We’ve been alerted to an advertisement for a ‘Senior University Lectureship in Wagner, Liszt and the Cultural History of Technology at the Faculty of Music, University of Cambridge with effect from 1 January 2016’.
This seems ever-so-slightly case-specific.
There are lots and lots of scholars who specialise in Wagner and Liszt, but probably only one who combines it with ‘the cultural history of technology’.
Word is it has been fixed for one David Trippett, a ‘principal research associate’ at Cambridge. See his specialties here (and below*).
As for due process, equal opportunities and Nolan rules – well, chaps, this is Cambridge. We don’t need all that stuff to judge a new fellow.
UPDATE: A University spokesman said: “The University has advertised to fill an identified need for a specialist academic role within the Faculty of Music. The open application process which includes a rigorous interview stage, is ratified by our HR team and is fully in line with UK employment law.”
* My research focusses on Richard Wagner, and the intersection of German aesthetic thinking with the growth of the natural sciences. Other interests include Franz Liszt and post-Classical Weimar; posthumanism and the philosophy of technology; as well as performance theory, the grey area between improvisation and composition, and musical creativity in the digital age. I welcome applications from potential Ph.D. students in these areas.
When time permits, I am also active as a collaborative pianist, having performed in Germany, Italy, the UK, and on both coasts of the US.
The first crisis left by Nikolaus Harnoncourt’s decision to retire immediately from all performances is a Fidelio, coming up at the Theater an der Wien on January 17.
We’re informed it will be led by Harnoncourt’s assistant, the harpsichord player, Stefan Gottfried. It’s not clear at this stage if he will direct from the keyboard. The singers include Juliane Banse, Michael Schade and Anna Prohaska.
Gottfried, Vienna born, studied piano with Michael Hrubý and harpsichord with Gordon Murray. He has been Harnoncourt’s regular assistant since 2004.
Stefán Höskuldsson has been explaining in the CSO players’ magazine why he has left the Met orchestra to become principal flute with the Chicago Symphony in May 2016.
‘I come from a small town in the east coast of Iceland called Neskaupstadur. At the age of nine I showed talent for the flute and since there were no real flute teachers in my town my father decided that I should get the best possible teacher in Iceland….
‘In 2004 I won the 2nd flute/piccolo audition at the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. I held that position until 2008 when I won the MET Principal Flute position…
‘In 2010 I had the great good fortune to work with Maestro Muti when he conducted Attila by Verdi at the MET. It was the highlight of my time at the MET*.’
This weekend, Riccardo Muti conducted his 250th concert with Chicago…
and was given something for his wall. Photo (c) Todd Rosenberg.
*UPDATE: This post quotes he original edition of the CSO musicians newsletter. The quotation was later adjusted. One of the editors explains: ‘In the article that you posted about our new principal flute, Stefan Hoskuldsson, there was a revised edition of his spotlight that didn’t get to me in time before I sent out the newsletter. He meant to say that the performance of Attila with Muti was ONE OF the highlights of his time at the MET.’
Sometimes an encore becomes an anthem.
You never know where Martha Argerich will pop up next.
But a walk-on performance on a prepared piano has just taken our breath away.
When you change the timbre ever so slightly on a grand piano, other problems arise. Martha was unhappy with her left-handed thumb D in the Mussorgsky transcription. (Jura) Margulis resolved her qualm by playing the note on an orchestral tube gong.
It’s an unexpected five-star review, my Album of the Week on sinfinimusic.com. Read here.
This happened last week in All Faiths Chapel at the School of Music, Theatre, and Dance, Kansas State University.
Respect? No respect.
Photo Theresa Breymeyer
A Cornish teenager with a lovely voice and ambitions to be a singer-songwriter decided the best way to get started was to play a piano in the sea, in a shallow beauty spot at low tide, and call in a film crew.
According to local media: ‘A plea was sent out on Facebook by Diani to find an old piano for the film, luckily a lady from Newquay who had owned one for 45 years heard about the appeal and offered hers; although she was not told what it would actually be used for.’
All well and good, and we hope Diani, 17, gets the lift-off she seeks. But every time a musical instrument is abused by getting dumped on a beach, or thrown out of a window, or mishandled by an airline, the art of music gets devalued one more notch and the profession of musician becomes that much more tenuous.
There needs to be a society for the protection of unloved musical instruments.
Try this: almost one-fifth of the music performed is by Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms.
Or this: Less than two percent of the music, 1.8% to be precise, is written by women.
All those women are presently alive. Dead women composers do not exist.
That rules out Bacewicz, Kapralova, Ustvolskaya (all three fascinating)…
… Any Beach, Ruth Seeger, Lizzie Lutyens, Ethel Smyth, Maconchy, Fanny Mendelssohn, Hildegard of Bingen, Clara Schumann, Rebecca Clarke, Vivian Fine and the putative Mrs Bach.
Not that the playing situation is much better anywhere else, as far as we can tell.
Dead women composers are always deader than men.
It has been a hair-raising weekend at the Seattle Symph.
Soprano Jane Archibald fell sick and there was no-one within reach to take over Messiaen’s Poème pour Mi, which had to be scrapped.
A chorus member volunteered to step up for the other part of the program, which was Fauré’s Requiem.
But what to do about the Messiaen-shaped hole?
Conductor Ludovic Morlot called for Ravel La Valse.
Without rehearsal.
Or a permanent concertmaster.
The apprehension in the orch was, we hear, ‘pretty intense’.
But Emma McGrath in the #1 seat took the change in her stride and the substitute work proved highly effective.
Do not try this at home.
The Los Angeles Philharmonic assistant conductor, Mirga Gražinyte-Tyla, 29, is on a learning curve. Her repertoire grows from one concert to the next. And she’s being auditioned for music director in San Diego. She’s getting known pretty well around southern California:
Her gender and her youth would not seem to be much of an issue during her rehearsal with the L.A. Phil. The sheer physicality of her presence on the podium is immediately remarkable. Her motions are big but crisp and incisive. She plants her feet, bends her knees, and drives a phrase like a tennis player swinging through a forehand. She makes a fist and growls, asking for more vigor.
She treats the orchestra as equals, as partners. She says “please” and “thank you.” Her verbal directions are brief and to the point. She seems to want to let the orchestra play through Rodion Shchedrin’s “Carmen Suite” – trusting their abilities to learn it, a sure way to win over musicians – more than to hear herself talk. At any rate, her baton is plenty expressive.
The 20 year-old Italian national Alexander Gadjiev took both the judges’ vote and the audience prize at the elite Japanese piano competition. He also walked off with the Mayor’s award, a clean sweep.
The sixth finalist was left on his own with fourth prize.
What kind of indecisive judging is that? And how was #6 left feeling?
The Times reports on a ‘cultural literacy’ scheme that is designed to help teenagers pass their Oxford and Cambridge admission interviews with flying colours.
Students attend art auctions at Christie’s, performances at the Royal Opera House and lectures at institutes to help them to hold their own. Children are also taught how to speak clearly and intelligently, to help them to succeed at university interviews .
The London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art is running workshops at the Harris Federation, an academy chain, for pupils from the age of 13….
