The Salzburg Festival board has decided to affix a plaque to the Karl Böhm Saal, specifying that the conductor, while musically gifted, was an enthusiastic Nazi who used the inhumanities of the Hitler regime to advance his career. The plaque will be engraved in German and English.

‘He was a great artist but fatally flawed politically,’ said Festival president Helga Rabl-Stadler.

There is nothing new in that statement. Böhm was an outright Nazi who in 1938 told the Vienna Philharmonc that anyone who did not vote for Hitler’s Anschluss could not be considered a proper German.

Karl_Bohm_fidelio

However, the decision to out Böhm as a virulent Nazi leaves Salzburg with a major headache.

Will local hero Herbert von Karajan, who profited no less than Böhm, receive a plaque of his own?

Full ORF story here.

The great baritone has posted his entire concert of December 27, 2105. Click here to watch.

hvorostovsky putin

PROGRAMME:
Glinka
Overture “Ruslan and Lyudmila”
Prokofiev
The first scene from the opera “War and Peace”
Tchaikovsky
Dance of the buffoons, “Snow Maiden”
Puccini’s aria from Madame Butterfly opera “Madame Butterfly”
Rubinstein
“In the ocean of air” from the opera “Demon”
Kalman
Aria Mister X from the operetta “The Circus Princess”
Dvorak’s aria from the opera Rusalka “Mermaid”
Pakhmutova
“Melody”
“Tenderness,”
“We Were Young”
Bizet
Overture “Carmen”
Couplets of Escamillo in “Carmen”
Petrov
Waltz from the music to the film “Beware of the Car”
Dunaevsky
Overture from music to the film “Children of Captain Grant”

Tamarin
“antique tapestries”

Babajanyan
“Do not hurry,” “thank you”

 

 

These days Walter Levin is best known as lifelong teacher of the Met’s music director, James Levine.

In his prime, he founded the formidable La Salle Quartet which played modern stuff other ensembles wouldn’t touch. Named after a street in Manhattan where the players lived as students, the quartet was Cincinnati based and world renowned. It premiered works by Lutoslawski and Ligeti and brought back from oblivion four major foursomes by Alexander Zemlinsky.

walter levin

After the group broke up in 1987, Levin continued teaching in Switzerland. But the onset of dementia reduced him to silence. He lives now in a retirement community in Chicago. Amazingly, the only thing that can persuade him to speak is the opportunity to coach musicians.

Read a compelling piece about Walter and his devoted wife Evi in the Chicago Sun-Times here.

 

Michael Shobe on WQXR offers close analysis of the composer’s likely ‘inspirations’:

For Han Solo and Princess Leia’s theme, Tchaikovsky sets the tone… Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D is where Williams found his melody for Han and Leia’s theme. The two are almost identical; the Tchaikovsky is faster, the Williams more sentimental….

Frederic Chopin’s Piano Sonata No. 2, nicknamed the Funeral March, is where Williams found Vader’s melody. To give the Imperial Death March some momentum, Williams turned to a different work about outer space, Gustav Holst’s “The Planets,” specifically “Mars, the Bringer of War.” The pulsating, repeating rhythms, the melody played by the low brass, the super ominous feeling it evokes — Vader also brings war everywhere he goes. “Mars” was a good choice.

Read more – and listen to the comparisons – here.

 

dudamel john williams

with Gustavo Dudamel, laying down soundtrack

Dame Josephine Barstow is seeking planning permission to build a Malthouse Arabians stableyard at Highlands Farm, Chiddingly, west Sussex.

Now there’s a diva not going gently out to pasture.

Josephine-Barstow

paris piano

And then the thing goes viral with seven million Youtube hits.

Yes, that kind of Paris day.

After the video was shared, the two guys made contact. One is called  Gerard Pla Daró, the other Zaouche Nassim.

 

Some two dozen members of the Minn Orch have put together a concert, to be conducted by Osmo Vanska and led by concertmaster Erin Keefe next Sunday, in aid of Syrian refugees.

Tickets are priced at $50 and all proceeds will go to the American Refugee Committee. Booking details here.

erin keefe

Minnesota is the first large music organisation in the US to rally to the humanitarian crisis. In October, Joel Cohen and the Camerata Mediterranea put on an ice-breaker event in Boston. The silence of other arts orgs is stunning.

 

 

The power tribes in South Korea are raising further allegations against the Seoul Philharmonic music director Myung Whun Chung, alleging that his wife was involved in the dismissal of former SPO chief executive, Park Hyun-jung, a hereditary member of the ruling elites.

The latest allegations have appeared in the Korea Times, mouthpiece of the elites. Mrs Chung has received a police summons on a defamation charge. The board of the SPO meets today to discuss Mr Chung’s contract. The wealthy Ms Park is said to have set up a ‘revenge office’ south of the river to pursue her grievances against the Chungs.

chung

The flare-up comes at the end of a year in which Korean artists achieved unprecedented triumphs at the Chopin Competition and other global summits. But power does not like to be challenged and talent is no match for hereditary wealth and political control.

 

It has been officially announced that Mark Stephenson will conduct the Tehran Symphony Orchestra at Vahdat Hall on January 19 and 20.

He’s the first Brit to lead there since… anyone remember the last one?

mark-stephenson-with-real-wolf-c-philharmonia-orchestra

Mark’s an accomplished walker on the wild side.

 

From the You-Couldn’t Make-It-Up Department:

MARIETTA, Georgia—John Brandt, music director of St. Joseph Church in Marietta, didn’t have to look far for a kidney donor. Ann Burkly, a member of his choir, readily volunteered.

Read more here.

surgeons music

unrelated picture

The actor Sasha Baron Cohen and his wife Isla Fisher are giving $500,000 to Save the Children to pay for measles vaccinations for children in northern Syria. A further half-million will go to the International Rescue Committee to help refugees in Syria and elsewhere, particularly women and children, with health care, shelter and sanitation.

sasha baron cohen

Sascha is renowned for his Ali G and Borat characters.

Agency report here.