A California is offering what purport to be authentic handwritten documents by Bartok, Berlioz, Debussy, Liszt, Mahler, Schumann and others on the international auction site. Bidding starts as low as $140. The dealers want at least $19,000 for the Liszt manuscript (below), which has a seller’s estimate of $40-60,000.

liszt manuscript

 

No description is offered, and no hint of original provenance. The collection is said to have belonged to ‘the late William K Steiner’, apparently a dry-cleaning machines millionaire.

Bidders enter the auction at their own risk. There are three days left before the virtual hammer falls.

Click here for auction.

Staff members of the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra are being interviewed by police tomorrow alongside the former chief executive Hyun-jung Park, who is accusing them of defamation and misuse of documents. The staff accused her in public of bullying and sexual harrassment.

Police have raided the homes of orchestra staff members since Park filed her claims. One person, unsettled by the rids and interrogations, tried to commit suicide earlier this week with an overdose of sleeping pills.

The individual is now recovering in hospital.

The atmosphere in the Philharmonic remains tense and mistrustful. Myung Whun Chung, the music director, has suggested in recent interviews that he may resign. A new chief executive is expected to be announced in the next few days.

seoul phil

The opera communities in Oslo and Berlin have been shocked by the death of Ina Kringlebotn, of brain cancer.

Ina was one of the brightest talents in Norway and in much demand abroad. At the Komiche Opera in Berlin she sang Eva in Wagner’s Meistersinger directed by Andreas Homoki, and Agathe in Weber’s Freischütz directed by Calixto Bieito.

ina kringlebotn

Ina married Ludvig Lindström on Saturday and died the following day. She leaves a daughter, four months old.

On the night of his coronation at the Berlin Philharmonic, Kirill Petrenko was conducting a rehearsal of Die Walküre at Bayreuth. No part of the Berlin big bang was allowed to disrupt his musical routines. If he raised a glass to celebrate, it will probably have been half full.

Berlin’s biggest tabloid newspaper, Bild, splashed his election on the front page, opposite the slump at Real Madrid.

bild-1

Munich’s deadly serious Süddeutsche Zeitung devoted the whole of page three to him, praising him as the world’s most sought after maestro. Die Zeit headlined its article ‘Maestro ohne Mythos’, rearranging the title of my conducting history, The Maestro Myth, a title that has since become cliché.

Overnight, I wrote an op-ed for Bild which was headlined ‘Habemus Petrenko’, a reference to the relief felt at the Philharmonic that a man of substance had emerged in their white smoke.

You can read the article in German here, in Spanish here at El Pais (El candidato del compromiso) and in the original English here in the Spectator.

Among other things, I write:

His shyness is a problem. The Berlin Phil is a flagship ensemble for German culture and its leader needs to be seen and heard on the high media seas, leading the fleet to triumph. Petrenko gives few interviews and betrays nothing of his inner self.

Worse, he is completely unknown abroad, in the territories where the Berlin Phil needs to be number one. A few guest appearances at the Metropolitan Opera, Covent Garden and the Concertgebouw left no lasting impression. He has never toured Japan or China. He has made hardly any recordings. Berlin will have to build his profile up from scratch before 2018 in order to maintain its myth of being the world’s premier orchestra with the greatest living conductor.

bild petrenko

 

The plutocratic Ann Ziff, chair of the Metropolitan Opera board and Peter Gelb’s biggest fan, has joined the board of Los Angeles Opera. Read into that what you will. Here‘s the straight version.

ann ziff

A US orchestral manager told me the other day that nothing chills the box-office in 2015 like Arnold Schoenberg’s name on the programme. More than a century after his first notoriety, Schoenberg is fixed in the public mind as a kind of musical emetic, a foul-tasting medicine you take to cure a bad digestion.

It doesn’t have to be like that. My Album of the Week on sinfinimusic.com is not exactly Schoenberg for Dummies, but the kind of thing you could take a bank manager along to without fear of default.

Click here and all will be clear.

arnold-schoenberg smoking

You know it’s good for you.

Among the Little England absurdities of our bewildered Government is a proposal to evict foreigners who earn less than £35,000 ($50k) a year. That would be most nurses. Almost all composers. And a high proportion of orchestral players outside London – musicians who are British born and bred, dedicated to music and don’t quite live up to what this Government believes should be a living wage.

If you are a musician who is affected by the proposal, let’s get the resistance rolling. Now.

wno_orchestra_01_446

Major coup for our friends in the north. They’ve hired the manager of Orpheus Chamber Orchestra as the incoming chief executive of the Royal National Scottish Orchestra.

Krishna will need to be hardy.

Press release below.

 

krishna2

The Royal Scottish National Orchestra (RSNO) has appointed Dr. Krishna Thiagarajan as its new Chief Executive.

Dr. Thiagarajan joins the RSNO from the New York City-based Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, where he served as Executive Director since January 2013. Krishna was responsible for increasing audiences including sold-out performances at Carnegie Hall, commissioning new work, touring the Orchestra to Japan, Colombia and throughout Europe, ensuring financial stabilisation and overseeing the orchestra’s first self-produced recording.

Previously Dr. Thiagarajan served as President of Symphony in C, one of three professional training orchestras in the United States, as well as Senior Director of Artistic Operations for the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra (RPO), based in Rochester, New York state’s third largest city.

There were four de Pasquales in the Philadelphia Orchestra. William and Robert de Pasquale were in the violins, Francis was in the cello section.

The big beast was Joseph de Pasquale. Principal viola of the Boston Symphony from 1944, he was seduced home 20 years later by Eugene Ormandy to join his brothers in the Philadelphia and teach future generations at Curtis.

Peter Dobrin as written a lovely account of his life on philly.com, here.

joseph de pasquale
photo: Curtis

 

Nikolaus Harnoncourt, 85, has pulled out of two Styriate concerts this weekend in his home town, Graz.

His replacement is Karina Canellakis, 33. Go, Karina.

cannelakis
photo (c) Todd Rosenberg

Mehr hier.

The film composer came to Liverpool last November for the world premiere of Pas de Deux, a double concerto for violin and cello that he had written for the Norwegian siblings, Mari and Hakon Samuelsen.

While in town, he sought out the memorial to the many victims of HMS Titanic who came from the port city.

 

horner liverpool
photo (c) Sandra Parr/RLPO/Slipped Disc

The Pas de Deux recording is released this month on Mercury Classics, tragically coinciding with James’s death.

Search for audio recordings by Kirill Petrenko and you will be swiftly disappointed.

The incoming chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic is a stranger to record studios. He has appeared on DVD in a number of filmed operas, notably at Bayreuth and Bayerische Rundfunk, but you can count the audio recordings he has made on the fingers of one hand.

There is a 2012 Pfitzner Palestrina on the Oehms label, a lovely performance of Suk’s Asrael on CPO, a second Suk performance also on CPO and an LPO Rachmaninov concerto on Channel Cassics.

suk asrael

 

Petrenko is, put simply, a post-recording conductor.

That presents both a challenge and an opportunity for the Berlin Philharmonic. Anything they release of him on their own label will be a unique product, a truly virgin recording. With careful planning, they could be onto a winner.

 

kirill-petrenko-portraet-500x341