War of words at the Wigmore Hall
mainA bitter spat has erupted between London’s premier chamber music venue and a German string quartet, after the hall’s cancellation of a June performance.
In fractious exchanges on Slipped Disc, someone called Billy Boyd using the Wigmore Hall’s email and claiming to speak on behalf of its staff, accused the Leipzig Quartet of being ‘dishonest, underhanded and badly … behaved.’
Matthias Moosdorf, the quartet’s cellist, replied: ‘Of course we did not lie. Why should we do this? WH got the full picture and followed the Leipzig Quartet social media on twitter.’
Behind the dispute is the absence of the quartet’s leader, Stefan Arzberger, who is facing a charge of attempted murder in New York. The Wigmore Hall claims that his absence, and a change of programme, invalidates their contract.
Read the full story here.
Dear friends, dear audience!
1.) Since April we hope that Stefan Arzberger is allowed to travel and play with us very soon. We are dealing with this situation day by day. Of course there is – hopefully – a really chance that HE can play this concert in WH. Who knows. Too early for a final decision.
2.) The world premier of Hanna Kulentys quartet had to be postponed because the music sheets arrived last week – too late for worthy practice because we are touring in Japan and South America without a single free day in between. And we were surprised that a sound engineer is needed for the performance. Both facts are sad but were not in our hands.
3.) We offered WH instead of Kulenty the UK premiere of Christobal Halffters Nr.7, dedicated to the LSQ. We invited Hanna to premier her piece during our cycle at Leipzig Gewandhaus in october 2015.
While all involved parties, including the co-commissioner De Doelen, Rotterdam, were still working on proper solutions, we were already booked on self-paying flights, Mr. Gilhooly wrote his single mail to Ute. Clear, stylish. But unfair and intolerable!
We try to do almost everything to find well balanced solutions, worldwide and since 1988. But we would like to expect the same from Mr. Gilhooly.
We are still open to a good solution for ALL sides!
Matthias
– See more at: https://slippedisc.com/2015/05/exclusive-string-quartet-is-banned-from-wigmore-hall/#sthash.0NNyjClw.dpuf