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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.’

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

Photo © Simon Menges via Fundació Mies van der Rohe

Jean-Pierre Rousseau, who became Directeur de la Musique at Radio-France last May, has had his resignation announced on the France-Musique website.

His departure, said the site, was ‘predictable’.

That could be because he hasn’t been seen in the building in a couple of months.

Meanwhile, the chaos just grows and grows. Read more at resmusica.

She performed at the inauguration of Chicago’s mayor, Rahm Emmanuel, in front of an audience that included President Bill Clinton.

Much excitement among those who spend their lives trying to save Bruckner scores from his meddlers.

The conductor Benjamin-Gunnar Cohrs has discovered a long-lost set of parts for the sixth symphony in the St Florian monastery, where the composer grew up in the choir and where he lies buried.

Here’s what he has announced:

After Anton Bruckner had finished his Sixth Symphony, a set of handwritten parts was copied which were to be used for a read-through of new repertoire by the Vienna Philharmonic (6 Oct 1882) as well as for the ensuing first performance of the Adagio and Scherzo, which was directed by Wilhelm Jahn (11 Feb 1883). This set of parts was believed to be entirely lost, as confirmed by Leopold Nowak in his Critical Report (1986, p. 49). To his own surprise, Benjamin-Gunnar Cohrs found a remnant of it in the archive of the Monastery of St. Florian – a part for Bassoon I in the hand of a copyist, with autograph annotations, and with the pencil indication “Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde Wien” on the first page by an anonymous hand. Cohrs´ furtherresearch in the Archive of the GdM in Vienna then brought to light the full set of parts, with only the Bassoon I part missing which is today in St. Florian. Earlier researchers had overlooked it, perhaps because it is held under the same signature as the dedication copy (XIII 37.730), but stored at another location in the archive stacks. The set of parts comprises all the wind instruments, timpani, and strings in single copies (except the viola, of which six copies survive!). The copyist responsible has yet to be identified. Most of the parts reveal autograph corrections as well as some pencil annotations by orchestral players.

Nachdem Anton Bruckner seine Sechste Sinfonie beendet hatte, wurde ein handschriftlicher Stimmensatz kopiert, der sowohl für eine Novitätenprobe der Wiener Philharmoniker (6. Oktober 1882) wie auch für die Erstaufführung von Adagio und Scherzo unter Wilhelm Jahn verwendet (11. Februar 1883). Bisher wurde angenommen, daß dieser Stimmensatz verschollensei, wie Noch Leopold Nowak im Revisionsbericht zur Sechsten vermerkte (1986; S. 49). Zu seiner Überraschung entdeckteBenjamin-Gunnar Cohrs jedoch einen Überrest davon im Archiv des Stiftes St. Florian – eine Stimme für Fagott I aus Kopistenhand, mit autographen Eintragungen, sowie auf der Titelseite mit dem anonymen Bleistift-Vermerk “Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde Wien”. Cohrs´ weitere Suche im Archiv der GdM in Wien brachte dann den gesamten Stimmensatz zutage; es fehlt nur die in St. Florian befindliche Fagott-Stimme. Frühere Forscher hatten dies übersehen, vielleicht deshalb, weil der Stimmensatz unter der gleichen Signatur wie die Widmungs-Partiturkopie indiziert ist (XIII 37.730), aber im Archiv-Magazin an einem anderen Standort verwahrt wird. Der Stimmensatz besteht aus allen Bläserstimmen, Pauken und je einer Streicherstimme (mit Ausnahme der Viola, von der sechs Exemplare erhalten sind). Der Kopist muß noch identifiziert werden. Die meisten Stimmen enthalten einige autographe Korrekturen sowie auch Bleistift-Anmerkungen von Spielern.

Artists at the opera house in Lviv (Lvov) say their company is being torn apart by a sudden spate of draft orders from the Ukraine military. We present their appeal verbatim, in a translation by the pianist Valentina Lisitsa:

From the artists of Lviv National Opera Theater:

Please read and share our appeal!

Lviv Opera Theater received 35 military draft summons from the Ukraine Armed Forces.
Majority of those summons are for our artists. Among those summoned are orchestra players, choir members, leading soloists of opera and ballet, Honored Artists and even one People’s Artist of Ukraine!
We, the artists of the theater, have hard time understanding such a wholesale ( at least for our theatre) rounding-up of highly qualified professionals!
We want to stress that such rampant mobilization will force the theater to withdraw certain performances from the repertory, and quite possibly – to shut down the theater entirely!
We would love to explain to the bureaucrats responsible for these actions, that the preparation of highly qualified orchestra players, opera soloists, ballet dancers etc. can take between 12 and 16 years of study plus many years of work experience performing on stage.
Just one example – our ballet troupe received 4 draft summons for the leading soloists – out of total of our 7 leading dancers . Among those drafted one is People’s Artist; in the entire Ukraine one can find hardly two dozens of artists of such a high level!
We would like to remind that no martial law has been declared in the country. The impression we get is that some bureaucrats are hell-bent on destroying the best artistic traditions of Ukraine. It would be interesting to know how many children of Parliament members or of bureaucrats have been drafted so far?
Is it that our leaders are only capable of sending artists to fight at the frontlines or robbing the population through raising the utilities’ tariffs to the level detrimental to majority of regular people?
FOR RENAISSANCE OF UKRAINE
WE MUST HAVE PEACE!
We very much hope that our appeal will be read by thinking people.
Sincerely,
The artists of the theater.

Original text:

УВАГА ЗВЕРНЕННЯ!!!
У Львівську оперу прийшло близько 35(!) повісток у ЗСУ.
Більшу частину з яких складає артистичний склад театру.
Серед запрошених на службу є артисти оркестру,хору,провідні солісти опери та провідні солісти балету,також є Заслужені артисти та навіть Народний артист України!

We’re delighted to hear that Dr Alejandro Martínez of Codalario magazine spoke to the great tenor this morning and found him in good spirits.

We erroneously reported Nicolai Gedda’s death yesterday, based on independent messages from two usually reliable sources and on his altered Wikipedia entry.

We took down the post as soon as the error became apparent and have tightened our procedures for the future. We apologise without reservation to Mr Gedda and to our readers.