mr. Jones came to New York in 1955 and was awarded a scholarship to the Juilliard School of Music, where he received the “Outstanding Woodwind Player” award prior to graduation. He continued his studies with the renowned Marcel Moyse and in 1966 made he New York recital debut at Town Hall, later appearing at CAMI Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center and at Jordan Hall in Boston. He has been soloist with numerous orchestras, including: The Bach Aria Orchestra, The New York Sinfonietta, American Symphony Orchestra, Brooklyn Philharmonia, National Orchestral Association, Municipal Concerts Orchestra and Symphony of the New World. He has appeared frequently with Today’s Artist in New York, San Francisco and at the Yachats Music Festival in Oregon. Mr. Jones has performed in recitals across the country as well. As a recitalist and teacher he participated in the 1988 and 1989 Manhattan School of Music International Summer Youth Festival in Taiwan. Mr. Jones was honored at a performance in Jackson, Tennessee, where he was presented with the Key to the City by the Mayor.

Mr. Jones was on the faculties of Westchester Conservatory of Music, Manhattanville College and he is the past president of the New York Flute Club. Besides his busy solo performance schedule, he also collaborated with the prize winning Audubon Quartet, the Fresk Quartet, internationally renowned pianist Leon Bates and guitarist Peter Segal. He recorded the Vivaldi flute concerti for the Library of Recorded Masterpieces and has four solo albums to his credit, on Antara Records: “From Bach to Bazzini”, “Afternoon Fantasies”, “Let Us Break Bread Together” and “This Little Light of Mine.”

UPDATE: Harold Jones Funeral
When: Friday, January 23, 2015
Time: 3PM – 5PM
Where: Saint Peter’s Church
619 Lexington Avenue
(54th Street & Lexington Avenue)
New York, NY 10022

Now here’s a turn-up for the books.

Our inveterate operamanes tell us the whole run of this premiere show is sold, but there’s a waitlist. You might get lucky. Read here.

Stand by for Women of the World Festival at London’s South Bank.

Southbank Centre is pleased to announce that we are once again recruiting female musicians to join the Women of the World Orchestra.

That’s the top line.

Here’s the small print:

The WOW Orchestra is not able to offer any fees to its players and is designed as an exciting, unique and fun professional development opportunity, celebrating great women in classical music and advocating and campaigning for equal and fairer treatment for the female musicians of the future.

Oh, ffff’s sake, SB bosses Jude Kelly and Gillian Moore. Respect what you pretend to respect.

In the US, one of the key markets, it has shifted precisely 600 CDs, so far, according to pinpoint Nielsen returns.

That’s  barely enough to pay for buttonhole flowers.

Another $6.6 million grant overnight, on top of $38  million some weeks back.

It makes no sense.

Why did they have to lock out the musicians before the people of Atlanta opened their hearts?

In Soviet times, it was widely whispered that the great mezzo-soprano was an agent of the secret police. There are two documented sources for this suspicion. One is an account by the American soprano Astrid Varnay that she had been warned by western opera managements to stay on the right side of the Russian mezzo as she had the power to call a Soviet boycott. KGB spies within the arts certainly helped to blight many careers.

The other report comes from Galina Vishnevskaya in her memoirs (pp. 452-7). Galina had been Elena’s teacher and mentor. When she and Slava Rostropovich fell foul of the Politburo for their support of the persecuted writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Obraztsova went to the Central Committee to denounce the pair and demand that Rostropovich be banned from conducting.

According to Galina, who called Obraztsova a Judas, even hardened apparatchiks were amazed at her eagerness to please the men in power.

The full facts cannot be ascertained and it is impossible to know whether the diva joined the secret state out of ambition, or (like many others) under duress. It is worth noting, however, that Putin’s ex-KGB apparat paid for the diva’s special medical treatment in Germany in her final weeks.

UPDATE: A reader adds:  I should like to tell you, as someone who was often in Moscow in the 1970s and 1980s, there was nothing ‘whispered’ in Moscow about the lady’s KGB connections. It was a well known, and oft stated, fact. Another fact was that her ability to come and go freely from the Soviet Union was entirely due to those connections.

There were often Soviet “minders” travelling with her too. I recall seeing her leaving La Scala the night of the famous Caballe-Anna Bolena cancellation, (1982), in what appeared to be full stage make up, accompanied by two thuggish looking men, who helped her into a car with the masses of bouquets she had received. The two men may as well have had K.G.B. stamped on their foreheads, so obvious did they look the part.

I would not presume to judge the actions of any Soviet citizen as I never had to live under such a regime, but I’ve seen much more circumspect behaviour from other Soviet artists of the opera and the ballet who managed to maintain their careers and their integrity without denouncing their colleagues.

Our friends at ResMusica report that Jean ouvel, the celebrated architect, has announced he’s staying away from his latest creation, the Philharmo ie de Paris, which opens tonight. He told Le Monde that the rushed opening and structural comporomises are an attack on his concept and a violation of his moral rights. The building, he says, is ‘premature’:

Ouvrir le programme de la Philharmonie de Paris sans ces espaces ne fait aucun sens et représente une atteinte à l’œuvre architecturale. A ce sujet, je ferai valoir  mon droit moral sur la conformité de l’œuvre, ainsi que sur d’autres points cruciaux, pour obtenir des finitions dignes des foyers et de la salle. /…/ Ce bâtiment est prématuré. »

Calls to Opera Zuid in Maastricht have gone unanswered all week. Likewise emails.

The Dutch company, which stages two touring productions a year, lost its financial director at the end of December. Much of its subsidy has been cut. The general director, Miranda van Kralingen, has her work cut out to keep the shows on the road.

Many in the business fear that Opera Zuid cannot survive. A plan to merge it with the successful Reiseoper has been resisted, thus far.

UPDATE: See comments…

We’ve been hearing from journalists on El Univeral, once a vigorous newspaper in Caracas but since last July placed under the chairmanship of Jesús Abreu Anselmi, representing a shadowy group of investors.  The journalists (and many readers) say the paper has been dulled down to a shadow of its former self and will not publish anything critical of the country’s despotic government.

The new chairman is the brother of the founder of El Sistema, José Antonio Abreu (pictured), visionary light of Venezuela’s music.

Jesús Abreu was previously involved in a banking crash.

Click on word ‘post’ for video to pop up.

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