Just announced: 

The recent passing of Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Steven Stucky has profoundly saddened the music world, and this is particularly true in Los Angeles where he had developed many deeply-rooted relationships.

To honor Stucky’s immeasurable contributions and long-standing collaboration with the orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and several partner organizations have announced a special free concert at Walt Disney Concert Hall. 

salonen stucky

Details here.

If you’re an admirer of Piotr Anderszewski – and it’s hard not to be – you’ll know that the Polish-Hungarian pianist follows his own inner rhythms, shunning the big career, thinking deep and slow.

In a chance encounter with the photography website Humans of New York, Piotr announced he’s taking time out from playing, starting tomorrow:

ANDERSZEWSKI - Bach Suites anglaises 1,3,5

 

‘I’m a pianist. I’m playing my last concert Thursday night. Then I’m taking a sabbatical. Some of my friends think I’m crazy to step away now, but I don’t want to become a two-hundred-concert-per-year performing machine. It requires too much efficiency. And the efficiency burns you out. There is a lot of pressure when you perform at Lincoln Center or Carnegie Hall. People pay for those tickets and you must respect your audience.

‘If you’re piloting a Boeing 777 with four hundred people on board, you aren’t going to try new maneuvers. You aren’t going to have fun or experiment. You don’t have time to stay in your dreams or ideas. You need to step back from the public eye so you have space to grow. I won’t say that taking time off makes you a ‘better’ musician, because I don’t like the word ‘better.’ It sounds competitive. But it does make you less of an automaton and more human. It’s like exploring a new continent. Time off is a space where you allow things to happen other than the known.’

Over coffee at the end of last year, I asked Cressida Pollock, chief executive of English National Opera, when she would not longer be able to pay the wages. She assured me it would never come to that. I reminded her of the day, 20 years back, when Mary Allen at Covent Garden was told by the bank it could not honour her payroll.

Cressida immediately came up with a date: April 2017.

It was confidential at the time. I kept the secret. Now she has gone public in an open letter, seeking to explain how she is trying to steer ENO clear of the cliff-edge that beckons 13 months from now.

Here’s the relevant passage from her letter:

Benvenuto-Cellini-ENO

Why do we have to make changes to how ENO operates?

Over the past 20 years, we have received £33m of additional public funding from ACE above the amount given to us to operate as a fully funded company. As Darren Henley (CEO of Arts Council England) put it recently – opera companies need to adapt, or die. While we have received bailouts in the past which have ‘topped up’ our funding, ACE have made it clear that future bailouts will not be forthcoming. We need to be able to live on £12.38m public subsidy or we have a real risk that we will not meet our payroll obligations in April 2017.

As I look at the decisions that need to be made in order to save ENO from bankruptcy, it is clear that we face difficult choices. There have been suggestions that if we ask the whole company to take a temporary pay cut, or produce cheaper productions, we can weather this storm and be back to “business as usual” in 2-3 years. I wish the solution was that easy. Our significant funding reduction is not a temporary situation. As a responsible CEO, and as the head of a company that employs over 350 people and engages many more on temporary contracts, I owe it to hundreds of individuals and families to ensure that ENO can withstand this change in our funding and that we do not face a crisis next year which could risk every member of staff losing their livelihood.

We cannot move to an ‘austerity year’ and hope that we buy ourselves some time for a magic solution to materialise. ENO, in one way or another, has adopted this approach for over 30 years. ENO is a solvent company and will remain that way but it can only remain so by fundamentally changing how it works. We are not simply trying to find £5m of savings. The company will have to save £5m every year. Over the next four years, we have to find £20m worth of savings to ensure we can get through this period and be resilient in the years to come.

When ACE confirmed our £12.38m annual subsidy (following the Opera and Ballet Review in 2014), our level of funding was set as one which would support an opera company with performing forces engaged for 30-40 weeks per annum, staging 7-8 productions and 75-80 performances per year. Our plan has always sought to do as much as possible above this level – to ensure a permanent presence throughout the year and to protect our permanent forces. As we have gone through all the options available to us, we have had the following priorities in mind.

ENO needs to:

  1. Deliver artistically excellent work which as accessible to the broadest possible audience
  2. Retain the ability to grow, to experiment and to innovate
  3. Ensure utilisation of our performing forces and permanent staff
  4. Operate on a resilient and stable financial basis

This painful confession has just been posted by the Canadian pianist Stewart Goodyear:

stewart goodyear

 

It hurts my heart to post this: Due to the mistakes of my management company, I might not be able to perform Messiaen’s Turangalila-Symphonie with Paavo Jarvi and Orchestre de Paris next month. This was a performance I was very much looking forward to. This was a work that I absolutely adored when I first heard it as a teenager. My first performance of this work was when I was 30 years old…For those who know me, I seize on inspiration despite people thinking the task impossible to accomplish…I accepted an engagement to perform this work with Peter Oundjian and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra Musicians even though I had only a month to learn the piano part. I worked 8 hours each day to prepare, the historic recordings of a very young Yvonne Loriod as my guide. The concert went wonderfully, and I couldn’t wait to perform this masterwork again.

I have performed this piece three more times since, twice with Paavo Jarvi and once with Kristjan Jarvi, two collaborations that I will always treasure. My first Turangalila collaboration with Paavo was with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in 2011…This was also my first collaboration with the eminent Cynthia Millar. I have absolutely no idea whether the Cincinnati Symphony will back me when I say that this was a performance to remember. Those of you who know me, know that I am my own hardest critic and would not call a performance a triumph if it was not. The only evidence I can give you for the Cincinnati performance were the rave reviews it received from both critics and audiences, and the fact that I was invited to perform the Turangalila-Symphonie again two years later with Paavo, Cynthia and hr-Sinfonieorchester – Frankfurt Radio Symphony in 2013. You could hear that performance yourself on Youtube.


I was very much looking forward to my trip to Paris…I have never been there before, and the idea of performing Messiaen in the composer’s home town had a very special significance to me. There is so much creativity, history and beauty in the city of Paris, and to perform in such an environment is an inspiration to all to all musicians. It saddens me deeply that because of a foolish scheduling mistake on my manager’s part that I will not be able to attend the first rehearsal of the Turangalila-Symphonie. There are only two rehearsals and a dress rehearsal before the concert, and I understand that each rehearsal is crucial to the success of this concert. I memorized the entire orchestral score and well as my piano part in preparation for this concert. I wish I could roll back the clock on this unfortunately scenario, but it is out of my hands. I am still hoping against hope that somehow, miraculously, I can fulfill the engagement, but that is also now out of my hands.

I send my warmest wishes to Paavo Jarvi, Cynthia Millar, Orchestre de Paris, and whoever is my replacement for the piano part, a triumphant and inspired performance of Messiaen’s Turangaglila-Symphonie.

Stewart is represented by CAMI Music.

The stoic Finns are getting quite excited about a rediscovered opera that could perhaps be their missing Ring.

It appears that in 1890 the German composer Karl Müller-Berghaus (1829–1907) wrote a opera on the Kalevala saga while beating time as chief conductor of the Turku Philharmonic Orchestra.

It was intended for an 1892 premiere in Hamburg but cancelled due to the famous cholera epidemic.

The second act was performed in Turku, and that was it.

Now the manuscript has turned up in a Turku archive and Leif Segerstam will conduct the world premiere in 2017 to mark the centenary of Finland’s independence.

Yo-ho, to-ho.

segerstam

The Stage reports this morning (from an official leak) that the senior directors of English National Opera have taken a pay hit and made other cuts in an attempt to balance the budget, while seeking further cuts to the chorus.

Chief exec Cressida Pollock has given back 30 percent of her salary. Other managers took a 20 percent cut.

Communications director Thomas Coops will leave the company and will not be replaced.

(Oddly, his job will be merged with the director of marketing and audience engagement, ENO’s weakest spot).

cressida pollock

Our informant in Teheran says the Iranian authorities have refused to accept Ali (Alexander) Rahbari’s resignation from the Tehran Symphony Orchestra.

In his resignation letter, Ali write: ‘Despite incorrect reports in the media, the players’ salaries were not paid completely and they do not have contracts for the future.

‘I have tolerated all these problems but I have no hope for collaborating with this unprofessional (Rudaki) foundation (through which the orchestra is funded). Therefore, I prefer to hand in my resignation and open the way for the musicians to find another organization with which to continue their careers.’

The Government now has a week to meet his reforms, or accept his resignation.

 

Ali-Rahbari-returns-to-Tehran

 

Martin Anderson contributes a splendid story about the Estonian conductor, who died last week.

schnittke

Eri used to tell a wonderful Schnittke story. He was with Alfred and Irina Schnittke at the Kiev Festival when Schnittke had a stroke (perhaps the first one, in 1985 — I’m not sure) — so severe that, although they got him to hospital and he was lying on a stretcher, they couldn’t get any sign of life from him: he was completely paralysed.

Eri leant over him and said: “Khrennikov” — and Schnittke gave a defiant laugh: “Ha!”