For the past two decades, one of France’s foremost artists has made London his home.
Philippe Graffin is celebrating the anniversary with a Strad magazine cover and a pair of concerts at St Johns Smith Square this weekend, with a bunch of eminent friends and a top composer playing the crotales (you don’t see that every day). Click here to see more.
Meanwhile, over in France, they are trying to abolish Philippe’s festival.
We regret to share news of the death of the international saxophone virtuoso and composer, John-Edward Kelly.
A professor of contempoary music in leading European conservatoires, John-Edward shifted more to conducting in the past decade, founding the Arcos Chamber Orchestra of New York with the violinist Elissa Cassini.
He leaves a wife, four children and more than 200 published scores.
Sakari Oramo was a concerto soloist before he became an international conductor. He’s presently music director of the Stockholm Phil and formerly of the Finnish Radio orchestra (which he swapped for the BBC).
When Patricia Kopatchinskaja turned up barefoot on stage (as she does), Sakari couldn’t resist the chance to play and dance the Ligeti Duo “Balada si joc”.
Helluva piece, right? More maestros should try this.
The North Carolina Symphony is in mourning for Jess Levin, a stalwart of the orchestra for 40 years, who died yesterday just after his 64th birthday. Jess premiered his own violin concerto with the orchestra and appeared as soloist in Mozart’s 5th. He had a passionate sideline as a professional photographer. Our sympathies to his widow, Pam, the orchestra’s assistant librarian.
The answer is, Practise slowly. And no longer than….
Itzhak is posting video tips on our community partner, Hello Stage. Click here for answers.
Say hello to the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, in Norway. Bergen receives 2,250 mm (89 in) of rain on average each year, making it the dampest town in Europe.
Musicians go to work well prepared, as you can see in their current ad campaign:
Great image. Doesn’t affect how they play.
Symphony No. 5 (Tchaikovsky) – Andrew Litton & Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra from Bergen Filharmoniske Orkester on Vimeo.
It looks too good to be true, but a special introductory offer from the Vienna State Opera allows you a week’s free access to one of 45 current HD productions, plus any of the rest of the season’s output at a nominal five Euros each. Check it out here.
I’ve just come out of the faintly out-of-body experience of listening to one man conduct two movements of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons as lead violinist and follow that by singing countertenor in a Vivaldi cantata.
All very capable and professionally earnest, but you do have to wonder why.
Why Dmitry Sinkovsky does it, and why he’s unable to choose between very different musical paths.
The album s out shortly on the naive label. Aptly named, for once.
Here’s one he made earlier.
Stéphane Lissner, head of the Paris Opéra, exposed himself to a short musical quiz on a business channel.
Turns out he can’t tell his Norma from his Wally. As the quiz progresses, he keeps getting his arias in a sling.
The video is being circulated by Corriere della Sera from Milan, where Lissner used to run La Scala.
They’re laughing in Bochum this week.
A post-industrial Ruhr town with a populace of under 400,000 has built a brilliant new concert hall for 34 million Euros, while wealthy Munich has dithered away for ten years, spent a small fortune on consultants and finally balked at a priject that cost ten times as much as Bochum’s outlay. Eat this, Bayern, is what they’re saying in Bochum.
You’ll hear much the same sentiment expressed in Birmingham, where an exemplary concert hall was built as a relief to 1980s post-industrial blight and where locals glow with pride at the way the city punches above its cultural weight.
None of this will ultimately cut much inauguration tape in Munich and London. The timing, politicians are privately saying, is all wrong. You can get away with second-city projects in the thick of austerity, but capitals cannot be seen to swagger.
So no new hall for the moment.
That’s why.
UPDATE: We are told that Bochum’s General Music Director Steven Sloane fought for 20 years to get the Bochum Symphony a new home, in a hall that provides educational space and a home for many school ensembles.
The fullest account of poor Anne Naysmith, killed last week by a lorry in west London, appears today in the Independent newspaper. The obituary writer Garry Humphries knew the old lady and provides some fascinating facts – that she was just 39 when she went to live in her car, that she had been a rising artist on the Wilfred Van Wyck list, that her mother was Russian and that she performed what must have been the London premieres of piano works by the mystic and altogether absorbing Russian composer, Karamanov. Read here.
Hong Kong’s traditional Chinese orchestra has sacked three principal players after the called for a change of management. Hsin Hsiao-ling, Hsin Hsiao-hung and Liu Yang, principals of the orchestra’s gaohu, erhu and zhonghu sections, were fired with immediate effect. There is no immediate sign that the dispute is connected to the local democracy protests. nThe sackings were announced on the eve of the Chinese new year.
More here.
