The Reine Elisabeth competition in Belgium has announced a new discipline.

Can’t think why they need a new round, but 2017 will be for cellos.

The tenor has officially crushed rumours that he was dating Madge.

Interviewed by Anna Picard for the Times (London), he said:

‘I think it came from Italy originally, but they claimed they saw us here at an exhibition in London.’

So was he at an exhibition in London with Madonna? ‘No. I wasn’t. Everybody just copied it from somewhere else. So in Russia, even, in every magazine, it was this big, big thing with pictures of us.’ Pictures of them together? ‘Of course not. There is no picture of us together because we’ve never met. I even thought about contacting her management to say, ‘Listen, it’s not me that’s spreading these rumours.’ ‘

His ‘Amazing Lang Lang’ fragrance was launched today at Galeries Lafayette in Berlin.

The pianist is now officially an irony-free zone.

Notice from the Swingle Singers:

We are profoundly saddened by the news that our founder, friend and mentor Ward Swingle has passed away at the age of 87. Ward was an inspiration to so many in the vocal community and beyond. As an arranger, composer and vocalist he redefined what singers could do, made us hear music in a new way and brought us so much joy. It has always been an immense honour and privilege to perform under his name. Even long after he retired from the group Ward was incredibly supportive of the current Swingles, always excited to hear about our latest projects and encouraging us to take risks. His passing is a huge loss and our thoughts are with his family at this very difficult time. Thank you, Ward, for everything you have given us.

Alabama  born, Ward played in big bands, studied at the Cincinnati Conservatory and went to Paris in the early 1950s as a piano pupil of Walter Gieseking. Then he had the Swingle idea. His lead singer, Christiane Legrand, was sister of the film composer, Michael Legrand. Nobody had tried jazz on Bach. It was a huge hit, very much a soundtrack of the Sixties, of our lives.

UPDATE: First obituary here (Telegraph).

That’s what it takes to tempt an audience in Sheffield, capital of the UK’s defunct steel and coal industries. Press release below.

Do you have a case of the January blues? Would you like to try something new but don’t have the cash? Sheffield’s chamber music organisation, Music in the Round, is inviting audiences to experience the magic of its in-house ensemble, Ensemble 360, for just one penny on Saturday 24 January.

Following the huge success of the first such concert in 2012, the concert will once again be held on Sheffield Crucible Theatre’s 980-seat main stage. The programme features music of theatrical flair that showcases the collective and individual brilliance of resident Ensemble 360 musicians. They will be playing orchestral favourites in skilful chamber versions, and a selection of more recently composed pieces that are full of spontaneity, wit and charm.

The concert programme will include Mozart’s Don Giovanni Overture (arr. David Matthews), and Ravel’s virtuosic Tzigane for violin and piano, as well as something more unusual in the shape of Ligeti’s fabulous Musica ricercata / Six Bagatelles for piano and wind quintet, from the 1950s. Ligeti originally wrote these 11 pieces for piano, and he later re-arranged 6 of them for Wind Quintet. In this concert, these two versions will be mixed for possibly the first time ever, with pianist Tim Horton performing 5 the pieces which Ligeti never orchestrated, with members of Ensemble 360 playing the Wind Quintet version of the others.

Lovely, intimate remembrance of Neil Armstrong here from principal trumpet, David Krauss.

A Belgian school withdrew today from a planned visit to La Monnaie. Its headmaster said: ‘There are soldiers in the streets, and armed police.’

Security has been tightened since the smashing of an Islamist cell last week in Verviers. But does that mean cultural education has to stop?

Read here (en francais).

The byways of the music business are littered with attempts by London agent Jasper Parrott to achieve merger or partnership deals. The big blow-back was a bid to sell his company, with its artists, to Universal Music.

Undaunted, Parrott has stayed in play. Today, he announced a partnership with a design-conscious start-up, PolyArts. Interesting development. Details below.

Every writer gets complaints. Some are justified. Most of us adjust to intelligent opinion.

The complaint that kept coming my way was that I banged on too  much about a composer readers had neither heard of nor cared about.

Point taken. I happen to believe that Mieczyslaw Weinberg (1919 – 1996) was the most interesting composer in the late Soviet Union after his friend Dmitri Shostakovich, and that he is also an indispensable musical guide to understanding some of his friend’s important works. Time alone will tell if Weinberg achieves the recognition I believe he deserves, but I made a private resolution not to review him again for a year, at least.

Even though Kremer and Trifonov are playing his music in major US cities right now.

Take him off the review list.

And then this release arrived. It’s my Album of the Week on sinfinimusic.com. Forget Shostakovich. It’s the most brilliant musical commentary ever written on Mahler’s 9th symphony. Absolutely indispensable five-star music. Click here.

Fifteen of the 16 pink Wagners that the town put up to celebrate its greatest resident have been stolen.

The head of marketing is fuming.

Now who would have nicked a pink Wagner gnome? Lemme think….

A group called Art Against Aggression which is peacefully picketing Valery Gergiev’s Mariinsky tour in the US called off its protest for yesterday’s Brooklyn performance of Prokofiev’s Cinderella, on the assumption that a large proportion of the audience was made up of children.

The notice of suspension is quite witty.

Last time the Berlin Phil voted for a chief conductor, Daniel lost out to the young lion. He bears no grudges. In today’s Morgenpost, he writes a lengthy and affectionate 60th birthday greeting. Full article here (auf Deutsch). Extract below.

 photo: flickr

He is a friend. Sometimes we don’t see each other for months. Then we meet and it feels like yesterday. It is a friendship which does not need frequency. On Monday, Simon Rattle celebrates a birthday. Last time, I called and congratulated him. I’m twelve years older than him and I joked at the time: Simon, enjoy the 50, I can tell you one thing, 50 is better than 60. This time, I’ll tell him: Enjoy the 60, but 70 is even better.

I first experienced Simon Rattle when he was 19, playing timpani in the English (National) Youth Orchestra. It was a performance of Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” under the baton of Pierre Boulez. We did not speak at that time. I met Simon in 1978 in Orange. During the festival, the Roman Theatre, Saint-Saens’ opera “Samson et Dalila” with Placido Domingo. Simon was on a private visit. That was the beginning. When we meet now, we have so much to talk about. We talk about Berlin, about England, about the Middle East. Simon has always been very interested in the West-East Diwan Orchestra. Of course, we talk about music, sometimes just about food.