Many musicians play chess to sharpen their minds and kill hours in trains and planes. Some are rather good at it.
The composer Sergei Prokofiev was good enough to steal a game off an international grandmaster. But he met his match in David Oistrakh.
Read a move-by-move account of their contest here. (The young woman looking on is Elisaveta Gilels, daughter of Emil.)
It’s the Slipped Disc long weekend read.
There was widespread concern last year when Harvard banned one of its doctoral graduates for life after he mounted a stage where Vladimir Spivakov and the Moscow Virtuosi were performing.
The protestor, Dr Roman Torgovitsky, is a biomedical scientist ad martial arts practitioner. He is also a voluble anti-Putin activist.
Last night, Dr Torgovitsky mounted the stage of the Metropolitan Opera, disturbing the artists as they took curtain calls. He was duly arrested. Should he now be banned from the Met?
Harvard was criticised for trampling on academic freedoms by imposing a life ban. However, in another field, there is generaly no objection when a football supporter who misbehaves during a match is removed and banned. Those who disrupt musical events with extraneous political protest must expect similar treatment.
If the Met were to ban Dr Torgovitsky, he would have no cause for complaint.
Our intrepid New York operagoers, Elizabeth Frayer and Shawn Milnes, went to see the protests at the Met and stayed to see the premiere.
Iolanta, says Shawn, ‘featured some of the best singing I have heard in my adult life at the Met.’ Bluebeard, says Elizabeth, was ‘truly scary’.
Read their double/double review here.
Giannella is a passionate viola player from Denver who has acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Today, she is rehearsing with the Colorado Symphony and tonight she will join its viola section in concert.
Nice.
Two resignations in a week at English National Opera – the chairman and chief executive – have brought the figure of artistic director John Berry into sharp focus.
It is no secret that the Arts Council has been been demanding his head, in exchange for a £7.5 million sweetener. They accuse Berry of financial profligacy, if not illiteracy.
It is no secret, either, that the ENO board has split down the middle on his merits. The business side of the table are alarmed by persistent losses of around a million pounds a year. Berry contests that figure.
His supporters on the board claim – rightly – that he has given the company higher status on the world stage than any boss in its history. ENO, through Berry, has become a feeder house for the Met, Munich Amsterdam and more. He is a key creative figure at the summits of the opera world, able to call in the cream of Europe’s directors and to instal Peter Sellars as a resident artist.
In a boardroom shootout, Berry’s supporters have won – for the time being.
His opponents still think they can topple him.
But Berry has ENO over a barrel. Keep him, and the turbulence will continue. Expect further departures. The company’s media chief (a former Arts Council official) has vanished into thin air. The atmosphere is not great.
Sack him, however, and the company will vanish into a vortex of nonentity. International houses and artists will withdraw ther favours.
John Berry is ENO’s ideas bank. Without him, the Coliseum is just an expensive piece of real estate. Contrary to most boardroom leaks, I expect him to survive. The Arts Council, whose conduct through the past year has been pusillanimous, will pay up regardless. They cannot be seen to be organising a putsch at a client institution.
Our money’s on John Berry for the immediate future.
West Australia Opera became an international laughing stock last year when its chief executive, Carolyn Chard, cancelled a Carmen production as part of a health-sponsorship deal. Both artistic director Joseph Colaneri and chorus master Joseph Nolan walked out.
Chard has now appointed Brit-based Aussie conductor Brad Cohen as her next artistic director.
He’s doing Faust. Does she know there’s drinking in it?
The Canadian conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin, an outside candidate for the Berlin Philharmonic vacancy in 2017, has removed himself from contention by signing on for five more years at Philadelphia, taking him to 2022.
Yannick is also music director in Rotterdam and principal conductor of the Orchestre Métropolitain in his native Montreal. He has been conducting in Berlin since 2010 and is well liked in the Philharmonie, but he has got his hands full for the next decade and more.
Press release follows:
(Philadelphia, January 30, 2015)—The Philadelphia Orchestra today announces that Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin extends his tenure with the Orchestra through the 2021-22 season, his first contract renewal since beginning his tenure as the Orchestra’s eighth music director in September 2012.
Of the renewal, Nézet-Séguin commented: “The warm embrace of The Philadelphia Orchestra and its audiences has been humbling and exhilarating since I made my debut in 2008. Knowing that this love affair with the Orchestra and the City of Philadelphia will continue is an immense joy. I believe what we are doing artistically is so important, and it’s having a big impact on this community. But to do this work takes time, so I am thrilled that I will continue here as music director for at least another five years. Our work together is in many ways really just beginning, and now being able to settle in and think and plan long-term is really wonderful. And it is all the more gratifying that my close collaborations with both Rich and Allison will also continue.”
Simultaneously, the Board of Directors of The Philadelphia Orchestra Association has renewed Chairman Richard B. Worley and President and CEO Allison Vulgamore, ensuring that the collective mission and vision established by the leadership triumvirate will continue to steward The Philadelphia Orchestra’s artistic growth and financial stability.
The Orchestra further announced today a remarkable gift from the Miller-Worley Foundation of $10 million. The lead gift, given by Leslie Anne Miller and Richard Worley through their foundation, will floor the Orchestra’s Comprehensive Campaign.
The resignation has been announced of Henriette Götz, brought in last April from Belgium to stabilise the faltering finances of English National Opera. Internal sources speak of a complete breakdown in her relations with her boss, John Berry, the artistic director who hired her. Last week, the chairman Martyn Rose quit, privately blaming Berry for the company’s difficulties.
A statement from ENO said: ‘Henriette Götz has informed the board of ENO that she has decided to step down from her post as Executive Director.’
She will be replaced as a interim measure by the former Glyndebourne chief Anthony Whitworth-Jones.
UPDATE: Who’s next? Click here.
press release:
ENO Management Change
Henriette Götz has informed the board of ENO that she has decided to step down from her post as Executive Director and will be leaving the company on the 28 February 2015.
Speaking on behalf of the board, Dr Harry Brünjes commented: “The Board and Henriette’s colleagues are grateful to her for the hard work that she has shown in her time with the company. She has a great deal of passion and commitment and much to offer to the Opera world.”
Henriette Götz and English National Opera have agreed that they shall not be making any further comment in respect of this matter.
Anthony Whitworth-Jones, currently a non-executive trustee of ENO, will become Acting Director of the company while the board carries out a search for a new full time director.
Commenting on the appointment of Mr Whitworth-Jones, Dr Brünjes said: “We are very fortunate to have Anthony step in to help lead the company. His excellent reputation and experience having led the teams at Glyndebourne, Garsington and Dallas opera companies is well known and we welcome this opportunity to have him work with John Berry and the rest of the ENO team.”
Yisrael Yinon, who died mid-concert in Switzerland last night, was a leading researcher into composers who were murdered in the Nazi Holocaust. He was the first to record the symphonic works of Viktor Ullmann. He went on to rediscover Hans Krasa, Pavel Haas and Erwin Schulhoff, performing some of their works for Decca’s Entartete Musik series.
I was present at his recording of the most important of these retrievals, an opera by Haas called The Charlatan, restaged in Prague in 1991 and filled with a totally unexpected lightness. Yinon addressed this music with a sense of holy mission. He was not deflected from his purpose or, at times, the easiest of colleagues. But the resultant record speaks for itself.
His death, at 59, is a terrible tragedy, the loss of a decent man and an excellent musician.
Born in Israel, he studied with Mendi Rodan and Noam Sheriff before basing his career in Germany.
We are devastated to report the death of Israel Yinon, the Israeli-born conductor, while conducting a concert in Lucerne, Switzerland.
Yinon, 59, collapsed last night while conducting Richard Strauss’s Alpine Symphony with a Swiss youth orchestra.
He fell headlong to the ground, amid cries from musicians and audience. His partner, Amari Barash, who was playing oboe in the orchestra, rushed forward and talked to him while medics fought to save his life. ‘We had a brief conversation and he continued to maintain eye contact with me as medical personnel attempted to rescue him,’ writes Amari to Slipped Disc. Tragically, Israel died where he fell.
More here. A partner’s lament here.
Daughter’s tribute here.
At the Iolanta Curtain Call tonight a protester with a poster of Putin with a Hitler moustache and other photos I couldn’t make out walked to center stage and held the poster up for the audience and then turned to show it to the cast, who seemed surprisingly unfazed.
He appeared to walk in from stage right but I think he climbed onstage from the side of the pit. He was soundly booed. And security was VERY tight getting backstage after Bluebeard’s Castle. Two NYPD stood at either side of the interior stagedoor. Many were turned away.
Outside, about 25-30 protestors chanted ‘musicians have choices’ and something to the effect of ‘shame on the Met’ and ‘Netrebko supports terrorists’.
UPDATE: The stage protestor is named here.
