Australia is an unsentimental country, gday and gnite.

Still, flogging off a maestro’s keyboard while the old bloke is still alive is pushing it a bit.

The Steinway in question was handpicked and autographed by Vladimir Ashkenazy for the concert hall of the Sydney Opera House in 1991. The building is about to undergo major refurbishments an they’re selling off some contents.

Anybody want a piano? Bid for it here.

Guess there’s no chance the maestro will come back for it.

ashkenazy piano

An Arabic version of the Canadian national anthem has been published today in order to encourage ‘civic engagement’ in new citizens. The performer is Toronto opera singer Miriam Khalil and the version was commissioned by the Canadian Arab Institute, ahead of the national holiday.
ya canada

Wonder why they never made a version in Yiddish.

 

Neil Courtney, a double-bass player with the Philadelphia Orchestra for 48 years, has died at 82. He started out as principal double-bass with the National Symphony in Washington for four years, but settled for a lesser role in a much better orchestra. He became an influential figure in Philadelphia, respected by Riccrdo Muti and advising crucially on the acoustics of the new concert hall. They called him ‘the king’.

Peter Dobrin has the obit here.

neil-courtney-1024

My tribute to Ronald Wilford appears today in the Spectator magazine:

When Margaret Thatcher imagined perfect power, she thought of the orchestral conductor. ‘She envied me,’ said Herbert von Karajan, ‘that people always did what I requested.’ Power, however, is a mirage that fades as you get close. What Mrs Thatcher saw were the trappings, never the essence. Great conductors might get the glory, but someone else pulled the strings. Behind every power there is a greater force. Behind every conductor, there was Ronald Wilford.

Read the full article here.

WILFORD , Ronald  portrait Head of CAMI .

No obituary of Wilford, who died almost two weeks ago, has appeared anywhere outside of the New York Times, whose culture department he once controlled.

 

 

 

These are the finalists, announced today, in the first Cliburn International Junior Piano Competition, taking place in in Fort Worth, Texas:

Alim Beisembayev, 17 (Kazakhstan)

Youlan Ji, 16 (China)

Yukine Kuroki, 16 (Japan)

Wei Luo, 16 (China)

Arsenii Mun, 16 (Russia)

Evelyn Mo, 16 (United States)

evelyn-mo

 

 

 

The Norwegian soprano Mari Eriksmoen was best friends with Ina Kringlebotn, who died this week of brain cancer, at the age of 32, leaving a four month-old baby daughter. We asked Mari to share some memories of Ina. Here is what she writes:

ina kringlebotn and mari

It’s hard to imagine the future without Ina. We met when we were 14 years old. Ina was already a star where we lived in Ski, Norway. Everybody were talking about the girl with the fantastic voice. Ina was one of a kind. Spirited, energetic, bright, edgy, generous, sharp as a knife and warm as a summer day. She was well-known for her brilliant sense of humour.

Ina was always clear about what she wanted in life… who she wanted to be. She knew which people she wanted to keep close, and we who were lucky to be a part of her life, were blessed. She was the reason I started to sing opera. I played the violin in the orchestra when she was singing Susanna’s aria at the age of 16. She was always so clear about which direction she wanted to go, and I was so inspired by her strength and her fire.

We went to the same schools, from secondary school, the Norwegian Academy of Music and at the opera academy in Copenhagen, where Ina was the youngest student they had ever admitted. She was 25 when she joined the ensemble at the Komische Oper Berlin, where she sang big parts like Rusalka, Eva in Die Meistersinger (at the age of 26), Agathe in Der Freischütz and Michaela in Carmen to mention but a few.

She had a bright future ahead, and she was just starting to sing Wagner. Her voice and stage presence was magical. She always said, that if she had touched just one in the audience that evening, she was happy. That was the reason she sang.

I learned so much from Ina. She is still my inspiration and I am forever grateful to have had her in my life. She was my soulmate and my best friend and I will miss her every day for the rest of my life. From now on I will sing for the both of us.
(c) Mari Eriksmoen/Slipped Disc

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.

 

Statistics for the first ten days, released exclusively to Slipped Disc, show considerable impact for medici.tv’s live streaming.

Over that period, there have been 3.5 million views across more than 160 countries.

On social media, there have been 420,00 actions and 160,000 additional video views.

All this, without a single controversy or headline-grabbing event.

Let’s see what happens next.

 

tchaik piano selection

UPDATE: 6 million views up to 29 June, and rising.

 

The great Russian baritone has just issued the following statement on his website:

It is with great regret that Dmitri must cancel all performances from now until the end of August. He has recently been suffering from serious health issues, and a brain tumor has just been diagnosed. Although his voice and vocal condition are normal, his sense of balance has been severely affected. Dmitri will begin treatment this week and remains very optimistic for the future.

hvorostovsky

We wish Dmitri a full recovery.

Winner of the 1989 Cardiff Singer of the World, Dmitri has gone on to sing at all major opera houses. In Russia he commands the highest fees of any recitalist, while steering clear of paying homage to the Putin regime. Dmitri, 52, is one of the most popular singers among his colleagues. 

This is a supposedly objective list, based on the following criteria:

Teaching Quality / Professor Ratings (10%)

Staff / Student Ratio (15%)

Median Salary of Graduates (10%)

SAT / ACT Test Scores (15%)

Graduation Rate Performance (10%)

Undergraduate Academic Reputation (20%)

Student Selectivity (5%)

Alumni (5%) Academic (Undergraduate) / Research (Graduate) Performance (5%) G-factor (5%).

 

It gives the following as the ‘best’ music colleges for 2015:

1 Eastman          Rochester

2 Juilliard           New York

juilliard-at-night-243x180

2nd best

3 NEC                  Boston

4 Oberlin             Ohio

5 Curtis                Philadelphia

6 IU                      Bloomington

7 U Mich             Ann Arbor

More here.