The top 25 classical albums put together sold just under 9,000 copies in the US, the world’s largest market, according to Nielsen Soundscan.

That’s the state of the record business, end of 2015.

star wars

Her version:

anna netrebko wedding

In his resignation letter, sent today to Seoul Philharmonic players, Myung Whun Chung makes no secret of the cause of his departure, pledging to continue to combat Ms Park’s legacy and her powerful supporters. He writes:

chung

‘It is with great sadness that I write this letter of departure from the SPO at the end of my 10th year as your music director.

‘I would like to congratulate the SPO members on your achievements over the last 10 years — achievements that have been applauded all over the world. It is sad that these achievements have been overshadowed by one person’s fabricated statements. Lies and corruption may cause scandals, but human dignity and truth will prevail in the end.

‘There is only one thing that I consider higher and more important than music — namely, humanity. For this I am willing to put music at the service of helping, enriching and defending human rights, be it to help children through UNICEF or, in our case, helping the 17 people who have been terribly mistreated by the former CEO. Mistreated far beyond civilized, acceptable levels. Perhaps it is a reflection of Korean society that this has been allowed to happen.’

The Quebec critic Claude Gingras has written his final column in La Presse today.

Gingras, who is 84, has reported on a rising talent pool among French-Canadians, capped by the outstanding Yannick Nézet-Séguin.

He was an institution, a critic of another age. Here’s his last despatch.

claude gingras-beret-autre-epoque-2003

The Latvian tenor Aleksandrs Antonenko is sick and has withdrawn from tonight’s Cav and Pag.

antonenko

At short notice, they’ve called in two tenors. Turiddu in Cavalleria rusticana will be sung by the South Korean tenor Yonghoon Lee, who sang the role at the house a couple of weeks back.

The role of Canio in Pagliacci will be sung by Lithuanian tenor Kristian Benedikt, making his ROH debut.

 

 

Five makers:

Monika Grütters

Monika Grütters: The German culture minister has been a leading advocate in the value of arts to society

cho chopin

Chopin Competition: Clean, transparent and producing a worthy winner

semper anti-pegida

Semper Oper, Dresden: The first cultural institution to condemn anti-refugee movements

severance hall

Cleveland Orchestra: America’s finest, despite severe social blight.

kirill petrenko china

Kirill Petrenko: The shy maestro (l.) who told the Berlin Phil to wait and the media to get lost

***

Five breakers:

carnegie hall interior

Billionaire Ron Perelman: Tried to sack Carnegie Hall’s boss in a major ego clash

park seoul

The abominable Ms Park: Beheaded the Seoul Philharmonic (late qualifier)

Lang_Lang_Montblanc_AD_watch

Lang Lang: Not so much a concert pianist, more a multi-brand

zakhar bron

Zakhar Bron: His students are bound to win

dallas

Dallas Symphony: Too chicken to fly

*

So who have we forgotten?

Gordon Getty, an amateur composer who pays for his own works to be performed, has issued a garbled and incoherent attack on opera subsidy on a classical website that he, bizarrely, subsidises.

Getty’s line of argument seems to be that stage directors would not run to sex and violence if they were not backed by public cash. He writes:

Then why does the subsidy go on?

Some is called for. The same audience goes to movies and Broadway, and reveals its preferences there. But it expects something different in the opera house. Opera is art. Art needs patience. Beethoven and Wagner and Mahler sounded all wrong at first. Now even the mass movie audience laps them up. Some subsidy is the price of patience, and patience is the price of art.

We are patient because we don’t want to gag the messenger. But why so long? Diehard leftist zeal in some suppliers, bless them or curse their carbuncles, and some on the demand side too, plus the patience duly shown for grating messages in the arts, adds up to something. Does it add up to 50 years and counting?  

Don’t all answer at once. It’s a truly confused article.

Gordon-Getty

Getty’s recent opera, Usher House, evoked all the wrong sorts of horror at its recent San Francisco premiere.

 

usher house

 

The Times Higher Educational Supplement has picked up on a storm generated by Slipped Disc over a Cambridge advertisement for a Senior University Lectureship in Wagner, Liszt and the Cultural History of Technology.

The terms are so specific that it seemed highly likely the job was tailored to a known individual.

We named him.

The THES won’t. But it does report widespread discomfort among academics at the terms of the engagement. As well as the official line:

Nicholas Cook, head of the music department, said that it was for a “strategic appointment”.

A Cambridge spokesman added that it had “advertised to fill an identified need for a specialist academic role” and an “open application process, which includes a rigorous interview stage, is ratified by our human resources team and is fully in line with UK employment law”.

Read the THES report here.

Cambridge University 1 (St John's College) comp_0

 

Here are the immediate consequences of Myung Whun Chung’s forced resignation today as music director of the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra.

1 The orchestra will lose its Deutsche Grammophon contract, along with its international exposure.

2 The search for a new music director, starting immediately, will attract no competent maestros – both because they are unavailable at short notice and because they won’t want to get buried in a political quagmire.

3 The quality of the orchestra will decline. Chung was a disciplinarian who rotated positions when the playing failed to meet his standards. That’s all over now.

4 Foreign soloists and their agents will think twice about accepting engagements in Seoul.

5 Oblivion beckons.

And all because of one vindictive, well-connected woman whose conduct since her dismissal as CEO suggests that the grounds for her sacking – bullying and staff harrassment – were fully justified.

park seoul

The soprano Sonya Yoncheva (‘best since Callas‘) has been obsessively tweeting an interview in which she recounts how she fell for the love of her life while auditioning two years ago for the role of Violetta in La Traviata at the Berlin Staatsoper.

Daniel Barenboim’s assistant at the audition was a young Venezuelan, Domingo Hindoyan. Eyes met.

Reader, she married him. Read more here.

 

Yoncheva Domingo Hindoyan

Somehow Villazon (r) sneaked into the picture

We’re receiving reports from Korean media that Myung Whun Chung has resigned as music director of the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra with immediate effect. He will not conduct next month’s Mahler 6th, which was due to be recorded for DG.

The move follows a campaign of harrassment by the orchestra’s sacked CEO, Ms Park, who has instigated a police investigation into allegations that her dismissal was brought about by the maestro’s wife.

If the reports can be believed and Chung has quit, the effect will be to make Korea a no-go zone for artists of international standing. In a state ruled by hereditary elites, music cannot flourish. The sun has set on Seoul.

 

myun whun chung

Editorial: Death of Seoul.

UPDATE: Chung attacks Park here.

Thomas Baldner, who has died aged 87, conducted leading orchestras in London and Berlin before joining the faculty of the Indiana University School of Music, where he taught until 2008.

A Hitler refugee, he founded the Greenwich Philharmonia in Connecticut and was artistic director of the Rheinisches Kammerorchester in 1950s Cologne, working with Stockhausen and Boulez on the newest of the new.

 

baldner

 

Dear Jacobs School of Music Family,

It is with sadness that I share the news of the death of Thomas Baldner. Thomas died on Sunday, December 27, 2015.

Thomas was born into a musical family. He began the study of music with his father, the famous German cellist Max Baldner, in his hometown of Berlin, and later was a student at the Berlin Academy of Music. As the first student from Germany in the postwar period, Thomas attended Indiana University between 1949 and 1952, subsequently receiving a bachelor’s and master’s degree in music. He was a master student of Pierre Monteux and was founder and conductor of the Greenwich Philharmonia in Greenwich Connecticut. Thomas returned to Europe, and for the next 25 years conducted orchestras from Berlin to Buenos Aires and from London to Tehran.

In 1976, Thomas was invited by Dean Charles Webb to join the faculty of the Indiana University School of Music, where he taught until his retirement in 2008. He conducted many orchestral and opera performances including tours of the School of Music ensembles in New York City. He was a conductor, pedagogue and master teacher to hundreds of aspiring conducting students, and his former students occupy major positions as music directors and conductors.

Thomas is survived by wife Bettina Baldner, daughter Karen Baldner  and his son Oliver (wife Elizabeth). We do not have any information on services to share at this time, but will be in touch if something is planned.

 

Sincerely,

 

Gwyn Richards

Dean

Jacobs School of Music