James Zimermann, principal clarinet of the Nashville Symphony, suffered the sudden, tragic loss of his wife, Candice, from a coronary incident on Saturday. Candice was 38.
She leaves James with two children, aged five and two.
Her funeral was held yesterday.
James tells Slipped Disc: ‘I have been very moved so far by the outpouring of support from the music community in Nashville. Our music director of the Nashville Symphony, Giancarlo Guerrero, served as a pallbearer at Candice’s funeral.’
Condolence messages continue to pour in. Our deep sympathies to James his family and friends.
Keith Buncke (r.) is the new Principal Bassoon of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, starting July 6, 2015.
Buncke, 22, was appointed principal bassoon of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra last year while still a student at the Curtis Institute of Music.
He may have failed to win the Berlin Philharmonic last week, but the Latvian conductor is earning rave reviews on his timely tour with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.
This just in from Stuttgart:
Da ist er: Andris Nelsons, 36, weltweit zurzeit einer der gefragtesten Dirigenten, und schon beim ersten Stück seines Stuttgarter Abends beweist er, warum er zu den heißesten Kandidaten für das Amt des Berliner Chefdirigenten zählte und immer noch zählt. Genauer, detailversessener und interessanter kann man Beethovens Werk kaum darbieten, und spätestens wenn der Lette mit zwei Fingern seiner linken Hand einen Flötentriller nachformt, ahnt man, wie sehr er das liebt, was er tut.
Nelsons ist einer, der brennt. Ein Gefährdeter also, und es mag auch damit zu tun haben, dass er den renommiertesten Posten in der deutschen Orchesterlandschaft im Vorfeld ablehnte: Für die Berliner Philharmoniker, so sein offizielles Argument, fühle er sich einfach noch nicht alt und reif genug.
A quick summary: One of the hottest conductors on earth, he’s on fire.
Catch him in Dortmund tonight.
Simon Keenlyside has pulled out of Don Carlo in the Munich Festival at the end of July, extending the period in which doctors ordered him to rest his voice completely. He has barely been heard since December and is cancelling engagements month by month, as required. All in the opera world wish Simon a very swift recovery.
His Munich replacement as Rodrigo, Marquis de Posa is Simone Piazzola.
Jonathan Biss has pulled out of tonight’s Brahms piano concerto, and the rest of the weekend, ‘due to an arm injury suffered in a recent accident.’
He is replaced by Kirill Gerstein. The concerts mark conductor Susanna Mälkki’s debut with the NY Phil.
So here’s what happened.
Jonathan broke his arm last month. It has healed quite fast and he was able to play Mozart with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra last weekend, but not the Brahms D minor concerto in New York. As he puts it: ‘the Brahms D minor Concerto is nearly 50 minutes long and makes unusual demands in terms of power and stamina. My doctors and I felt that it would be safer to give my arm a bit more time before tackling such a mammoth work. The recovery is going very well, and I’m closer to full strength with every passing day!’
Tuesday’s live broadcast from English National Opera of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Pirates of Penzance has just blown a big hole in the opera streaming business.
Pirates, in Mike Leigh’s production, took £600,000 at the UK box office at a single screening, reaching an audience of over 40,000 people.
The previous UK best was the Metropolitan Opera’s broadcast of Franz Lehár’s The Merry Widow, which grossed £504,000 in total, including repeat screenings.
That’s impressive. Wonder if the Arts Council gets the point? Doubt it: their website crashed today, presumably for want of visitors.
Sistema Scotland has received an ‘extremely positive’ report from the Glasgow Centre for Population Health, which says it has ‘the potential to significantly enhance participants’ lives, prospects, health and wellbeing.’
Sistema’s Big Noise has been teaching children in Raploch since 2008 and Govanhill since 2013.
The First Minister is a fan.
Nicola Sturgeon and Fiona Hyslop at Holy Cross Primary School in Govanhill. Photo: Chris Watt/Scottish Govt.
We love today’s tribute to a growing trend on Seattle Opera social media. How many can you name?
You can see a slightly larger version here.
I have written a reflection on the failed Berlin Philharmonic election for The Spectator, a few thoughts on cultural attitudes as well as orchestral politics.
The intense focus on the Berlin Philharmonic election was triggered by the emergence of a German candidate as music director, the first since Wilhelm Furtwängler in 1922 (Furtwängler’s 1955 successor, Herbert von Karajan, was a fly-in Austrian who overnighted at the Kempinski Hotel).
The German of 2015 — hailed by some as a man of destiny — is Christian Thielemann, Berlin born and bred, German as bratwurst in a bierkeller. German, and then some.
Read the full article here.
After 15 years, the Dutch-based Rubens Quartet is calling it quits:
“We, the members of the Rubens Quartet, after having enjoyed a rewarding and intensive international career, have decided that we will end our collaboration as a quartet at the end of the 2015/16 season. The quartet has been at the center of our professional lives since the year 2000 and we look back on those years with much gratefulness and satisfaction. Now we feel that it is the right time for us all to pursue other musical activities that will present us with interesting new challenges.
Since the beginning of our quartet career we have had the pleasure of playing concerts all over the world: we have wonderful memories of our many trips to the US (where we toured eleven times and performed in thirteen different states), our regular summer appearances in France, as well as Great Britain, Israel, Hungary, Romania, Italy and several others. We also look back on a rich concert history throughout our home country of the Netherlands, where over the years we have had the opportunity to perform in virtually every large and small venue that offers chamber music concerts. We have had the honor of sharing the stage with wonderful and inspiring guest artists. Our last two internationally acclaimed CDs and our educational DVD “The Art of Perception” serve as documents of our special time together.
This coming year will be our farewell season. We are very much looking forward to the last two programs that we will present together as the Rubens Quartet: joining us are bass-baritone Robert Holl and Godfried Hoogeveen, former principal cellist of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. We hope very much that you will join us for one or more of these special concerts. Starting in the spring of 2016 we will all be embarking upon new artistic adventures and look forward to performing for you in other musical contexts.
We heartily thank you all for your support and interest these many years!”
The Quartet members are Sarah Kapustin and Tali Goldberg (violins), Roeland Jagers (viola), Joachim Eijlander (cello).
Reactions in Russia to the latest glasnost on cultural earnings has been a curious mixture of envy and pride.
According to Valery Gergiev’s tax declaration, he owns three plots of land, six apartments, one cottage and two cars, in addition to a tax-year income of 340m rubles, just under seven million US dollars.
Some politicians grumbled that it was unfair for a music director to rake in so much when wages across the cultural sector fell last year by 40 percent.
But a director of the Institute for Social Policy, one Sergei Smirnov, took an aspirational view: ‘For God’s sake, if the maestro can earn 340 million, one should only be glad for him. I don’t understand why this (fuss) is necessary.’
The baritone has pulled out of tomorrow’s Nabucco ‘for serious family reasons’. He is replaced by Zeljko Lucic.
He’s due at Covent Garden next week.
