Granilano reports that Makhar Vaziev is leaving La Scala to become head of the Bolshoi Ballet next March. He succeeds the acid-attacked Sergei Filin, who was unsentimentally sacked on his recovery by Bolshoi boss Vladmiri Urin.
Vaziev, 54, is a former Mariinsky soloist who headed the Mariinsky Ballet for Gergiev for 13 years before serving seven at La Scala, where he recently renewed.
Few Russian dancers can resist the Bolshoi, short-term as it’s likely to be.
More here.
It’s the Dean’s Symposium with Norman Lebrecht, 2.30 pm EST, or 1830/1930 Euro time.
Watch here.
Not much.
Two new recordings attempt to pair the string quartets and piano works with works by other composers, and somehow miss the mark.
The Amadeus Quartet, dominant in the middle of the last century, told me in retirement that their greatest regret was never having played the two Janáček quartets. You can see how the omission occurred. Janáček is the ultimate outsider, the one who doesn’t fit in any canon, whose music never sits easily with any other – which is what makes the repertoire in these two albums so challenging.
Read the rest of my Album of the Week on sinfinimusic.com. Click here.
The final round reel is online here, with Elsa vamping it:
The first notes of opposition to Simon Rattle’s proposed new hall rallied in The Observer yesterday, following last week’s admonitory post in Slipped Disc. This morning, The Times has picked up the controversy.
Briefly, it’s a question of how much bang you get for a half a billion bucks.
Both Munich and London face the same dilemma. Both have ugly halls with bad acoustics and politicians without the balls to replace them. Now, the UK Government has green-lighted a new hall as part of a deal to bring Simon Rattle to London, but the plan is to build a ‘concrete monster’ in the heart of the City of London on the most expensive slice of real estate on earth. That is not only madness. It’s an insult to the intelligence.
Spend half a billion on a concert hall when hospitals have to shut for lack of nurses, who can’t afford to live in London? And in an area where senior citizens fear to walk after dark. Come on…
Every musician knows that London needs a new hall. But where, and for how much. The solution is to build it outside the Square Mile, in an area where people live, served by good transport links. It needs, moreover, to be designed to look like a great concert hall, not like the Mayor of London’s nuclear bunker. It needs to become an issue in the upcoming mayoral election.
And it must not cost half a billion pounds, or even half as much. I have just been to see a new hall rising in Germany for just 35 million Euros – half of it paid for by citizen donations.
More on that bold experiment in a few days time.
Anna Goldsworthy despairs of having to play for audiences of pension age.
It is reassuring to imagine that our audiences will naturally renew themselves, but last year, on tour with my trio, Seraphim, I started to have my doubts. We began in Macedon, Victoria, where we delivered eulogies for two cherished audience members who had recently passed away; we then performed Beethoven, who did the job better. Up in Queensland, a chamber music society president confessed that since many of her former subscribers could no longer leave their homes, the society was drawing down its financial reserves and would soon shut up shop. In New South Wales, our presenter revealed that he was suffering from dementia, and was not sure how much longer he could continue.
Read the full depressing essay here.
The Telegraph reports the death of Christopher Tambling, director of music for 18 years at Downside School, near Bath.
Downside is staunchy Roman Catholic. Tambling was low-church Anglican with distinctly populist tastes. He will be widely remembered for a much-played fanfare on the tune, Shine, Jesus, Shine.
The history world has suffered a terrible loss in the death today of David Cesarani.
David was primarily an historian of Jewish and Holocaust issues, but he wrote an icebreaking biography of Arthur Koestler and was as much engaged in cultural history as he was in political events. Our conversation whenever we met always revolved around creative issues. David was a well-rounded man. He had many books left in him.
He leaves a young family.
Devastating.
Julian Trevelyan has made it to the finals of the Long-Thibaud-Crespin competition.
The other finalists are:
Madoka Fukami, 27, Japan
Daria Kisleva, 26, Russian
Kaoro Jitsukawa, 26, Japan
and Hyeon Park Joo, 27, South Korea.
Julian will play the Bartok 3rd concerto in the final on Tuesday – by far the most challenging of the five pieces.
The jury is headed by Stephen Kovacevich.
She was awarded an honorary doctorate on Friday by the Academy of Music in Katowice.
In response, Martha said it was her greatest award in Poland since winning Chopin competiton in 1965. For someone who has returned loyally to the country many times in 40 years, you might have thought they would have given her some state honour.
After the ceremony, Marthat sat down with Nelson Goerner and played the hell out of the Rachmaninov Symphonic Dances.
A teacher suggests how you can stop them. Click here.
John Hixson, who has written for Slipped Disc about his friend Pierre Boulez, is a former student of Jorma Panula at the Sibelius Academy, widely regarded as the world’s most influential and successful conducting teacher. We asked John how Jorma does it. Here’s his account.
“Don’t get in the way”
The conductor, composer and legendary musical mentor to many, Jorma Panula, is difficult to write about, so it is perhaps done best in an approach similar to his bold and unconventional character. It is a character that is simple and direct, but deep and strong. Very personal and warm as well, he very much embodies that Finnish sense of sisu which is probably best translated as bold, simple, direct and strong. He is tremendously important to me, fortunate to have known him for almost 20 years.
Interested in conducting as I was wrapping up my doctoral degree at The Juilliard School, and impressed by conductors such as Esa-Pekka Salonen and Jukka-Pekka Saraste, I soon became aware of Jorma. On a trip to Finland, I found a phone book and simply looked him up and called. I had studied Finnish via the Juilliard and Columbia University exchange program, so I asked in Finnish if I could attend a masterclass and he said that would be fine. Before that, in the Juilliard library, I was supposed to be writing a paper on Mendelssohn, but there was a book in the M section, Conversations with Menuhin, which I flipped open and David Dubal asked him who was the best young conductor at that time and Sir Yehudi Menuhin said it was Panula, who actually shapes music rather than just beats time. I found that to be an interesting coincidence.
After meeting in Helsinki we decided on a masterclass in Mikkeli, the first among many, as well as much time spent in restaurants, his home in Finland, my apartment in NY and communication that continues until now that I am here in Tokyo. In Mikkeli, I prepared various scores, among which was the Barber Adagio. I have only slightly competent pianistic ability, but had learned that score and when he asked what I would do first, I mentioned it. He was delighted and said he loves that piece; I sat at the piano, played, and he conducted me while the orchestra was warming up. It was perhaps the beginning of a very good relationship.
Whilst Jorma is very Finnish, he is also deeply studied in Asian culture, particularly about the mind, body and spirit aspects.
He had rented a house in Mikkeli for the students. The second day of the course, I woke up early and found him doing seated breathing meditation. I went to splash some water on my face and brush my teeth and going back to my room, he was standing up. We said good morning, and then he pointed at the dantien or tanden in Japanese, (the location of an important place of energy often said to be three fingers below the navel) and indicated with his left hand a flow of energy that started with his breath and in the gesture of an upbeat, reached to his right hand and projected out. That was the beginning of a most important lesson.
The lessons continued in NY, in Italy, other places in Finland and also in Russia. He always insisted I would come one week early and stay in his house, and then take the overnight train from Helsinki to Moscow. In his house, the best example of rustic and elegant Scandinavian design I know, we would have long nights of excellent food prepared by his wife Marja, the former principal cellist of Helsinki Phil, top-notch wine or cognac (his favourite) and early mornings of coffee and tea, some time out in the woods doing some yard work – then going over scores, phrase by phrase, gesture by gesture, insight by insight. Sometimes he would call up a neighbour who had the traditional savu sauna (made by smoking the interior for several hours, favoured by Sibelius, not the electric one that passes for a sauna these days), and we would reflect on many things.
The three or four times we took the train to train to Moscow was fun, in part because of the Russian sparkling wine and caviar in a dining car straight out some kind of old Soviet movie, but also his tales of the great Finnish composers that influenced him, his conducting teachers and sometimes just boyish silly jokes.
His approach to music is based on a profound respect for the composer and score, and a strong distaste for musicians who make music to glorify themselves. One of his maxims for conducting students is, “don’t disturb.” It is a direct translation from Finnish, which makes perfect sense. I had translated some of his texts into English and said it is better to say, “Don’t get in the way.” I don’t know which is better now, but then I thought it was better. He grumbled and growled and said, “don’t disturb!”
One day after that, back in NY, by chance in a magazine shop, I saw a BBC classical music magazine featuring him on the cover. I leafed through the article, where he said his basic philosophy of conducting is, “Don’t get in the way.” I was a bit touched…
Jorma’s way is to respect the score, respect the individual, respect the orchestra, respect each student as an individual, and most of all, listen, listen, listen… study, study, study…
Focus. Center.
