The Turkish state has wheeled out its diplomatic big guns to attack a forthcoming Dresden Symphony concert making the First World War massacre of Christian Armenians by Moslem Turks.
The Turks see red when the word ‘genocide’ is used. The number of Armenians murdered in the state-inspired slaughter varies from 800,000 to 1.5 million.
Turkey has neither admitted nor atoned for the atrocity.
More here.
There were extraordinary scene at the Carl Nielsen finals in Odense on Friday night.
The jury president, Nikolai Znajder, having announced that he did not approve of any of the three finalists approved by the rest of the jury, proceeded to add an extra award for Slipped Disc ‘for creative journalism’.
We accept it with pleasure and pride. Every single word in our earlier report was sourced from reputable Danish media and eyewitnesses.
The award ended, as we predicted, in total shambles. Read more here.
UPDATE: In addition to the three designated prizes, Znaider inserted three more for the eliminated semi-finalists: ‘We have heard many young musicians over the last week who are at different stages of their development. The reality of competitions means there will always be talented violinists who won’t make it through to the next round, even if they show great promise and potential. The jury has therefore decided to create a joint fourth prize which will be awarded to this year’s three semi-finalists each of whom will receive 1000 euros: JI Won Song (23), Karen Kido (21) and Soo-Hyun Park (26).’
First prize was awarded jointly to 23 year old Ji Yoon Lee from South Korea and 25 year old Liya Petrova from Bulgaria and third prize was awarded to 25 year old Luke Hsu from the United States.
Anthea Kreston’s weekly diary on life in the international Artemis Quartet. Compelling, as ever:
The North America tour is complete. 11 days, 9 concerts, one video session, one photo session, several interviews, two trains, one rental car, one cold, 10 flights, one massage, three HIIT exercise sessions, one visit to Niagara Falls, one Bikram Yoga. Chicago, NYC, Schnectady, Buffalo, Cincinnati, Toronto, Connecticut, NYC, Montreal. Reviews were great, audiences fantastic, quartet grew in each concert – personalities flourished and group sounds meshed. To be totally honest, it was in some ways much harder than I anticipated. In other ways (such as a quartet flow and group cohesion) it vastly exceeded my expectations.
During tour, the daily schedule (of course every day is different, but this is a general schedule) goes something like this.
6 am wake up, shower and eat
7 am leave for airport (train/car)
2 pm arrive at destination city
3 pm arrive at hotel – options in this two hours and 15 minutes are: eat your most nourishing meal of the day, practice, nap, FaceTime family, exercise
5:15 pm leave for hall
5:30-7 pm Beast building and rehearsal
8 pm concert
10:30 pm break-down stage
11:30 pm back to hotel to pack
The obvious difficulties here are being able to be well-rested, focused for the concert (of which the first several are jet-lagged), and well-nourished. There is often not a good breakfast option (this is a big difference from the European tours), and dinner is not really possible either. Eating after the concert is too late, and before there is not time. Our back-stage rider includes things like fruit, cheese, crackers, nuts, and drinks. This happened more often than not, which is a life-saver. In Chicago, my mother delivered four emergency food bags for us with trail mix, powdered miso soup, and peanut butter and jelly.
I have gotten great advice from teachers over the years – two bits of which I follow religiously. Well, actually three. The first was from Phil Setzer from the Emerson Quartet. He told me to buy a new pack of underwear before every tour, because the endless washing in the sink every night is a real bummer. I can tell you that by the end of the tour I could smell my suitcase when it was zipped up. And I don’t even want to talk about how I smelled personally. Ok – that was gross. Second bit of advice – never get on a plane without an emergency peanut-butter and jelly. My teacher said – “you may not eat one of them for a year’s worth of flights, but one day it will save you like you never thought possible!”. The third piece of advice was from Ida Kavafian. When I was studying with her I was just beginning to play professional concerts (read:getting paid to play violin). She said to me, “Anthea, you sound great, but from now on you can’t miss any more notes. People won’t pay you if you do”. Tell it like it is! Love that.
So – the hard part of tour. I had experienced, during our first tour in Europe, an interesting swing in the group rehearsal and atmosphere dynamic around concert number 5. The comments during our dress rehearsal were shorter, more to the point, less finessed and with a frustrated tone of voice. There was even what I would classify as our first fight. I spoke to a quartet member after the rehearsal and they said – “oh – that always happens around concert number 5, I don’t know why”. Incidentally, my brother-in-law had recently mentioned something like this as well – the 5th concert annoying rehearsal – which he has experienced a lot touring with a quartet. Hmm – I wonder if this is fixable? I decided to bring fresh strawberries to the next rehearsal. Maybe that helped a little.
So – as we approached concert 5 on the North American tour, I decided to head it off and see if we could just sail through and not get testy. I wrote a Group Sworn Statement and asked everyone to recite it with me. It went over better with some than others, but I think it could certainly be a good thing to read together for any group – could even work for an entire orchestra, I suppose.
Here goes:
5th Concert Group Sworn Statement
Raise your left hand, and place your right on your music.
I, (fill in the blank), so solemnly swear the following:
I hereby pledge to
Optional group activity
So – this actually worked. We didn’t get annoyed. We stayed nice and generous. Fantastic!
I know that I am usually very optimistic and relentlessly goal-oriented and problem-solving. But this is not to say that I am always happy. No one is. I had a hard time around concert 8. I was lonely, overwhelmed, and home-sick. No one answered my calls for two days. I felt isolated. I cried. The quartet saw me cry. But, this is normal. This is ok. I got hugs, Jason called, I made a list of things that were stressing me out, and gave the list to everyone. Some things can be fixed (Gregor has gone to Ikea and hired someone to begin installing our kitchen, I almost have health insurance, I hired a German tutor). Some can’t (I miss my family, friends and Oregon). And some will take time (finding our new family balance and adjusting to our new home). This is not easy at all. But we can do it. I know we can.
I saw so many old friends on this tour – old students, colleagues, family, friends. I even had a friend fly from Oregon to see our Carnegie concert. This was a great boost to me – thank you all for coming! Sunday I head back to Berlin with Jason and the girls. We are in Oregon for a short vacation and to wrap up the things we didn’t have a chance to finish before- sell the car, etc.Tomorrow we go to the Saturday Market and meet friends at our favorite bakery. Our footprint here is nearly erased, but I have every confidence in the shape of our new family footprint in Germany. With patience, all things will come.
Richard Elliott, Lecturer in Popular Music at the University of Sussex, has this take on the purple icon:
… A truly eclectic and classical artist.
For this is what Prince was: not in the narrow sense of his interest in Western classical music, but in a far more liberated and liberating understanding and extension of the varied streams of a black classical music tradition that incorporated gospel, jazz, R&B, rock and roll, soul, funk, hip hop and more.
Read full argument here.
Your views on classical definitions?
Only Allan Evans can do this. The encyclopaedic record producer Allan Evans.
Check this out.
The latest episode of Zsolt Bognar’s Living the Classical Life features the effervescent, candid and irrepressible Chicago violinist, Rachel Barton Pine.
She was playing in the Civic Orchestra at 11 and concertmaster at 14. ‘I was told to leave that off when I went to competitions in Europe,’ she laughs, ‘but conductors say to me, “hey I can follow you so easily”.
She had no thought in life other than being a musician, and marrying one. But she ended up marrying a non-musician, a computer specialist who travels everywhere with her and their child, moving home from one hotel room to the next.
It wasn’t always like that. ‘Because my father was unemployed for much of my childhood… Our phone and electricity were being turned off all the time, we’d be one missed payment from losing the roof over our heads…’
Experience Rachel’s joie-de-vivre:
Simon Zagorski-Thomas, professor at the University of West London, has used his 15 minutes of fame on BBC Radio 4 to argue that popular music should be given more academic attention and funding.
‘It seems to be up to the younger universities to take the lead in analysing musical forms that live outside of the world of the classical score and to create a musicology that is more relevant to our experience of music now.’
His rant has annoyed a lot of classical academics and his institution is hardly a rain-maker of serious opinion. Still, you may use it to define your definitions of classical music.
Listen to the 15-minute talk here.
The wealthy one-armed pianist Paul Wittgenstein commissioned left-hand concertos from numerous composers, among them Prokofiev, Strauss, Schmidt and Britten. The most successful was by Maurice Ravel but the composer (below) was reported to be dissatisfied with the performance.
Listen to this 1937 recording and you can see why.
Especially at 1:40 –>; 2:55 – 3:10; 11:10 –> 11:30
Fascinating stuff.
