Christiane Peitz in the Tagesspiegel says Ms Hahn had the Philharmonic audience at her feet in the penultimate concert before she retires to give birth to her first child. ‘An unbelievable woman,’ raves Christiane. Read her review here (auf Deutsch).

Thursday night she plays Vienna, and then it’s break time.

 

Hilary-Hahn

The following notice has gone up on the former benevolent fund’s site:

We want to announce that David Sulkin has decided to leave his position as the Executive Director of Help Musicians UK with effect from 6 June 2015 to pursue other opportunities. For the period from 19 May 2015 until 6 June 2015, David will continue to promote and support our mission and the activities of our charity.

The Trustees would like to acknowledge David’s significant contribution to the success of Help Musicians UK during his tenure as Executive Director and wish him well as he pursues other opportunities.

Sulkin was responsible for the charity’s rebranding in January 2014. Too far, too fast?

 

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Powerful piece today by Peter Dobrin, arguing that Kimmel Center’s financial targets have made it impossible to invite the Vienna Philharmonic and Lang Lang to play in the city. Read Peter here.

kimmel center philly

Leonard Slatkin has given a pumped-up interview to our pals at resmusica, describng how his US orchestra has emerged from ‘horrendous economic peril’ to create a new set of outreach and multimedia strategies.

It’s not just about the Detroit Symphony–it’s about what Detroit is. It still has a lot of problems, but if you come to Detroit–if anyone comes to Detroit–they feel a palpable energy in this city. The amount of construction that’s going on, businesses moving in, young people coming to Detroit because they can get property very inexpensively, in particular from the arts community.

My next set of thoughts and ideas about growth here have to do with putting all the resources of the new people coming into the city, merging with the different artistic factions that are there, and really making this a vibrant scene for visual, aural, whatever kinds of arts there are.

Full interview here.

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Chicago’s Ars Viva gave its closing concert on Sunday. Co-founder and  music director Alan Heatherington is heading off to pursue a different vocation, in the Anglican ministry. He provided opportunities for many fine local musicians and will be very widely missed.

Larry Johnson was at the farewell concert, announced at one month’s notice. Read his review here.

Add your memories of Ars Viva and Alan to the Comments section below.

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If you’re looking for a downtown pad in Minneapolis, you might like to take the picture tour of Osmo Vänskä’s condo, which is up for sale.

vanska condo

 

photo: Brian Peterson/Star Tribune

The property benefits from high windows, open-plan bedroom, wooden flooring and an essential Finnish accessory. Price on application. Picture tour here.

Moscow has announced a contemporary music festival for violas next month.

Taking its title from Morton Feldman’s work, The Viola in My Life, and organised by violist Sergey Poltava, the festival will match Russian works with pieces by Lutoslawski, Gavin Bryars, Catherine Reed, Steven Snowden, George Pelecis and Fred Rzewski. Most will receive their Russian premiere. Revolutionary stuff.

Details here.

feldman viola

The concert hall of the Freiburg music academy has suffered damage estimated at a million Euros after a freak spring hailstorm burst the roof of the 1980s building.

The storm broke shortly after the end of a baroque concert and, according to one report ‘literally shredded’ the roof.

Read more and watch video here.

freiburg musikhochschule

Polish architecture is not usually cutting-edge, so it’s quite a coup that the new concert hall in Szczecin has won the 2015 Mies van der Rohe Award for the Barcelona firm Barozzi/Veiga.

The hall is constructed ‘following a Fibonacci sequence whose fragmentation increases with the distance from the scene, and gives shape to an ornamental space which reminds of the classical tradition through its gold-leaf covering.’

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Szczecin competed against 420 other projects for the €60,000 award.

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Photo © Simon Menges via Fundació Mies van der Rohe