They are getting married Tuesday morning.
Collapsed in mid-concert
Beat on to the last.
Remembered on Christmas Eve.
Rose from the Vienna Phil
From Warsaw to St Louis
Indispensable at the Met
Broke through in Chicago
Cut through record crackle
His middle name was Wolfgang
It has been announced that the fashion pair Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana are to be core sponsors of La Scala Milan. They have committed to to donate 600,000 Euros annually until 2021.
The duo have long been regular first-nighters.
The Russian president, in a meeting with his Council for Arts, singled out the Tchaikovsky Competition as a notable achievement and thanked ‘Maestro Gergiev’ for organising it (maybe he’s starting to forget first names).
Putin said: ‘”We can say that this year the Tchaikovsky Competition really returned to its former glory revived. This was a great success.’
The nonpareil Swedish tenor in ‘a gay opera’.
Click here to watch video. You won’t be disappointed.
A new book by Edward Dusinberre, first violinist of the Takacs Quartet, opens with a familiar situation:
No sooner do I play my opening notes in Beethoven’s late string quuartet, opus 131, than a man in the front row of London’s Wigmore Hall coughs ominously.
A teacher once suggested to me that coughing in an audience is inspired only by a boring performance. If that is so, this particular verdict has been reached swiftly. I wonder why the man doesn’t escape from his seat. Perhaps he knows that there are no breaks between the seven movements of opus 131 – if he gets up now the ushers may not allow him to re-enter the hall. Hopefully, both boredom and phlegm will dissipate.
A familiar situation, as we said. What should Edward have done?
1 Stop playing til the man settles down?
2 Glare?
3 Invite the unruly fellow to step outside and settle it with knotted hankies?
4 Collapse in a paroxysm of his own?
5 Ask if there are any BDS in the hall who can outshout the tubercular bugger?
6 Hiss at him, ‘I know where you live’?
7 Offer him a cigarette?
You decide. The author of the most original and practical suggestion will win a copy of Edward’s book, Beethoven for a Later Age: Journey of a String Quartet, published by Faber and University of Chicago Press in January.
