The Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra has called off a six-city tour of Spain next May. The news broke as Dallas, a much richer orchestra, cancelled a much bigger tour of Europe, allegedly on security grounds.
The reasons Fort Worth is giving sound closer to the truth. They say the falling Euro and the poor Spanish economy have made the venture economically non-viable.
This was to have been FWSO’s first Europe trip in 25 years and its Peruvian music director Miguel Harth-Bedoya was much looking forward to greeting audiences in Alicante, Madrid, Murcia, Oviedo, Vitoria-Gasteiz and Zaragoza in his mother tongue.
‘We are heartbroken that it is not coming to fruition,’ says FWSO president Amy Adkins.
FW’s honest explanation may help to shed light on Dallas’s tawdry equivocations.
San Francisco Conservatory his beefing up its piano department with Jon Nakamatsu and Corey McVicar.
It has also secured the most elusive piano teacher of all as artist-in-residence.
Press release:
The San Francisco Conservatory of Music announced an expansion of its piano faculty with the appointment of two distinguished artists and teachers, Jon Nakamatsu and Corey McVicar. In addition, SFCM has named legendary pianist Leon Fleisher artist-in-residence for the coming academic year. Beginning in the fall semester of 2016, Conservatory students will have the opportunity to study closely with six artists who have enjoyed celebrated performance careers. Nakamatsu, who has been teaching at SFCM in an interim capacity this fall, and McVicar, a faculty member of SFCM’s elite Pre-College Division since 2012, join colleagues Paul Hersh, Sharon Mann, and department chair Yoshikazu Nagai on the Conservatory’s roster of collegiate piano faculty….
As artist-in-residence at SFCM for the 2016-17 academic year, pianist Leon Fleisher will work with piano students in group lessons, master classes, and coachings during four visits. By participating in conversations and other forums, all Conservatory students will learn from Fleisher’s experience on the international stage and from the remarkable trajectory of his career… Fleisher holds the Andrew W. Mellon Chair at the Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University.
Can you believe it? Texans are too scared to fly.
Here’s the statement they have just released:
Due to the recent and tragic events in Europe and the United States, and informed by conversations with national and international security professionals, the Dallas Symphony’s executive board along with its executive and artistic leadership have made the very difficult decision to postpone its April 2016 European tour. After careful deliberation, we believe that there is an elevated risk to the safety of our musicians and their families, guest artists, DSO personnel and travelling patrons, and therefore will not be proceeding with the tour at this time.
Did anyone ask the music director (Jaap van Zweden)? As for the conversations with ‘national security professionals’, are they saying Washington is telling orchestras not to fly?
This is not just as cowardly statement. It’s profoundly dishonest.
We’ve received this warm and cuddly reply from KLM, which threw a diva and her dog off a London-Amsterdam flight, claiming the dog was overweight.
KLM say: At KLM we have a long history of transporting all kinds of animals, and their well being is of utmost importance. Each pet has to fit comfortably in its kennel, and only small kennels fit in the cabin. For this reason we adhere to weight restrictions indeed. At KLM we choose to maintain clarity. If we would make an exception in this case, it would not be fair towards all other pet owners. Please see http://klmf.ly/1iwQbn3 for more information.
Don’t you just want to fly them? Doncha just?
The Aurora Festival at Trollhättan, Sweden, has released video from Kurt’s last performances in August this year.
Barely able to move, he communicates a lifetime of human sympathy and musical understanding.
Rest his soul.
Lugo, a stopover between Bologna and Ravenna, has a gorgeous little theatre built by Antonio Galli Bibiena.
The town has just hired Rinaldo Alessandrini to put on a music festival, and he has teamed up with former La Monnaie exec Valerio Tura to trawl in some talent.
The pair have some fascinating chamber operas in mind for next December.
Just look at this little gem of a Teatro Rossini.
The Aurora Festival at Trollhättan, Sweden, has released video from Kurt’s last performances in August this year.
Barely able to move, he communicates a lifetime of human sympathy and musical understanding.
Rest his soul.
A rapturous performance of Scheherezade earlier this year by the symphony orchestra of Galicia, impressive in every respect. But at 45 minutes on the dot, the conductor erupts.
Fast-forward and watch.
The conductor is the law-unto-himself Leif Segerstam, a loner even among Finns.
Mr Segerstam, 71, recently composed his 289th symphony.
It is titled ‘When the cat visited’.
No excuses. There has never been a tenor like him.
The outstanding Eleanore Büning has devoted the first paragraphs of her annual recordings survey in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung to the plight of Stefan Arzberger, first violinist of the Leipzig Quartet, who has been on bail in New York for most of the year following an unclothed incident in a boutique hotel.
Arzberger is unable to work or leave the city. He has been obliged to resign from the Quartet. He is innocent, until proven guilty. Eleanore has done well to highlight his plight.
The great soprano has been giving Austrian media a sneaky peek at her forthcoming nuptials to the Azerbaijani tenor Yusif Eyvazov. The pair got engaged in March 2014.
The wedding ceremony will be held on December 29 in a small suite at the Hotel Palais Coburg, attended by close family, followed by a reception for 180 guests at the Palais Lichtenstein.
(Slipped Disc’s invitation has obviously been delayed in the Christmas mail.)
Anna has asked to be released from her January 2 performance as Joan of Arc at La Scala, Milan.
It’s my very last Album of the Year for sinfinimusic.com, which is being wound down, and I found myself reflecting critically on the ones I had missed.
At this time of year, my thoughts always turn to the ones that got away. Allowed to choose just one release a week for review, I find myself regretting the fantastic works and performances that, for one reason or other, missed the cut.
Leo Ornstein, for instance. Ornstein was a Russian-Jewish composer who migrated to the US in 1906 and died in 2002 at the age of 108. After a couple of decades of frenetic modernist composition, he went against the grain, recommitted himself to melody and was shoved rudely into obscurity. A pair of 1920s chamber works on Hyperion, scintillating performances by the Pacifica Quartet with Marc-André Hamelin, have been among my most-played pieces of the year.
No, it’s not that one. To find out which 2015 release will, in my view, last the test of time, click here.
