Here are the airlines to avoid, according to our bulging complaints bag.
1 Ryanair
The Irish budget line make it their business to be horrid to everyone, but they reserve a special extra nastiness for musicians.
2 United
Only one piece of carry-on, to be stowed under seat. And no miles for low-fare fliers.
3 KLM
The Dutch are rude to divas and even ruder to dogs.
4 WestJet
Our reader’s advice: ‘Cellists: Never. Fly. WestJet’.
5 American Airlines/USAir
Unkind to instruments. And worse to concertmasters.
6 Easyjet
Locked an orch in an airless corridor for half an hour. No apology.
7 Alaska Airlines
Alaska have the same tender concern for baggage as Sarah Palin does for truth.
8 Southwest Airlines
See Alaska, same problem.
9 Vueling
Probably the worst of the lot. Repeat offenders who never apologise, let alone compensate.
10 Air Canada
Multiple complaints
Dear readers, you fly these companies at your own risk. Do let us know if we’ve forgotten anyone.
The Heidelberg composing prize for women has been won this year by the Israeli Harvard professor, Chaya Czernowin.
We congratulate her.
Past winners include Saariaho, Neuwirth, Unsuk Chun and Iris ter Schiphorst, all well established and moderately well known, some of them even beyond the lily-pond of contemporary classical music.
Professor Czernowin has salaried security at Harvard. She has been composer in residence at the Salzburg Festival. She has a publisher and her works get performed.
The Heidelberg prize for women composers has been running since 1987. The prize money is a paltry 5,000 Euros. Maybe it’s time to lay it to rest as a 20th century anachronism.
The German airline has agreed from today to take violins on board without extra charge.
A victory for Jakob Lehmann and Slipped Disc.
Our friend Fiona Stevens has been given the green light to take her instrument on board. Please feel free to use this as precedent against any AirBerlin employee who seeks to block a violin.
We will shortly publish a list of best and worst airlines for musicians. All submissions welcomed.
Equity, the actors union which represents many in the ENO chorus, is balloting its members for a strike. The union says they are facing a 25 pay cut and the loss of four jobs.
Equity’s head of live performance Hilary Hadley spoke of plans to abolish extra pay for Sunday working and stop overtime pay. ‘There is also a vague proposal that they’ll be able to find the chorus some additional work during the summer months (May-August). However, the existing proposal is that if they do find work it will cut their pay from 75% to 50% of their current salary.’
The plan is rather more complex and not yet fully disclosed (according to Slipped Disc sources).
A strike may not be the best response at this point, in our view. Best to keep the gunpowder dry until the full plan is rolled out and the impact on the orchestra becomes clear. But feelings are running high across the company.
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last man standing
William Bolcom’s opera McTeague, premiered in Chicago in 1992, received its first European staging at Linz this weekend.
McTeague, an unqualified dentist, loses his job, kills his wife and joins the gold rush. More or less. Based on an 1899 novel by Frank Norris, it beame the plot of Erich von Stroheim’s 1924 movie, Greed.
This first-night reviewer thinks it’s a metaphor for 21st century post-liberalism.
The original New York Times review is even more confused.
The chief executive of English National Opera, Cressida Pollock, has responded swiftly to a weekend petition calling on her board to fight plans to reduce the orchestra and chorus.
Cressida writes: ‘Let me promise you one thing – we are committed to preserving a permanent chorus at ENO. ‘
But (the big But): ‘Whilst we remain committed to our permanent ensembles, we also recognise that we have to make significant cost savings in order for ENO to be a more sustainable organisation in the long-term. We are working towards a solution with the ENO chorus which would see them maintained as a permanent ensemble but with a greater degree of flexibility in their contracts, which reflects the economic reality of ENO’s situation.
‘We are looking at ways we can reduce our reliance on freelance backstage staff, in order to preserve our backstage ‘family’ and protect full time positions – as these individuals provide the backbone to our company.
‘We realise that your support is needed now, more than ever.’
Read Cressida’s full statement here.
The bold attempt by Putin’s culture minister Vladimir Medinski to repatriate the body from a Valhalla cemetery outside New York was blocked by the composer’s descendants.
A long-running initiative, backed by Putin himself in 2013, to purchase Rachmaninov’s Swiss mansion, Villa Senar, beside Lake Lucerne, has also got nowhere. The estate is still up for sale.
And no more has been heard of a desire to revive the Rachmaninov Competition in Moscow, defunct since 2008.
Like much else in Putin land, it appears the dream has run out of steam.
Click on link to view.
Slipped Disc was the first to tip Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla as the next music director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. We knew what the players wanted and we called it right.
Now, with strong conviction but slightly less confidence in the outcome, we are happy to confide that, as of this moment, the favourite to succeed Jaap van Zweden at the Dallas Symphony is … Karina Canellakis.
Karina, 34, has risen like a rocket in the past year. She won major agency representation at AskonasHolt and was first in line to step in for Niklaus Harnoncourt when the early-music maestro subsided into retirement.
This weekend she covered triumphantly for Van Zweden when he was summoned to Holland for a family emergency. Local media attributed her success to Van Zweden’s tutelage; she is in her second year as his assistant conductor. But local musicians tell us she has got what it takes.
For want of compelling international contenders on the Dallas guest list – the top names are James Gaffigan and Joshua Weilerstein – Karina can be considered a front-runner.
And if she doesn’t win Dallas by the summer, she will be head-hunted somewhere else.
