The Pittsburgh music director has been talking to his hometown paper, Vienna’s Kurier, about making ends meet and filling the house in a city that is drifting away from European culture.

He gets his musicians to introduce each concert on video and is encouraging young people to attend his concerts dressed in jeans.

Read here.

He’s in Detroit this week.

He was meant to be playing the Elgar concerto with Leonard Slatkin but changed his mind a few weeks ago and will perform a work of his own, ‘Dedications’, its movements named after Jarek Smietana, Isaac Stern, Stephane Grappelli and Mark O’Connor.

The former wild-child British violinist, now 59, last played in the US in 1998. No reason is known for his long absence, but caprice may be a factor.

The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation has given $275,000 to classical and jazz composer Wayne Horvitz.

Out of the blue.

Free to do with as he pleases.

Barabara Haveman jumped in last night at La Scala in the opening of Robert Carsen’s new production of Fanciulla del West, conducted by Riccardo Chailly.

She replaced her fellow-Dutch soprano Eva Maria Westbroek, who is unwell.

The show received a 9-minute ovation and very few boos. This may have been Haveman’s Scala debut.

In Vienna, Alexandra LoBianco messaged: ‘What did I just do tonight….oh wow, what a night.’

The young American replaced Anne Schwanewilms as Leonore in Fidelio.

It’s a good time for singers to stay close to their phones.