The usual suspects are whipping up a panic call over expected cuts to the budget of the Department of Culture, Media and Sport. Some suggest the Department itself may be abolished (which would not be a bad thing).
The stirrers have failed, however, to read what the Chancellor George Osborne announced yesterday in Parliament.
He said the Treasury would ‘prioritise spending that achieves the best economic returns, as well as that which promotes innovation, growth, productivity and competition.’
That’s the arts, isn’t it? Let stop whinging, get out there and innovate.
The musicologist Michael Lorenz has uncovered a fascinating snippet of Austrian military history – the story of Ferdinand Christian Ali, from Borna in Ethiopia, who was (literally) drummed into the Emperor’s service.
He was known as ‘His Roman Imperial Majesty’s hartschier and field army tympanist’ and he married ‘the honorable and virtuous maiden Elisabeth Kleybinger, legitimate daughter of the late Andreas Keyblinger, former citizen and baker in Steyr, and Christina his married wife.’
Rembrandt van Rijn, Black Drummer and Commander, ca. 1638 (The British Museum, Oo,10.122)
Message to the music community from the conductor, Michael Stern, dated July 22:
Dear Friends,
Please forgive this mass but practical modern means of communication. With sadness, Shira, David, and I are sorry to let you know you that our mother Vera died this afternoon at 12:05pm, after a prolonged period of failing health, ten days after we celebrated her 88th birthday together. We escorted her for the last time out of the Beresford, the building which she called home for the last 60 years. She left this earth just as she had inhabited it, on her terms. To the end, she showed the strength, resiliency, grace, and character that defined her, always. She took her last breath listening to music, surrounded by people who loved her and cared for her, in her own home. Thanks to extraordinarily expert and loving hospice care, she was free of pain and any fear. In recent years she had faced her health challenges with elegance, fortitude, and a stubborn refusal to submit, and she defied again and again every dire medical prediction. To so many of you whose paths crossed with hers in this life, there was no doubt that she left an indelible mark. In her conversation and sentiment it was very clear to all of us, as she faced this final chapter, that her thoughts returned to her husband of 43 years, our dad Isaac. Despite their divorce, with all of that life history, it was indisputably evident that she loved him. Today would have been his 95th birthday.
She was a steadfast friend to so many of you, a staunch advocate of good causes, a generous benefactor, and a tireless lifetime volunteer. Her lifelong love of music inspired her devotion to so many musicians, those from the past who informed her rich and wonderful life, as well as the young ones whom she admired so much. Her life reflected her remarkable journey — from her origins that were Russian in character and disposition, she moved from the Berlin of her birth, through her escape through Switzerland to Paris, then to Stockholm, then back to Paris before settling in the United States. She made aliyah to Israel in 1951 only to return to New York half a year later after her seventeen day courtship to our father. Immersed in her new life, she enthusiastically began her immense impact on the musical life of this city and Israel.
Her extraordinary energy was focused on her work for Israel Bonds, L’École Française (later The Fleming School), the America-Israel Cultural Foundation, the Musicians Foundation, and so many others. Her most gratifying and continuing legacy was as the organizational and energizing co-pilot with Isaac in saving Carnegie Hall from destruction in 1960.
But of all her achievements in her accomplished and distinguished life, perhaps the greatest one was in her role as the matriarch of our family. She was the anchor, the epicenter, the protector, and the guiding spirit for her all of us. At the core, she had an incontrovertible, unwavering, and fierce love for us all. Her parents, Michael and Esfir, and her sister Meri Lind, predeceased her, as did our father Isaac, in 2001. But her spirit will continue to touch us all: Shira, with Don, Noah and Ronni Jane, Ari, and Eytan; Michael, with Shelly, Hannon and Nora; David, with Katta, Sophia, and Talia; and her nephew Gregor and her niece Mika, with Samuel.
…
Services will be held at 11am on Thursday, July 23, 2015, at the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue, 30 W. 68th Street (just off Central Park West). For those wishing to attend, we ask that you arrive at 10:45am for a prompt start at 11am. … In lieu of flowers, we ask that you consider a contribution to a charity of your choice which reflects your love and memory of Vera.
They had little in common by way of character, taste or temperament. Michael was a twinkle-eyed journalist with a nose for a story and a passion for the irrational plots of Richard Strauss.
Andrew was an opera man first and foremost, on first appearance dour and dry, probably most content to be hunched in a museum over a Verdi manuscript.
Ted was a party man, happiest with a glass of record label champagne in hand. All left us at a respectable age.
They were the last of a line that knew not social media. Andrew wrote by hand, never using a typewriter. I’m not sure the other two ever mastered a computer. Certainly, none of them used Twitter or Facebook.
Critics of their era left a performance keeping their thoughts to themselves until an opinion could be cogently formed and preserved in cold, black print. They did not knee-jerk an instant response. Their day is done.
This is what’s going up at Veracruz, home of the Boca del Rio Philharmonic Orchestra.
Michel Rojkind is the architect and he hopes his design will be ‘an urban detonator capable of inciting modernity in the area.’
There will be two concert halls, of 850 and 150 seats. Ground has just been broken.
photos courtesy Rojkind Arquitectos
The Entartete Musik scholar Michael Haas has created a virtual exhibition on Korngold, based on his successful show at Vienna’s Jewish Museum, which drew 45,000 visitors. Korngold’s life in Vienna and Hollywood is encrusted in myth and legend. Michael finds strong parallels between music in Korngold’s time (1897-1957) and ours:
The themes that resonate throughout Korngold’s life are particularly relevant today as they represent the fight for the very purpose of music. Is it elite, or is it populist? Is it high art or easy entertainment? Is it merely an application, like the use of colour in cinema or is it l’art pour l’art – a thing of purity and a bridge between the listener and a higher state? Is music a cultural cornerstone of European civilisation or is it merely ‘disposable’?
“I’m not at all comfortable because I still have too much, too many activities,” she said. “I’m busier now than when I was younger. I don’t know why. I need to practice more.”
She wondered whether her abilities were deteriorating and even asked me if she should retire.
I asked Argerich, who said she hoped to keep coming to Beppu, what her wishes were.
‘That’s a mystery to me. I don’t know what I want to do, and I need some more time for myself. I don’t know how much time I have. I’d like to live very freely and do what I want, if I can.’
from the film Bloody Daughter
The death has been announced of a great American novelist. He was 84. President Obama tweeted: ‘E.L. Doctorow was one of America’s greatest novelists. His books taught me much, and he will be missed.’
He came to a book launch of mine in New York. I was struck dumb by the honour of his presence.
What I remember was him telling me that his parents, Russian immigrants, made their living from music. His father had a music store, his mother was a pianist. Edgar went to concerts all his life, and to the Met.
I live by this saying of his: ‘I am telling you what I know—words have music and if you are a musician you will write to hear them.’
First shot from the Verbier rehearsal room (with Martin Engstroem).
(c) MediciTV
Theodore Bikel, who first played Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof in 1967 and performed it more than any other actor, has died at the venerable age of 91.
As recently as 2009, he stood in for Topol on a US tour when the Israel actor suffered an injury.
Bikel was also the first Captain von Trapp in The Sound of Music on Broadway.
He appears on numerous recordings in a wide range of folk songs in several languages, delivered in a fine baritone voice.
press release:
Houston Grand Opera (HGO) will present the world premiere of O Columbia, a chamber opera created by an acclaimed team of artists: composer Gregory Spears, librettist Royce Vavrek, stage director Kevin Newbury, and conductor Timothy Myers—on September 23 and 24 at 8:00 p.m.at the Bayou Music Center.O Columbia examines the past, present, and future of the American spirit of exploration and celebrates the identity of America’s frontiersmen and women. O Columbia will be HGO’s 57th world premiere.
Informed by interviews with astronauts, engineers, shuttle mission trainers, and others from the NASA community, the chamber opera in three acts explores our culture’s fascination with space and introduces historical events of exploration as touchstones. Each short act, framed by works for chorus, imagines a conversation that crosses space and time to create a unified story: we ride with Sir Walter Raleigh on the bow of his ship heading for the New World in the 16th century; sit with a teenager in her Houston bedroom as she experiences communion and later, heartbreak, with a Columbia space shuttle astronaut gliding around the earth; and finally we travel with future astronauts to the far reaches of the solar system, with Lady Columbia waiting to greet them.
John Taylor died on Friday night after suffering a heart attack while playing with Stephane Kerecki’s band at the French Saveurs Jazz Festival. The band have posted a segment of that performance, with John looking happy at his piano.
