Katy Clark, Welsh-born president of the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, has been named president of Brooklyn Academy of Music. Originally from Swansea, Katy read history at Jesus College, Cambridge, and took a certificate in arts management at Birbeck College, London, while playing five years in the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

At St Luke’s she appointed Pablo Heras-Casado as principal conductor and launched Youth Orchestra of St. Luke’s and St. Luke’s Subway Series.

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She says: ‘BAM has always been fearless in the creation and presentation of art, for the borough of Brooklyn, the city of New York, and audiences around the world.’

With Clive Gillinson at Carnegie Hall, Clark at BAM, Graham Parker at WQXR and Thomas P Campbell at the Metropolitan Museum, it looks like New York is back under Brit rule.

 

No edition in music is ever complete.

This Saturday in Helsinki, the YL Male Choir will premiere two pieces by Sibelius. The scores have been found on a sheep farm belonging to a family called Rautavaara.

Apparently they were given by Sibelius to one of the authors of Finland’s declaration of independence. One score is the original, longer version of “Terve Kuu!”, written in 1901. The other is “Suomenmaa” (1898) a melody re-used by Sibelius in Op. 28. Nobody seems to have known of their existence.

Report here (in Finnish).
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h/t: Joel Valkila

Sean Chen, who came third in the 2013 Van Cliburn Competition, has been awarded $100k by the Leonore Annenberg Fellowship Fund.

He was the first American artist to reach the finals in 16 years.

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press release:

TORONTO, April 8, 2015  PEN Canada deeply regrets the Toronto Symphony Orchestra’s decision to cancel the April 8–9 appearances of Ukrainian-born pianist Valentina Lisitsa due to a controversy over her political views on the conflict in the Ukraine.

“Ms. Lisitsa’s politics have nothing whatsoever to do with the TSO or her music,” said Philip Slayton, President of PEN. “It is a grave error of judgment, deeply contrary to freedom of expression, to cancel Ms. Lisitsa’s performances because her views may offend some.” Slayton called on the TSO to apologize to Lisitsa and reschedule her performances.

According to media reports, Ms. Lisitsa’s online statements have outraged members of the Ukrainian-Canadian community, and her tweets about the current Ukrainian government have included comparisons with Nazi Germany. Ms. Lisitsa has said that the TSO offered to pay her entire fee for the cancelled shows but pressured her not to disclose the reason for their decision. “If they do it once, they will do it again and again, until the musicians, artists are intimidated into voluntary censorship,” she wrote.

PEN Canada is a nonpartisan organization of writers that works with others to defend freedom of expression as a basic human right at home and abroad. EN Canada promotes literature, fights censorship, helps free persecuted writers from prison, and assists writers living in exile in Canada. PEN Canada is the Canadian centre of PEN International, a community of writers that operates on five continents and in over 100 countries.

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A memorial concert at Berlin’s Haus des Rundfunks on Sunday will mark what would have been the 80th birthday year of Peter Ronnefeld, one of the most dazzling musical talents of his time. Peter was just 30 when he died of cancer in August 1965.

His ascent had been dazzling. Chief conductor in Bonn at 26 and Generalmusikdirektor in Kiel two years later, he was getting offers from all the best orchestras. Herbert von Karajan had been among the first to spot his gift, engaging him as repetiteur at the Vienna Opera in 1958. Nikolaus Harnoncourt employed him as harpsichordist in the Concentus Musicus Wien.

An avid composer, Ronnefeld premiered works by Zimmermann, Isang Yun and other trailblazers. He conducted a Mozart evening with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. Karl Böhm said: ‘this young man could be the next Karajan.’

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photo: Minna Ronnefeld

In the summer of 1965, Ronnefeld was rehearsing a new work by Aribert Reimann when cancer was diagnosed; he was dead within weeks, leaving a widow and six year-old son.

A selection of Ronnefeld’s works, published by Ricordi and UE, will be performed on Sunday by a youth orchestra, the veteran Berlin Philharmonic cellist Wolfgang Böttcher and the singer Anne Steffens.

 

It’s being reported that the new concert hall will be shut down for two months in summer in order to adjust many of the shortcomings that were apparent at its over-hasty opening in January. Concerts are being shifted over July and August to the nearby Cité de la Musique.

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The tough times that Staatsoper director Dominque Meyer has predicted are kicking in. The 2015/6 season, announced this morning contains just five new opera productions, plus a commissioned children’s opera.

The season’s repertoire, however, remains huge. It comprises 54 operas across four centuries, certainly the largest of any leading opera house.

 

Details below.

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2015/2016 season:

Giuseppe Verdi: Macbeth (4th October 2015 – C: Alain Altinoglu; D: Christian Räth; with Ludovic Tézier, Ferruccio Furlanetto, Tatiana Serjan, Jorge de León);

Engelbert Humperdinck: Hänsel und Gretel (19th November 2015 – C: Christian Thielemann; D: Adrian Noble; with Adrian Eröd, Janina Baechle, Daniela Sindram, Chen Reiss, Michaela Schuster, Annika Gerhards);

Leoš Janáček: Věc Makropulos (first performance at the Wiener Staatsoper on 13th December 2015 – C: Jakub Hrůša; D: Peter Stein; with Laura Aikin, Rainer Trost, Margarita Gritskova, Markus Marquardt, Norbert Ernst, Wolfgang Bankl, Heinz Zednik);

Péter Eötvös: Tri Sestri (first performance at the Wiener Staatsoper on 6th March 2016 – C: Péter Eötvös; D: Yuval Sharon; with Olga Bezsmertna, Margarita Gritskova, Ilseyar Khayrullova, Eric Jurenas, Boaz Daniel, Paolo Rumetz);

Giacomo Puccini: Turandot (28th April 2016 – C: Gustavo Dudamel; D: Marco Arturo Marelli; with Lise Lindstrom, Johan Botha, Anita Hartig, Heinz Zednik, Dan Paul Dumitrescu);

Johanna Doderer: Fatima, oder von den mutigen Kindern (world première of the children’s opera commissioned by the Wiener Staatsoper on 23rd December 2015; C: Benjamin Bayl, D: Henry Mason)

He’s conducting Turandot next season, it has just been announced.

Close observers will note that the Venezuelan conductor has resisted persistent approaches from the Met.

 

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There were demonstrators in Roy Thomson Hall and a severely depleted attendance as the Toronto Symphony played without Valentina Lisitsa last night after the pianist had been removed from the programme for her outspoken political opinions. ‘She shouldn’t be discriminated against for her political views,’ said Vlad Alexeyenko, a Ukrainian studying at the University of Toronto. ‘She should be allowed to play for her audience.’

Toronto’s leading newspaper the Globe and Mail published a strong op-ed, calling Lisitsa’s dismissal ‘a terrible precedent, warning that it exposed any artist playing in Toronto to risk of cancellation.

Mr. Melanson cancelled her concerts this week after complaints over her views on the conflict in Ukraine. The decision throws the door wide open for other groups to campaign for a bar against artists they find objectionable.

Imagine if an Israeli violinist with strong Zionist views were invited to play Roy Thomson Hall. Imagine she had once said that the Palestinians were not a true nationality, that their leaders were terrorists and that Israel had the historic right to live in all of the Holy Land. Wouldn’t Palestinian-Canadians have the right to say she should be banned?

Or what about a Palestinian flutist who calls Israel a racist state and argues that armed resistance is sometimes justified even against Israeli citizens? wrote Marcus Gee.

The TSO’s president Jeff Melanson has tried to defuse the issue in phone interviews with Musical Toronto and WQXR. He called Lisitsa a liar for claiming he had cancelled her contract at the demand of a Ukrainian benefactor. ‘That is complete fabrication, and she is basically distorting the truth and making this up. We did not cave to pressure by one lobby group over another, and we absolutely are not taking a position politically between Russia and the Ukraine. This is really about offensive tweets about people by Ms. Lisitsa.’

The case continues.

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The Iceland Symphony Orchestra looks like losing tonight’s concert.  Players voted to strike from today if agreement had not been reached on a new contract.  It is the first orchestral strike in country’s history.  Olari Elts was down to conduct Mozart symphonies nos. 32 and 40, with Shai Wosner playing Mozart’s D minor concerto.

Lights out in Rejjavik’s brave new concert hall. At least for tonight.

 

rejkjavik concert hall

In Spain, musicians in the Grand Canaries philharmonic orchestra (music director Pedro Halffter) have gone on strike over what they describe as ‘a complete breakdown of understanding’ with the administration (a situation not uncommon in Spain, we understand).

The new NY #1 is to be Frank Huang, presently concertmaster of the Houston Symphony.

He succeeds the retired Glenn Dicterow after a search process that lasted almost two years.

Statement: ‘More than any other musician, the concertmaster shapes the persona of an orchestra, and in Frank Huang we have found just the right mix of virtuosity, flair, musicality, and collegiality,” said Music Director Alan Gilbert. “After our very comprehensive search, during which we heard many strong candidates, the musicians of the search committee and I unanimously agreed that Frank would both fit right in to the New York Philharmonic and push it to even greater heights. I am thrilled and proud to be announcing this most important appointment.’

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Frank Huang was born in Beijing, China. At the age of seven he moved to Houston, Texas, where he began violin lessons with his mother. He commenced study with Fredell Lack at the University of Houston and at 16 he enrolled in the pre-college program at the Cleveland Institute of Music (CIM) where he studied with Donald Weilerstein. He continued studies with Weilerstein in college and earned his bachelor of music degree from CIM in 2002. Subsequently he attended The Juilliard School in New York City, studying violin with Robert Mann. Mr. Huang, who began his tenure as concertmaster of the Houston Symphony in 2010, also serves on the faculties of the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University and the University of Houston.

Genia Kühmeier, Salzburg born and bred, withdrew today from this summer’s Marriage of Figaro ‘for personal reasons’. She will be replaced by the German soprano Annett Fritsch.

‘Personal reasons’ usually means a clash with the director, vocal problems or relationship issues.

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UPDATE: The tragic cause is amplified in Comments.