The inexhaustible Basia Jaworski has unearthed a video interview with the incoming chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, recorded five years ago in Israel. Petrenko speaks impressive, idiomatic English.

He reveals that both of his grandmothers were living in Israel, in the seaside town of Bat-Yam, and that they peacefully shared the same apartment.  Fast forward to 5:00 to begin his part of the interview.

In the next segment (below) he shares childhood reminiscences.

For a musician who became ferociously private, these are the most revealing we have yet seen of the new maestro. He talks of conducting as ‘manual therapy to make music’. The interviewer is Peter Marck, bass player in the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.

kirill petrenko conducting2

The Slovak conductor Oliver von Dohnanyi, an offshoot of the German political-musical family, has been named principal conductor of the opera and ballet in Yekaterinburg. Among his first productions will be Weinberg’s The Passenger.

Oliver, 60, is director of the national theatre in Bratislava and has enjoyed an international career.

 

oliver von dohnanyi

Yekaterinburg, formerly Sverdlovsk, is Russia’s fourth largest city.

 

In the summer issue of Standpoint magazine, I report on the declining fortunes of US orchestras, as experienced at their national convention last month.

Sample text:

The crash of 2008 drove several orchestras out of business and prompted others to resort to the raw capitalist remedy of locking out musicians without wages or health insurance until they accepted lower compensation. In the worst collision, the Minnesota Orchestra starved its musicians for 16 months until local worthies and a loyal conductor, Osmo Vänskä, forced a board retreat and the sacrifice of a meek English president, Michael Henson (the meeker the manager the more presidential his title).

So when the League of American Orchestras (LAO) went into its annual convention in Cleveland this spring it was in subdued and introspective mood, concerned not to rock a listing boat, exercising a flummery of euphemisms by which every problem is a challenge, every steep decline a temporary setback.

As a guest speaker, I was struck by the forced smiles of wilful denial — and even more struck by the absence of musicians. Not one conductor, not one principal player, was invited (or agreed) to address the heads of their industry. Like Britain in the 1970s American orchestras exist in a collective mindset of them and us.

 

severance hall

 

Read the full essay here.