From Alexander Gilman, artistic director of LGT Young Soloists:

Emirates-1

I am flying with my youth ensemble LGT Young Soloists to Dubai next April. The concert organizer has booked the flights with Emirates. During the booking process, Emirates has asked the concert organizer for the exact measurements of the instruments. After receiving the measurements for the violas, they forced the organizer to book a separate seat for the instruments…

We are not talking about low cost airlines such Ryanair, Airberlin or Easyjet. This is Emirates – one of the leading airlines in the world which is now asking for a seat for the violas…

The manufactured controversy over the Met’s late adoption of an established opera by Kaija Saariaho has bred a spate of thoughts about the state of prejudice against women opera composers.

Our pal Shawn E. Milnes reflects on the sorry history here, but he finds a rising tide of equality in smaller companies. By way of contradiction, the composer Missy Mazzoli offers disquieting evidence of a double standard:

missy mazzoli

I have a friend, a composer, who told me, ‘When a man writes something lyrical it’s seen as brave and courageous, but when a woman does it it’s seen as sentimental and indulgent.’ This was in the late ’90s and she was commenting on how sexist the new music community was. I’d like to say that times have changed, but I think this is still totally true.

More here.

In the Guardian, Charlotte Higgins argues that opera is both unfair and sadistic towards women.

You might expect that, in the modern era, women’s roles would have changed, but opera is a big and expensive artform whose repertoire is not easily refreshed. Women composers of opera on the grand scale are few and far between….Their librettists have sometimes been women.

Discuss.

Lulu Cigar1 met

The most daring analysis comes from the critic and publisher Martin Anderson, who bravely associates composing with a form of autism.

It strikes me that what gives a composer the tenacity to sit at a desk endlessly turning patterns over in his (or her!) mind is likely to be some form of autism – which is a spectral condition, so that you have it to varying degrees of intensity. Some composers would seem to have been full-blown Asperger sufferers and so to have had the social dysfunctionality that goes with it – think of Alkan, Beethoven, Brahms, Janáček, Langgaard, Martinů, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Weinberg and many others. My suspicion, indeed, is that the capacity to take infinite pains over something that’s often minutious means that music, mathematics and other such ‘mental’ disciplines are going to attract and reward minds that are autistic to some degree and find satisfaction in such activity.

Now, autism affects males much more than females, to an extent current estimates of which vary, but the ranges are between twice and sixteen times as much. Since the historical preponderance of male over female composers seems to have survived into our more liberal times, could it be that there are fewer composing women simply because women as a rule are more ‘normal’ than men, that fewer of them are obsessive to the degree required to be a Janáček or a Shostakovich?

Phew! Read on here.

Talk among yourselves.

The London Symphony Orchestra have elected a new chairman, succeeding Lennox Mackenzie, who is stepping down after 16 years.

The new chief is Gareth Davies, 44, principal flute since 2000. Gareth will have a tough learning curve with Simon Rattle coming in as music director, equipped for the first time in LSO history with what is widely believed to be the right to hire and fire musicians and staff*. We wish Gareth well.

gareth davies

*UPDATE: An LSO source who has seen the contract has clarified that the right to hire and fire is not included. Rattle’s title and authority, however, are more powerful than any of his predecessors.

Meanwhile, at the London Mozart Players, Nicolas Soames has departed as interim manager. Julia Desbruslais, co-principal cello for the past 25 years, has stepped up as executive director.

And at the Philharmonia white smoke is awaited on a successor to chief exec David Whelton, who retires in April.

Now the orchestra has finally broken the double-digit barrier – 10 women out of 121 members – its chairman, Andreas Großbauer, is speculating that the gender balance will be overturned in the course of the next generation.

ORF report here.

Andreas Großbauer

We hear that Boris Allakhverdyan, principal clarinet at the Metropolitan Opera since 2013, won the audition for the same seat at the LA Philharmonic on Friday.

He is the fourth woodwind principal out of eight to flee the Met in the past two years – both principal flutes quit on the same day last summer, one to Chicago, the other to LA.

We hear also that a fifth Met woodwind principal is in talks with Chicago and a sixth is preparing to retire. There is growing unease in the Met orchestra over the company’s general drift and the on-off music director position.

 

boris allakhverdyan

Peter Kamnitzer, viola player in the LaSalle Quartet, has died in Israel at the age of 93.

He co-founded the quartet at Juilliard in 1947 with fellow-refugees and played in it throughout the world until its disbandment in 1987.

peter kamnitzer

The LaSalle’s earned renown on Deutsche Grammophon as specialists in 20th century modernism, especially the Second Viennese School.

The French Prime Minister, Manuel Valls, is married to a professional violinist, Anne Gravoin. They go to music.

Last night, they dropped by backstage in the interval of a concert by the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France to see the conductor, Mikko Franck.

manuel valls mikko franck

Ivan Podyomov, 29, originally from Archangelsk, is the new co-principal oboe of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.

He will share the seat with a fellow-Russian, Alexei Ogrintchouk.

ivan podyomov

Ivan writes: It’s a huge honour for me to become a part of this fantastic orchestra and especially incredible and touching is to be a colleague of my dear friend Alexei Ogrintchouk, whose very kind participation has been so significant for me during last almost 23 years that we know ea

The viola player Kim Kashkashian won a Grammy for Best Classical Instrumental Solo.

US mass media got excited. They thought she was someone connected to Kanye West.

Kim has had to go on the record to deny any connection with those plastic people.

‘I’m a middle-aged mother and a classical musician,’ she protests.

Can’t anyone tell the difference?

kashkashian

or

kardashian

In an interview on BBC’s Front Row, I returned to a simple solution for Britain’s perpetual opera crisis.

Over the past 25 years, one or other of the Arts Council England’s biggest clients – Royal Opera House, English National Opera, National Theatre, Royal Shakespeare Company – has been under threat of cuts or closure after falling foul of ACE’s arrogant bureaucrats and budgetary controls.

Put simply, ACE has proved itself inadequate time and again in dealing with major international companies. It has conveyed uncertainty instead of confidence, hostility instead of support.

The best way to assure long-term budgetary stability at the four companies is to remove them from ACE control and place them – like the British Museum and national galleries – under direct funding from government, through the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

The ACE is not competent at handling big artistic enterprises.

You can hear the interview here (just after the 10 minute mark).

norman lebrecht

 

Searching for something else, we came across this almost unwatched and altogether fascinating video of the Berlin Philharmonic music director reminiscing about his musical antecedents in the multicultural city of Liverpool.

The infrastructures and organisations he describes still exist – except for the record stores.

epstein liverpool

flute in car