Wolfgang Gönnenwein, a highly effective chorak conductor who recirded lots of Bach for EMI, has died at 82.
He also served as president of the Stuttgart conservatoire and general manager of Stuttgart state opera.
My Album of the Week on sinfinimusic.com consists of two tenth symphonies by modern masters, one of them a world premiere. But which will last the test of time? Click here.
This is rare for UK orchs which are lousy at raising endowments.
The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra has just topped £2m ($3m). Big for UK. Well done.
Among the givers is outgoing music director Andris Nelsons.
Even more unusual.
The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra has passed a fundraising milestone having raised an initial £2 million for its Endowment fund.
The fund was created after Arts Council England’s Catalystprogramme offered to match pound for pound Endowment donations made by private supporters before 31 July, up to a total of £1 million. The Orchestra reached the target two weeks before the deadline as a result of generous donations from over 50 supporters.
The investment interest generated from the Endowment will be around 7%–8% of the £1.2 million which the Orchestra must raise from the private sector each year to sustain the world-class excellence of its concerts, its extensive educational and community programmes, its six choirs and its Youth Orchestra.
Donors to the Endowment have included every member of the CBSO Development Trust and Board, outgoing Music Director Andris Nelsons, and other close supporters of the Orchestra.
CBSO Chief Executive Stephen Maddock said: “We are extremely grateful to those who have contributed so generously to this initial Endowment target. Alongside increasing levels of annual fundraising, income from the Endowment will be vital in securing the excellence and breadth of the CBSO’s work. We have absorbed a 25% real-terms reduction in our public funding since 2010, and this is just the beginning of a fundamental shift towards securing our future with increased private support.”
CBSO Development Trust chairman Chris Loughran added: “Reaching our Catalyst target is a significant achievement and an encouraging step on our fundraising journey. Our city is blessed with an Orchestra and Chorus of world renown. We continue to champion the Orchestra’s importance to our local economy and society, and look forward to welcoming many more people to our family of supporters in the years ahead.”
Peter Knott, Area Director, Midlands at Arts Council England, commented: “This is really fantastic news for the CBSO. Continued public investment is crucial for supporting our nation’s world-class arts and culture and the benefits it brings to people and places, but in the current economic climate it’s vital for arts and cultural organisations to be exploring new ways to generate income and raise funds. This was the ambition behind our Catalyst programme so we’re delighted to hear that the CBSO has reached its target and begun forging those all-important relationships for the future.”
We have received news of the death this morning in Prague of Ivan Moravec, at the age of 84.
Ivan was a pianist’s pianist. Especially praised for his Chopin and Debussy, he was Czech to the core and probably prized Mozart above all composers. Most, including the Philips Great Pianists series, numbered him among the indispensables.
Ivan recorded extensively on Supraphon.
Personal memoir here.
Knowing I couldn’t make it to Verbier this year – too much else going on – I had dinner with Menahem Pressler and his daughter Edna while they were in London the week before last.
For a man of 91 who underwent major heart surgery in Boston seven months ago, Menahem has lost none of his boyish innocence and enthusiasm. For a man who spent 55 years of his life driving across America and Europe as part of a piano trio, he looks forward to each solo engagement with boundless amazement and gratitude.
Medici TV have just put his Verbier recital online. Like the headline says, you gotta watch. Click here.
Coming up: A date with the Dresden Staatskapelle and Thielemann in October. Unmissable.
(I’ll be in the US, dammit.)
Jeremy Constant, concertmaster at Marin Symphony and assistant concertmaster at San Francisco Symphony, has discovered his 1850 Vuillaume has history – movie history, London legends, happy days of father-son bonding. Read Jeremy’s story exclusively on Slipped Disc.
It was nice to have my violin acknowledged from the stage during the concert today! We’re playing with Classical Mystery Tour, a Beatles tribute band. Backstage I told them the story of my violin (a J.B. Vuillaume, del Gesu model from 1850, numbered 1801) and how, after buying it, amongst its papers was a letter from Hill and Sons in London stating that it had been the favorite violin of the late David McCallum. The only David McCallum I knew of was the actor who played Illya Kuryakin on the Man From U.N.C.L.E. I used to jokingly refer to the violin as the ex-Kuryakin.
A few months after buying it, Sir Neville Mariner was conducting us and I was Concertmaster. He glanced at my violin and exclaimed “I know that violin!” I told him about the papers and he said “no, no, no…you’re thinking of David McCallum junior, the actor. His father, David McCallum senior was Tommy Beecham’s concertmaster!”
Well that got me doing some more research and it turns out that in addition to being Beecham’s concertmaster or leader in both the London Philharmonic Orchestra and later with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, he was a much in demand studio concertmaster and led the sessions for the Beatles’ track A Day in the Life and quite likely many other Beatles sessions.
Well, A Day in the Life, Yesterday and Eleanor Rigby all had fairly prominent violin solo parts during these past 2 days of performances of all Beatles music and it just felt right to be playing it on the violin that helped to bring many of those immortal pieces of music into existence.
After learning all this I started the process of trying to get in touch with David McCallum junior and after many months of clearly getting filtered/vetted by folks that were concerned with keeping the creepy people away from him, I got a lovely email from him saying “I would love to talk about daddy’s violin with you”. It took a while before our schedules lined up, but he very graciously drove to our hotel while we were on tour in LA and he was available to take a break from the set of N.C.I.S.
I showed him the instrument and played it for him (very badly unfortunately) and he was clearly pleased to see it and hear it again. We had lunch together and he told me stories of his growing up with his parents playing violin and cello and going to Hill’s shop and his dad playing the game of “spot the Strad” when he would play a handful of instruments and it was Jr’s job to identify which one was the Stradivarius.
It was really great to meet such a gracious man and to connect the history of my violin to its past. It occurs to me now that in the tradition of naming violins after well deserving former players, this violin should now be christened the ex-McCallum Vuillaume.
(c) Jeremy Constant/Slipped Disc
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra has announced that Sir Andrew Davis has renewed to 2019. Andrew, 71, holds parallel jobs as music director at Chicago Lyric Opera and emeritus at the Royal Liverpool Phil.
This segment of CBS Sixty Minutes aired in 2010, seven years after the programme first discovered its subject. They couldn’t tear their eyes away from Derek.
Derek Paravicini, born blind and with severe cognitive disabilities, can do anything at the piano.
Just watch.
h/t: EL/CH
John Smith, general secretary of the Musicians’ Union (MU) since 2002 will become chair of the music licensing agency PPL from next January.
John, a former tuba player at English National Opera, is also president of the International Federation of Musicians (FIM). He is presently a member of the PPL board.
The fabulous Laura Mvula has kicked off three weeks of free piano lessons at the St Pancras terminal. The station has three good upright pianos and teachers will be standing by 11.00-14.00 from 23rd July to 12th August 2015 at each of them.
This is a wonderful initiative by Youth Music, a charity which helped Laura herself when she was growing up in Birmingham. Don’t hesitate: take the kids.
