The Welsh bass-baritone has been running through his qualifications to perform Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof. He told Richard Morrison of the (London) Times that he grew up with Topol’s recording of the musical echoing around the family farmhouse. And there were other aptitudes:

‘My dad milked cows. I carried milk churns. I have a long connection with milk. So who better to play a milkman? And I have lots of links to the Jewish community. Years ago when I was studying at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama I lived in Golders Green and supplemented my income by singing at Jewish family gatherings.’

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Fiddler on the Roof opens at Grange Park Opera on June 4.

My album of the week on sinfinimusic.com is a rare five-star.

It’s a set of the six Ysaye sonatas by the UK-Russian violinist Alina Ibragimova who, in my view, imposes herself on the sonatas with an authority that is arrestingly quiet. I cannot recall any artist who keeps the level down with such fierce determination, avoiding the temptation of a flashy trill in favour of maximum concentration….

Her playing is of unerring and at times unearthly accuracy, yet the effect she projects is totally warm and compassionate; of sympathy for the human condition. Among the 20-odd recordings of the complete sonatas, this becomes immediately my preferred choice.

Read the full review here.

 

Here is what Alina is up against by way of past recordings:

 

ysaye
Ruggiero Ricci, 1974, Candide
Gidon Kremer, 1976, VMI
Charles Castleman, 1981, Music & Arts
Oscar Shumsky, 1982, Nimbus
Lydia Mordkovitch, 1988, Chandos
Yuval Yaron, 1990, Accord
Evgenia-Maria Popova, 1991, Leman
Mateja Marinkovic, 1992, Collins
Vilmos Szabadi, 1992, Hungaroton
Stéphane Tran Ngoc, 1994, REM
Frank Peter Zimmermann, 1994, EMI
Tomoko Kato, 1995, Denon
Vincenzo Bolognese, 1997, Arts
Philippe Graffin, 1997, Hyperion
Takayoshi Wanami, 1997, Somm
Leonidas Kavakos, 1999, BIS
Hana Kotková, 2002, Forlane
Thomas Zehetmair, 2004, ECM
Rachel Kolly D’Alba, 2010, Warner
Judith Ingolfssohn, 2011, Genuin
Tai Murray, 2012, Harmonia Mundi
Krystof Barati, 2013, Brilliant
Tianwa Yang, 2014, Naxos

(main source: Peter Wilson, violinist.com)

The Colorado MahlerFest in and around the city of Boulder is one of the boldest musical initiatives of modern times. Founded in 1988 by Robert Olson and apply intense immersion to one symphony each year, it has become a byword among Mahler scholars and followers for its uncluttered idealism, its uncommon altitude (5,430 feet high) and its internationally resonant scholarship and recordings.

Bob Olson is retiring as artistic director after 28 years.

His successor, in May 2016, will be the UK-based American Kenneth Woods, principal conductor of the English Symphony Orchestra and a widely recorded interpreter of post-Mahler romantics.

 

Roll on the next Boulder.

mahler mountains

The Philharmonia Orchestra has ‘bid a fond farewell to our Principal Timpanist Andy Smith, who has just retired after 42 years in the Orchestra.’

While lifelong tenure is common in US orchestras it is less usual in London, where there are infinite distractions and multiple temptations. To spend 42 years in the same orchestra, and still keep your sanity and hair, is a triumph of tolerance and dedication.

We wish Andy a happy and fulfilling retirement.

andy smith timpanist

… Georgia, which gives less per citizen to arts than any other state.

Georgia allows 6 cents per head. South Carolina gives 63 cents, Mississippi gives 61c., Alabama gives 82c. and Tennessee gives $1.07.

Shame on Georgia.

Watch here.

woodruff arts center

In an effort to engage its thriving international online audience with the daily work of an orchestra, the Detroit Symphony aims to stream Wednesday’s rehearsal live.

Correction: make that ‘aimed’.

It appears that union rules only permit 15 minutes of rehearsal streaming without heavy payment.

slatkin birthday

 

You can watch on dso.org/live from 9:50 EST when Leonard Slatkin makes some preparatory remarks. The rehearsal kicks in at 10. The work on the stands is Mahler’s First.

 

After 16 years as executive director, Alan Jordan has resigned from the Vermont Symphony Orchestra, apparently with immediate effect. His name has been removed from the orch’s website.

Music director Jaime Laredo said: ‘Alan and I came to the VSO at about the same time and have worked together for many years. He was been an extraordinary partner and loyal friend.’

Stuff happens.

alan-jordan

Trouble at the Beethoven Orchestra of Bonn, where music director Stefan Blunier is on his way out. The players held a ballot for his successor and voted overwhelmingly – and with a decisive clarity that must be envied in Berlin – for the experienced, Munich-born Jun Märkl as the next chief conductor.

But a selection committee consisting of Beethovenfest director Nike Wagner (pictured), the Bonn theatre manager, Bernhard Helmich, and a musicologist Peter Gülke have ignored the musicians’ decision and handed a contract to the Frenchman, Marc Piollet. Our man on the spot says local bureaucrats wield far too much power in Bonn, believing they are still running the German capital, rather than an aimless ghost town.

This will not end well.

nike wagner

Montserrat Caballé, who missed a court date in Barcelona last week, has cancelled a matinée at the Vienna Opera on May 31 ‘on grounds of ill-health.’

Poor Montsy.

montserratcaballe1

Caleb Young, a conducting student at IU, has sent us a short reflection on a loss of leadership in conducting faculties in the USA. He has a point. Baton students these days head to Helsinki, St Petersburg, Vienna, Berlin and elsewhere. Has America lost the beat? The headline and preamble are written by Slipped Disc. Here’s Caleb’s thoughtful article.

caleb young

 

A tidal wave of change is coming to conducting pedagogy here in America.

Ambitious young conductors come from all around the world to study conducting in the United States. For decades our schools have sported internationally renowned Maestros, who have passed along their experiences and wisdom, lab orchestras and a plethora of performance opportunities. But is this golden age of conducting pedagogy coming to an end? From my standpoint the future looks uncertain.

The death of the great James DePreist at Juilliard started a domino effect in the American school of conducting. Curtis, well steeped in producing excellent conductors, has struggled to fill Otto-Werner Mueller’s shoes. The stern, yet lovable, Victor Yampolsky is still manning the helm at Bienen. But for how much longer? Peabody’s lionized Gustav Meier is still flying from Ann Arbor to Baltimore to teach his talented class of budding maestros, even in his 80s.

Then there is my guru, David Effron, at Indiana University. From Cologne, City Opera, Eastman, Curtis, Brevard, and finally the Jacobs School, the winds of change are passing through Bloomington. (In fairness Jacobs will be in great hands with Maestro Arthur Fagen…)

These are big shoes for deans to begin to start thinking about filling. We will see a drastic change in the next 5-10 years in the way conducting is taught in the USA. There will most certainly be arguments for this being both a negative and positive passing of the batons. The USA has become an epicenter of conducting pedagogy that students flock to and it will be interesting to see how our craft will evolve. As I shared a long lunch with my own guru yesterday, I felt honored to have been part of this legacy of the great American school of conducting. But as with all art, we must take our sacred traditions and grow them into new and ever evolving ideals.

The australian composer’s house was sold yesterday at auction to a pair of arts philanthropists who want to turn it into a ‘music fellowship in residence centre’.

The neighbours, who were the underbidders, are said to be furious. Read here.

peter sculthorpe's home

Sculthorpe died last August, aged 85.

Robert Drasnin, director of music for CBS television from 1977 to 1991, has died after a fall, aged 87.

His own credits include composing the Mission Impossible theme music for the second series, according to Variety, and working with the Grateful Dead on Twilight Zone.

bob drasnin