The well-known Zurich firms Musik Hug and AKHZ Management (formerly Krompholz) have been hit by the Swiss competition commission with a massive fine of half a million Swiss francs for price fixing.
The two firms were found to have conspired to fix prices and discounts illegally on upright and grand pianos made by Steinway & Sons and Grotrian-Steinweg. A third conspirator, La Bottega del Pianoforte, was exempted from the penalty after admitting its involvement.
One offence involved the sale of a Steinway to a public institution, the Zurich Hochschule der Künste.
More than 200 boys were subjected to beatings, starvation and rape over a period of 40 years at the Regensburger Domspatzen choir school in Bavaria, according to a lawyer investigating the allegations on behalf of the Roman Catholic diocese.
Ulrich Weber told a press conference: ‘I have 231 reports of physical abuse.’
The school choir was directed by Pope Benedict’s elder brother, Georg Ratzinger, from 1964 to 1994. Ratzinger has said the matter was ‘never discussed’ during his time as director.
(agency reports)
The Vienna Symphony Orchestra has named Lahav Shani principal guest conductor from 2017-18. Shani, 27, is deputising at the moment for the orch’s music director Philippe Jordan, who is invalided out for two months.
Winner of the 2013 Gustav Mahler International Conducting Competition in Bamberg, Shani has already made a last-minute, well-received debut with the Vienna Philharmonic.
He’s also on a shortlist of three for the vacancy at Birmingham.
A rare and altogether extraordinary venture by the French modernist into the strict classicism of C P E Bach. Recorded in Spain in 1979 with Jean-Pierre Rampal, who is made to go much faster than he might have liked in the scurrying finale.
