The violinist Stefan Arzberger, charged with attempted murder after an incident in a New York hotel, has failed in an appeal to have his passport returned so that he can travel again with the Leipzig Quartet. He has been ordered to return to court for a further hearing on June 18. Here’s a statement by his attorney:

‘We appeared today in court asking the judge to permit Stefan to travel internationally with his Quartet. This request was denied once again, notwithstanding the very strong evidence that he is not guilty of the charges and the undeniable fact that he, too, was the victim of a crime the evening in question.

‘We will now continue preparing our defense, which will include the forensic analysis of hair samples to identify, if possible, the drug that was likely administered to him by the person who stole his property and fraudulently used his credit and bank cards, and we will also consult with an expert in pharmotoxicology and a psychiatrist to better understand the circumstances that led to the charges. We thank the many hundreds of people who have expressed support for Stefan during this very difficult time and will keep you updated regarding developments in the case.
Any help for Stefan is welcome!

‘We look forward to a positive outcome so Stefan can put this behind him and return to what he does best – making beautiful music with his Quartet.

Richard Levitt’

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Saturday night, Lisette Oropesa opened an exuberant production of Donizetti’s Daughter of the Regiment at Pittsburgh Opera.

Sunday morning, she ran the Pittsburgh Marathon.

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Talk about breathing exercises… Has any other opera singer run 26 miles the morning after a premiere?

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Here’s an extract from her lead review:

Soprano Lisette Oropesa’s Marie was a triumph May 2 at the Benedum Center, utterly winning in both the role’s vocal challenges and the physical demands of Curran’s staging. Her voice is wonderfully suited to the role, warm and rounded in tone but also pure, and sparkling in coloratura. “The Song of the Regiment” started with a lovely vocal flourish, then proceeded with irresistible elan.

Two recitals on May 8 and 9 in Oakville have been called off by the pianist after doubts came to light about the organiser’s credibility.

Documents seen by Slipped Disc reveal that the concert organiser, a developer by name of Les Holdway, made claims of being linked to two charities and gave assurances that he had made payments  both to the concert venue and to Steinways for a grand piano.

None of these commitments was validated.

On Friday, Lisitsa ordered Holdway to take down the concert announcements and refund those who had purchased tickets. Holdway had offered to put on the concerts ‘in defence of freedom of expression’ after the Toronto Symphony buckled to local Ukrainian pressure and cancelled a concerto by Lisitsa, who has tweeted anti-Kiev material. The TSO action provoked a wave of sympathy for the soloist among the Toronto public and media. Holdway’s hapless intervention has not helped her cause.

lisitsa toronto

UPDATE: From Valentina Lisitsa’s cancellation email:

Dear Mr.Holdway,

I don’t know what the reasons are behind your intent to make the concerts on May 8 and 9.  Whether you saw an opportunity as an entrepreneur to make some money on my “five minutes of fame” – or you genuinely tried to do a good deed for the society, inspired by the publicity that surrounded my cause – it’s not for me to judge.
At this point I accept nothing but cold, hard facts that I could verify.
1. You don’t have the charities you said you have. I don’t care about semantics or legal terms or whether they are “in process or being” this or that… The fact is – you don’t have them now. You didn’t have them when you called me to arrange the concerts. By advertising the concert as FUNDRAISER for CHARITIES you mislead people and made me an unwitting participant in this deception.

3. You say you paid over 9000 in expenses for rentals etc in preparation for the concert.
I am yet to hear from Meeting House whether you made %100 nonrefundable deposit. But their rent for commercial and non-profit events is public information. It’s 1/10th of the number you named. Need I say more?
4. I spoke with Steinway and was told that: first of all you didn’t pay them. Second, you downgraded from a concert grand to a small piano without even asking me.
For me it’s enough “evidence”.
Please kindly request Ticketmaster to issue the refunds to the audience.
I will make a statement on Facebook about the cancelation.
I thank you for a hard lesson you gave me: I should be less trusting of people in a future, no matter how good their intents may seem.

Sincerely,
Valentina

 

Slipped Disc was first to report that Yo Yo Ma nobly sat in for a sick orchestral cellist in a Vancouver Symphony Orchestra concert on Friday night. Now music director Bramwell Tovey gives his account:

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(I’m) starting to read several different versions of what happened on Friday when Yo-Yo Ma played in the Vancouver Symphony cello section for Dvorak’s 8th symphony. This is what happened.

When I entered the theatre around 7:45pm, I was told by Sarah Boonstra, our stage manager, that one of our cellists was ill and unable to play that night. The musician concerned (who was devastated to miss this concert, of all concerts,) is a fabulous cellist, completely dedicated to the VSO who also happens to teach my daughter, Emmeline. His wife is a key member of our administration and was backstage with me just before the concert, at 7:59pm. Joanne Harada, VP of Artistic Administration was also present, as were Sarah and Dale Barltrop, our concertmaster. Yo-Yo, was also there, socializing as he so often does before a concert.

Yo-Yo is a tremendous colleague who often plays in the orchestra for the second half when he’s played a concerto before the intermission – there are several other soloists who are similarly generous – James Ehnes and Gil Shaham come to mind, but to play in the first half when the second half contains a concerto as mammoth as Dvorak’s for cello, well, that’s unheard of in my experience.

So, we were gathered at the side of the stage, hemmed in by the staircase which was recently re-decorated when used as a film set for “If I Stay.” The lugubrious colo(u)rs brought drama to the movie and somehow enhanced the conversation we were having.

yo yo ma exchannge

I told Yo-Yo of the poor musician’s plight and jokingly (really, honestly, just as a joke) asked if he’d deputize. He was already dressed. Without demur, almost anxious to play, he went downstairs to fetch his cello (the Stradivarius that Jacqueline Du Pré played on her first recording of the Elgar cello concerto.)

Dale suggested we get Yo-Yo onstage at the end of the brief Slavonic Dance that opened the concert. So that’s what we did. Yo-Yo moseyed on, almost incognito as I was introducing the symphony to the many young listeners present.

In the second half Yo-Yo played his heart out in the Dvorak concerto, following with a movement from Saygun’s Partita as an encore. Post concert he was incredibly generous with his time at a reception, visiting with fans and talking and even more impressively, listening to everyone. He made a wonderful speech to the assembled crowd.

Yo-Yo gave a brilliant young local cellist, Tate Zawadiuk, the chance of a lifetime – he invited Tate to play his cello while he, Yo-Yo, took in the reception and the crowd of fans who were assembling. The next day with the VSO Music School Sinfonietta, he gave a masterclass on Elgar’s Serenade forStrings which lifted and inspired everyone present.

Last August, my own daughter, Emmeline had been given the same opportunity to play the same cello in a similar situation when Yo-Yo and I performed with the Philadelphia Orchestra in Saratoga.

Yo-Yo’s a great man and a great musician. Unfailingly generous, always keen to give as much as possible, frankly, I don’t know how he sustains such genuine bonhomie without letting up on his musical intensity. He’s the real deal, the full circle. Whether talking with him privately, one on one, or listening to him address the crowd, he is the same person.

In Las Vegas yesterday, two men hammered each other with increasing violence until one was declared a winner with a prize of millions. At the VSO Music School Yo-Yo Ma taught a room full of people how to think bigger, realize possibilities within themselves, at the end of which, everyone won.

The bigger riches were in Vancouver. Hopefully, what happened in Las Vegas stays there.

Thanks Yo-Yo. We love you – please come back soon.

yo yo ma in the wings

photos (c) Vancouver SO

Andrew Powell, a well-informed voice in Munich, has been sounding out players on the Berlin Philharmonic election. In a blog for Musical America, Andrew confirms our assessment that Christian Thielemann has the largest, best organised group of supporters in the orchestra but is still probably short of an outright majority.

However, if the Thielemann bloc holds firm in subsequent ballots there is no standout candidate who could rally support from all factions. Except one, perhaps.

He’s Russian, lives in Berlin, and will be conducting there the night before the election.

His name has not been mentioned before as a candidate.

He might just be a contender.

jurowski

The Prokofiev scholar Simon Morrison has written a long essay in this week’s Times Literary Supplement, turning back the clock on a generation’s assumptions that Tchaikovsky was homosexual and that his death was not caused by drinking cholera-infected water.

Morrison is aware that he may give comfort to current Putinist musicology which (using the accusatory headline above) seeks to ‘cleanse’ the composer of the Putinist crime of gay sex, dismissing the aspersions of homosexuality and violent death as western inventions.

Morrison is exceptionally harsh on the British biographer David Brown, who ‘imagined (Tchaikovsky’s) life from having listened to the music.’ His critical argument, however, is with both sides, east and west, for trying to find the key to Tchaikovsky’s music in the circumstances of his life’s conflicts. Somehow we have all climbed into bed with him, wondering what went on in the great composer’s boudoir and whether or not, for the sake of his reputation and Russian culture in general, the linens should be sent to the cleaner.

Read the full, illuminating essay here.

trucking with tchaik

 

Distressed this morning to receive news of the death on Friday of Paul Myers, an engaging character who was head of CBS Masterworks and, later, a driving force at Decca. Urbane, engaging and vastly well informed, Paul was a man of the world in the manner of his CBS role model, Goddard Lieberson. He helped me with much background when writing my history of the classical record industry and I commissioned from him an outstanding, intimate and critical biography of Leonard Bernstein, with whom he worked and clashed for many years.

 

bernstein bio myers

As a very young man, Paul was a civil servant – principal private secretary to the prime minister of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), where one of his duties was to make sure no snakes and rhinos invaded the Cabinet Room. Passionate about symphonic music, he was recruited by Epic Records to produce Georg Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra. Unlike many others, he tapped into great warmth and affection in Szell and maintained his contract through years of poor sales.

As head of Masterworks, he recruited Lorin Maazel from Decca and scored massive successes with the young guitarist John Williams, wih Murray Perahia and Yo Yo Ma.  After upeavals at CBS (you can read about them in The Life and Death of Classical Music) he returned to England and worked for Decca. When that label went into tailspin, he was responsible for a vertical rise in production standards at Naxos.

Constrained by kidney failure in later years, he was sustained by a happy marriage and a sea-view retirement on the English south coast. Paul was 83, bless his memory.

 

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photo: producer Paul Myers, Szell, Cleveland concertmaster Rafael Druian (standing), Samuel Barber, and soloist John Browning

Clarice Carson, who has died at 85, sang leading roles in the late 1960s and 1970s at the Met, Covent Garden, La Scala and other big stages. Among many career highlights, she sang Desdemona to Jon Vickers’ Otello.
clarice-carson

The Leipzig Quartet has issued a statement in response to lurid claims made in court at the pre-hearing for violinist Stefan Arzberger on charges of attempted murder, assault and strangulation. The Quartet say:

To whom it may concern: We know our colleague Stefan for more than 20 years. He never needed to meet prostitutes or transsexuals – that is bullshit. But he likes to talk and to meet people. Learning by talking, all over the world. We played in more than 60 countries, trusting each other.. So what happened to him that he could lose the control for the rest of the night? And for sure HE is the victim if you stay away from media nonsense and look to the whole story. But we believe that there are strong signs that he will be ruined and destroyed at the end of the way through US court system – unless he will be found NOT guilty by the people of a jury! Immanuel Kant suggested to use your own brain. Please do so!

The judge is expected to decide today (Monday) whether to restore Stefan’s passport and allow him to resume his place on tour at the head of the quartet.

leipzig quartet