Katherine Browning checked in her bass-clarinet before flying from Manchester to Exeter. That’s the last she saw of it. And the airline? Couldn’t care less.
First she tweeted: Not only was flight BE374 delayed by 2 hours (with us actually ON the plane!!) due to fault (unlatched door!!), @flybe crews at MAN lost my instrument. NOT GOING TO STOP SHOUTING UNTIL ANSWERED
Now she’s sharing the whole sorry saga with Slipped Disc:
I got to Manchester Airport at just after 3pm, and went straight to hold baggage check-in; I was directed straight down the express lane to book in my bass… but at the end it was not obvious where to go. I asked a lady in uniform, and she told me to put it onto the ‘rollers’ just before a conveyor-belt… which wasn’t moving. I turned round for reassurance, because there was NO-ONE THERE to take the bag so it seemed unnatural to just leave it. She nodded and said “yep, put it right there”, then pretty much lost interest in the conversation. Reassured and trusting that she had some idea as to what she was talking about I put the instrument where she’d indicated. Not at any point did it seem like anyone was tagging it up so as to have barcodes attached to it, linking it to my flight… in fact the only labels that I saw on it last were the tags for the previous flight (Exeter to Manchester nearly a week previously)
Really wish I hadn’t trusted her; after being delayed by 2-3 hours (sat on the plane waiting to take off, and before alighting due to diverted traffic), I get to the baggage carousel at Exeter… but that carousel stopped going round, and there was no sign of my instrument.
I spoke to the member of staff in charge of missing bags, and he emailed Manchester airport; a PIR was written – the Exeter-based staff member is the only person who’s taken the slightest notice that something so valuable is unaccounted-for. No-one has spoken to me since, and short of calling a 13p a minute phoneline I have no means of contacting someone who knows anything about it!
I asked about CCTV even to see if they can SEE me dropping it off, and who picked it up, but they seemed to verbally shrug and say ‘yeah I guess we could… but you need to phone checkins about it, we can’t help’. I called Manchester Airport’ general enquiries line, but the representative said that it was something only the baggage handling company could handle… but that she couldn’t remember who it was that was handling Flybe’s baggage… and she didn’t help me find out either (I’ve found out since that it is Menzies).
Who does Kat have to sue to get her baby back?
Ross Knight, 23, has won a two-year position with the Berlin Philharmonic orchestra academy. He will play with the Berlin Phil whenever a second tuba is needed or when its principal tuba, Alexander von Puttkamer, is unavailable.
Ross, who is principal tuba of the European Union Youth Orchestra, will make his Berlin Phil debut next month as principal tuba in Pelleas et Melisande, Simon Rattle conducting.
The Swedish clarinet star Martin Fröst has been forced to cancel his debut as artistic partner with the St Paul Chamber Orchestra due to an attack of Meniere’s Disease, an inner-ear disorder. He has also pulled out of an Asia tour. Alexander Fiterstein will substitute.
In the new issue of Standpoint, out today, I write about what’s happening in Bochum, a profoundly depressed town in Germany’s Ruhr region that has lost its steel, coal and lately its car industry.
So Bochum is building a new concert hall, right?
Bochum, nearly bankrupt, has grasped music as a means of salvation. (Steven) Sloane, the orchestra’s executive director as well as its chief conductor, persuaded the town to let him build a new concert hall and then called on its citizens to help. Out of a budget of €35 million, half has been donated by individuals, in gifts from €5 upwards.
The hall is being constructed around a mid-19th-century church, its deconsecrated nave offering a long corridor of light in ambient gloom. Every gifted euro cent, every inch of space, is being made to count. Teaching and rehearsal studios occupy the peripheral rooms. When it opens next summer, there will be music in the hall from morning to night, all year round. The contrast with Simon Rattle’s half-baked plan for a half-billion pound vanity hall in the City of London could hardly be more pronounced. As London looks to its bankers, Bochum looks to its bootstraps. No question which has a better understanding of the value of music in an age of uncertainty.
Further to our report about Alban Gerhardt joining the back desk of cellos in New Orleans, the conductor Nir Kabaretti tells us of a distinct upgrade in Taiwan.
Nir writes:
Yesterday I had a concert in the beautiful National Concert Hall in Taipei.
Lynn Harrell, who played Saint Saens#1 and Dvorak’s Rondo as soloist, joined the National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra after the intermission to play Dvorak 8th Symphony, in the principal cello chair.
The evidence:
He gave up the instrument at 19 after suffering a growth on his hand.
I never once saw him play a stringed instrument.
But this pic has just been sent my way and I find it incredibly moving.
The great conductor was always rooted in his instrument. It’s an image of profound loss.
Bavarian State Opera is looking for new singers.
Singers of all nationalities at the beginning of their career can apply for the Opera Studio for the 2016/17 season until November 23, 2015. The age limit at the time of the application is 28 years for female and 30 years for male applicants on the closing date.
There’s a huge media storm brewing in Korea and China over Yundi Li, who broke down in Seoul during the first movement of a Chopin concerto.
The Sydney Symphony Orchestra reportedly stopped and the movement was retaken. Yundi later shunned the after-concert signing.
Here’s how it sounded:
And here’s what’s raging on social media, with fans demanding their money back. More here in English-language Korean media, which claims that ‘It was not only Yundi’s mistakes that the audience couldn’t seem to shake, but rather his attitude toward conductor David Robertson during the orchestra’s sudden pause, in which the pianist appeared to shift the blame for his tempo mistakes onto the maestro.’
And here‘s a summary from Chinese media (in English)
Early eyewitness reports from Korea, on which our original post was based, have now proved to be over-excited and we have toned down the post accordingly. But that’s the risk with Yundi, who generates intense interest.
UPDATE: The Sydney concertmaster Andrew Haveron clarifies:
We performed this concerto the previous day in Daegu. The performance went smoothly and was greeted rapturously by the audience who were clearly fans of his. The next day, in Seoul, he simply took a wrong turn and our harmonic progressions parted company (there is little else for an orchestra to do accompanying a Chopin concerto!). He tried to find his way back in, but in a piece such as this – where the soloist carries 90% of the musical argument – I can fully understand how difficult it is to find your way back into the middle of a long paragraph. He tried heading for the exit (musically speaking) by playing a couple of cadential bars prior to what he hoped was the next tutti.. But found the wrong tutti. You can hear my colleague Dene Olding valiantly come in with the next tutti entrance (from memory – we had a page or two to go) but that wasn’t the key our soloist had reached (he, I think, had found the very end of the movement, whilst we were still in the development). Thus things came to a stand still – without any say so or interference from our conductor – and Yundi bravely decided to try it all over again, this time with success. We finished the performance and the applause was generous and supportive. He declined to play an encore, but he had declined the previous day too.
He did not leave the stage until the end, and I am unaware of any blame being laid at anyone else.
It is a shame that this is the only bit of the concert available to hear – I cannot imagine that this is a legal recording. It has clearly been made available through schadenfreude alone.
