In my monthly essay for Standpoint, I analyse the thoughts of Maestro Thielemann as expressed in his book, My Life with Wagner (Weidenfeld, £25).
Sample text:
Here’s Thielemann:
Sometimes I have nightmares. I dream that artistic quality is out of tune. I dream that art and music are destroying themselves because the quality has gone wrong. Because far too much that is trivial, empty, superficial and indifferent is rife, and is tolerated. And because none of us can find genuinely creative time to spare any more, either for ourselves or for such great work as Richard Wagner’s.
The world is a terrible place, says Thielemann. Since we can do nothing to improve human conduct, let us observe it from a safe theatrical distance and derive what comfort we can from our personal detachment and innocence. The greatest sin — nightmare — would be to neglect or distort great art, the only thing that might redeem us. Accept that the word is evil. Make good art.
A federal judge has stripped Warner of the rights to the song.
Judge George H King ruled yesterday that Warner/Chappell never had the right to charge for the use of Happy Birthday To You’. The publisher owned only the piano arrangement, not the song itself. Read here. It’s a severe blow to the publisher.
Message to Metropolitan Opera goers:
An Important Notice About Your Met Opera Performance
Dear Ms. X
Due to extensive street closures related to the Pope’s visit to New York City, the Met’s performance of Il Trovatore on September 25 will be delayed by 30 minutes, allowing audiences additional time to get to the Met. The performance will now start at 8:00pm and will end at approximately 10:50pm.
We recommend that you allow yourself extra time to arrive at the Met.
Please feel free to contact a Customer Care Representative at 212-362-6000 with any questions.
If you have a reservation at the Grand Tier restaurant on the evening of September 25, please call 212-799-3400 to confirm your reservation.
We look forward to welcoming you to the Season Premiere of Il Trovatore.
Sincerely,
The Metropolitan Opera
We enjoyed this picture sequence from the Primavere Gallery in Cambridge, England.
Click here for more pics. The 1920s Weber piano is valued at £65,000 ($100,000).
Not content with being a would-be Paganini on the violin, Sergey Malov also plays viola, Violoncello da spalla and baroque violin.
Try some: his video reel runs through different instruments.
In a wide-ranging interview with Bruce Duffie, the choral conductor (who died last week, aged 95) was at once polite and forthright about historically informed practice.
‘Where composers have specified clearly what they want, one ought not to depart from that. Most modern composers do specify very clearly, first of all, the tempo. They give a broad indication, through metronome marks and that sort thing, as to what they want. Clearly one has to adapt to a certain extent, because if you’re performing in a church with a very reverberant acoustic — perhaps an echo period of five seconds — you must perform at a more steady pace than you would if you were in a very dry acoustic. So I always look at what the composer asked for and then think to what extent one should adapt according to the circumstances. Where composers specify certain instruments, you ought to think twice before changing those instruments. You certainly oughtn’t to add notes willfully, although some composers of the Baroque and Classical periods did leave a lot for the composer. They wanted ornamentation. They wanted a certain degree of improvisation. So to that extent, I would depart from the printed score.
BD: But were they not confident that the style would always be the same that had been handed down for at least the last couple of generations?
Sir David: I think they were, and I think they’d be horrified sometimes to have heard what successive generations have made of it. But we are making a genuine effort now to understand what musicians of that period probably would have done. Now to answer your question more fully over the other things, I would hope that with modern composers one does keep as far as possible to the score as they’ve presented it, although music must be recreated and there must be a subjective element in the performance of music. Nobody wants to exist for all time on a recording made by a particular person, even if it’s the composer himself. I think music would become sterile if it weren’t constantly being reinterpreted by others.’
We are saddened to learn of the death, from cancer, of Adrian Morris, bass trombone of the Hallé Orchestra for the past 18 years.
Previously with the Ulster Orchestra, Adrian – known as Benny – also played with brass bands and jazz orchestras.
Our sympathies to his family and colleagues.
Slipped Disc editorial
Today’s announcement that Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical is to occupy the home of English National Opera for 43 performances over five weeks in April arouses the same kind of emotions as the sight of that railway carriage in the forest of Compiègne. It is a complete and unconditional surrender.
True, the costs of the production are being borne by independent producers, GradeLinnit. True, too, it will keep the orchestra and chorus of ENO in work for five weeks.
True, again, that ENO cannot afford to fill a season all by itself, given its burden of debt and shrinking Arts Council subsidy.
But a Lloyd Webber musical? A genre that takes the luscious red cherries of grand opera and turns them into glacé cake-toppers? That’s not a sensible strategy for a struggling opera house.
You may argue that La Scala once staged Phantom and other opera houses have gone deeper into the Lloyd Webber oeuvre in the hope of attracting new audiences. The thing is, they failed. There is no crossover between the pure and unmediated act of opera singing and the amplified, under-orchestrated act of Sunset Boulevard. No new faces at Lohengrin, no benefit at all to ENO, except that it pays five weeks’ rent.
This is a sad call by ENO’s new makeshift regime, a bad call, and one which sounds horribly like the scratching of pens in the middle of a French forest.
Historical footnote: A while back I suggested that Andrew Lloyd Webber should be approached to be chairman of ENO’s weak board. The response I got from those who know him well was ‘Andrew’s only interested in pushing his own stuff’. Whether or not that’s the case, what we have here is failing ENO serving mighty ALW’s empire.
After the political storm, the plaque has finally been affixed to the composer’s former home.
Photos (c) Marion Kalter/Lebrecht Music&Arts
Two months ago we were approached by musicians of the Symphony Orchestra of the Bulgarian National Radio (BNR) with lurid tales of the breakdown of their relationship with chief conductor Emil Tabakov. Since much of the material was highly subjective and the orchestra of limited international interest, we declined to publish it.
Since then, much has happened.
According to the musicians, Tabakov, 68, was suspended by the director of BNR’s music department for ‘systematic violations of his labour profile and endless conflicts with the orchestra.’ Tabakov called in political allies – he is a former Bulgarian Minister of Culture – and hit back, forcing the director’s suspension and returning to his podium.
‘Our indignation,’ say the musicians, ‘is enormous’.
Not much we can do from the outside, except to point out that all is not well in the musical state of Bulgaria.
The Munich Chamber Orchestra have chosen Clemens Schuldt, 32, to be their chief conductor from next season. He succeeds Alexander Liebreich.
Schuldt, a former orchestral violinist, won the Donatella Flick Conducting Competition in London back in 2010. he’s managed by KD Schmid in Hannover.
