Sicklist: Muti’s out after a hip operation
mainOvernight from the Chicago Symphony:
CHICAGO— CSO Music Director Riccardo Muti is unable to conduct his February concerts in Chicago due to recovery from a hip operation that was needed following a minor accident.
We wish Riccardo a swift recovery.
UPDATE: It appears he suffered a fall at home, in Ravenna.
You sexy man!! Have seen Muti in Vienna. Ooh-la-la! But his Beethoven tempi were too slow, on the whole.
Get well soon!!
In his RAI 3 (Che tempo che fa) TV interview last month, promoting his Riccardo Muti Music / Corriere della Sera 32-CD issue, which includes three new Verdi opera recordings from Rome (Nabucco, 2011, I due Foscari and Ernani, both 2013) as well as old stuff once issued by EMI, he:
*jokes about Covent Garden comprimario singers
*scorns British “playback” procedures
*name-drops Abbey Road (and the Beatles) although most of his UK records were made at Kingsway Hall, Watford Town Hall and Walthamstow Assembly Hall
*recounts how he saved the Queen from tripping as she came to his La Scala dressing room, and
*twice refers to his “London Philharmonic” (with Prince Charles as patron) as if he is not aware of the existence of the orchestra that was in fact his for nine years
Apparently he has forgotten where he got his first big career breaks. Of course, the Italian TV audience (and sales target for the 32 CDs, to be sold serially at newsstands) laps it all up.
Muti was music director of the Philharmonia in London. Apart from this error, I can’t see the point of your post.
It is Muti’s “error” — and I can’t imagine why or how he would remember his orchestra’s name this way when he knows the correct naming in London is important. He insults the musicians who played for him, and Solti headed the LPO. The whole 30-minute interview has a weird take on the British.
Please remove the “/” at the end of that link, and it will take you to the interview.
This is what the French call “enculer des mouches”.
It’s a small point but Muti was never actually “Music Director” of the New Philharmonia Orchestra and then (from 1977) the Philharmonia Orchestra. That title was first accorded to his successor Giuseppe Sinopoli some years later.
Thanks for the link. My limited Italian only allows me to get the barebones of his anecdotes without any of the spices which apparently is what makes the audience guffaw. Can you provide some more details or quotes of what he’s saying (the stuff you cite above and below)? Thanks, much appreciate it. Unfortunately, Google has not yet come up with audio translations!
Too bad, I was looking forward to principal Stephen Williamson’s Mozart clarinet concerto with Muti. I hope they find a Mozart specialist to replace Muti. And I hope Muti and Williamson reschedule as well. There are plenty of clarinet concertos worthy of regular programming, Copland, forget Spohr, Corigliano, forget Weber, some talented composer needs to orchestrate the Brahms clarinet trio and sonatas… Matthieu Dufour before he went to Berlin used to hog up all the wind concerti at Chicago (must have been in his contract), now should be Williamson’s era.
BTW there are orchestrations by Berio (!) of the Brahms clarinet sonatas. We played one many years ago with a viola soloist. Not sure what I would think now, after 25 years later, but at the time I was struck by how “Brahmsian” they sounded.
(example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ajav3lTcK00)