The Association of British Orchestras is holding its annual gabfest in Gateshead. To keep participants awake, Rhinegold Publishing announces a series of awards for the most notable small-island attainers. We present the winners below without comment. This is an irony free zone.
ABO/Rhinegold orchestra manager of the year: Auroraorchestra’s John Harte
ABO/Rhinegold orchestra manager of the year: Michael Eakin of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic.
ABO/Rhinegold artist manager of the year: Jasper Parrott and the HarrisonParrott team
The overall ABO award: Mark Elder, music director of the Halle Orch.
The Times Literary Supplement runs an occasional squib about writers who are showered with prizes just for being themselves. Top of its leaders board at present are Amos Oz and Philip Roth.
In music, it’s not much of a contest. The composer with most prizes, year on year, is the German household favourite, Wolfgang Rihm.
And the conductor?
It’s got to be…
He has just added the 250,000 Euro Ernst von Siemens prize to his bulging collection.
Cheer up, old chap. It’s tax free.
Previous Siemens winners include Herbert von Karajan, Dietrich Fischer Dieskau, Leonard Bernstein, Claudio Abbado, Henri Dutilleux, Anne-Sophie Mutter and Hans Werner Henze.
The Nashville Symphony is getting nervous about its upcoming performance of an opera by Roger Waters (pictured) of Pink Floyd, an outspoken anti-Zionist. Some believe his obsession with Israel makes him anti-semitic. Here’s how the Nashville orch is preparing for trouble.
You read it here first.
Dear Board Members, Musicians and Staff:
I am writing to make you aware of a developing controversy related to our upcoming performance of Roger Waters’ opera Ça Irathis Fridayevening. Last week, the local chapter of the National Conference on Jewish Affairs (NCJA) ran a full-page ad in the Nashville Scene, expressing concern over public statements Waters has made regarding Israel and Palestine — some of which have been characterized as anti-Semitic. (Waters, however, maintains that he is not anti-Semitic.)
I want to assure you all that by presenting Ça Ira, we are in no way providing Roger Waters with a platform to share his views on Israel, Palestine or Judaism, nor are we either endorsing or opposing any of his personal, political or religious views. The Nashville Symphony would never program a work that is intended to espouse or incite violence, hate or intolerance toward any individual or group of people in any form. After a thorough vetting by our team, it was determined that Ça Ira adheres to those critical standards. We programmed this work based on its artistic merit, and hosting the U.S. premiere continues our commitment to delivering creative and dynamic programming to the people of Middle Tennessee.
In early December, we had a very constructive meeting about this performance with Mark Freedman, Carol Hyatt and other leaders of the Jewish Federation, in which we listened to their concerns, and discussed the work to be performed (which is actually about the French Revolution). The NCJA is, of course, not the same organization as the Jewish Federation. In response to the NCJA ad, however, we did receive a couple of calls from patrons expressing concern.
We have learned that the NCJA Nashville chapter will very likely stage a public protest Friday evening at, or near, the Schermerhorn. As a performing arts organization, part of our responsibility is to facilitate and promote a public discourse on issues surrounding artists and their work. As such, we welcome any individuals or groups who wish to let their voices be heard on this particular topic, provided their actions are peaceful and do not interfere with the performance or the enjoyment of those who are in attendance.
Should you encounter individuals engaged in a protest at any point on Friday, I ask that you please be respectful of their right to assemble and peacefully share their views, just as you would any other guest or visitor to Schermerhorn Symphony Center.
We take this matter very seriously and have made preparations to ensure that everything goes smoothly on Friday evening. If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to share them with me.
Best regards,
Alan
Alan D. Valentine
President and CEO
Nashville Symphony
Schermerhorn Symphony Center
One Symphony Place
Nashville, TN 37201-2031
Just in, from Clive Gillinson.
press release: CARNEGIE HALL ANNOUNCES 2015–2016 SEASON
Carnegie Hall’s 125th Anniversary Celebration
Season launches with Opening Night Gala concert with
Alan Gilbert, Evgeny Kissin, & the New York Philharmonic on October 7, 2015
All-star anniversary gala featuring Carnegie Hall Artist Trustees on May 5, 2016
marks 125 years to the day that Carnegie Hall first opened
125 Commissions Project
Carnegie Hall commemorates 125th anniversary by commissioning 125+ new works by established and emerging composers over next five seasons
Debs Creative Chair: Kronos Quartet
Pioneering group to hold Debs Chair for the launch of
Carnegie Hall’s 125 Commissions Project, as they begin their own Fifty for the Future: The Kronos Learning Repertoire initiative;
NYC residency includes Carnegie Hall concert and week-long workshop for young musicians
Perspectives: Evgeny Kissin, Sir Simon Rattle, and Rosanne Cash
Evgeny Kissin celebrates 25 years since his Carnegie Hall debut with six concerts, including performances in opening and closing weeks of the season with the
New York Philharmonic and The MET Orchestra
Sir Simon Rattle launches two-season Perspectives leading
complete Beethoven symphony cycle with the Berliner Philharmoniker
Singer-songwriter Rosanne Cash curates four-concert celebration of Southern roots music featuring appearances by The Time Jumpers;
Ry Cooder / Sharon White / Ricky Skaggs; and St. Paul and The Broken Bones
The Somewhere Project
Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute launches citywide creative learning project
exploring West Side Story, culminating in large-scale production
of the musical in restored factory in Queens, NY
conducted by Marin Alsop and directed by Amanda Dehnert, March 4–6, 2016
The pianist Mitsuko Uchida was awarded the Golden Mozart Medal in Salzburg on the composer’s birthday.
No marzipan was harmed in the making of this ceremony.
The laudatio was given by incoming Salzburg Festival director Markus Hinterhäuser.
Frederica von Stade joined a street choir of homeless people Sunday night in Dallas, wearing the orange t-shirt of protest.
Flicka is off the circuit now, no longer obliged to play the diva role.
The diva leaves Carnegie Hall last night. Photo: Pavel Gintov.
A report from Adrian Bruttan, one of the protestors:
If there was still any lingering doubt about her total awareness of what she has been doing, look at this picture taken outside the stage entrance of Carnegie Hall following Gergiev’s concert yesterday. We faced her and confronted her, she saw our posters of the dead swan and rivers of Ukrainian blood, she heard what we were saying – and her only response was a laughing smirk and mock salute. (Her girlfriends in her entourage were less subtle, turning to flip us the finger on several occasions. How anyone could treat the human tragedy and thousands of deaths by just showing the finger is incomprehensible.)
Regarding the concert itself, the Mariinsky Orchestra played in an unremarkably bland manner. The Shostakovich 4th Symphony, which is a bit of a stylistic hodgepodge, got a reading that sounded like the instrumentalists were just going through the motions.
Fred Westcott, the baritone who played the title role in the stage premieres and recording of Michael Nyman’s powerful chamber opera, has died in retirement in France at the age of 93.
Our partners at Ullstein have been following one of the great survivors: Heinz Jakob „ Coco“ Schumann – is a German Jazz musician who survived the Holocaust. He was born at May 14, 1924 in Berlin. He was the son of a Christian father and a Jewish mother. Coco Schumann stayed in Berlin for the first 10 years of Nazi rule. He refused to wear a yellow star and to limit his activities to those deemed suitable by the Nazis. Coco Schumann made a name for himself in Berlin’s underground jazz scene. In 1943 he was arrested by the Gestapo and deported to the concentration camps – Theresienstadt, Auschwitz, Dachau. At the camp Theresienstadt he had begun playing in a band known informally as “The Ghetto Swingers.” Following his transfer to Auschwitz in September 1944, he played songs such as “La Paloma” for the German guards during an approximately five-month stay in the camp, while they murdered thousands of innocent Jews, ethnic Poles, Roma, gays and others.
Schumann was saved from the gas chambers of Auschwitz because a guard who was charged with sorting out new arrivals recognized him from Berlin’s jazz scene and placed him in a Roma musical group.
In the 1990s he has founded the “Coco Schumann Quartett“ playing Swing and Jazz. He is living in Berlin.
The Globe has been lifting the lid on hidden earnings of arts administrators.
The Boston Symphony, for instance,
includes summer housing at Tanglewood as part of managing director Mark Volpe’s $698,805 in compensation. The benefit, whose cost is not specified, is “for the convenience of the BSO,” according to its tax filing in 2013, and is not subject to taxes.
The symphony pays for Volpe’s wife to travel with him to court donors and raise funds. He drives a 2008 Audi A6 provided by the BSO and also had a $200,000 mortgage the symphony made to him in 1997 and refinanced in 2003. Of that, $72,000 is still due.
Bill Achtmeyer, chairman of the BSO trustees and a management consultant, said Volpe’s compensation is reasonable.
“Mark is the top managing director in the orchestral world. He is respected and trusted by artists and musicians around the globe,’’ Achtmeyer said. “We are lucky to have him at the BSO and will do everything we can to keep him in his post as long as he is willing to serve.”
The death of Joseph Rotman, self-made oil trader and merchant banker, has robbed the arts in Canada of a powerful supporter. Toronto born, Rotman was in the middle of his second term as chairman of the Canada Council for the Arts and was a major donor to the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the Canadian Opera Company, the National Ballet of Canada and the Toronto International Film Festival.
Joseph Rotman was 80. His kind don’t grow on trees.
There’s much confusion about her instruments and, particularly, the bows she used. Charles Beare, her cello supplier and lifelong friend, puts the facts straight in a fascinating reminiscence on Tarisio, here.
Jacqueline du Pré, who died in October 1987, would have been just 70 years old this week.
