Sheku Kanneh-Mason, 17, from Nottingham, was named winner of BBC Young Musician 2016.
Bio: Sheku attends Trinity Catholic Comprehensive School in Nottingham. He began playing the cello aged 6 with Sarah Huson-Whyte of Southwell. At age 9 achieved the ABRSM Marguerite Swan Memorial Prize for Grade 8 cello, gaining the highest UK marks that year. He holds the ABRSM Junior Scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music, where he has been studying cello with Ben Davies since 2008. He also studied piano with Druvi de Saram.
The Georgian bass Paata Burchuladze, 61, has confirmed he is cancelling international performances for the next year in order to run in national elections this October.
He says: ‘I am forced to leave the sweet and good life of an opera career and go into politics. This is not because I’m a good person or politician, but because the country is in a very bad condition.’
We hear that the board of l’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande in Geneva has parted company with Jean-Pierre Rousseau, its stand-in manager for the past two months.
The vastly experienced Rousseau, a former Radio France exec, left on Monday. The board, apparently refused to renew his contract, described as ‘ad interim pour une durée indéterminée’.
But with Rousseau gone there is still no-one else in sight to replace Henk Swinnen, who vanished in February. It may be that no manager of quality would go near so tainted a board of management.
The OSR holds its annual press conference this Thursday. Rousseau was meant to present it.
Meanwhile, the intended music director Jonathan Nott is still withholding ink from a contract.
Anywhere else but Geneva, the orchestra board would be held accountable by media and politicians.
But this is Switzerland, Fifa land.
Ask no questions.
Herbert Blomstedt, 88, has been named Honorary Conductor of the Dresden Staatskapelle.
He is only the second conductor, after Sir Colin Davis, to be awarded that title.
A bunch of finance and legal guys in New York have put together an Adolf Busch Award, named after the anti-Nazi violinist and conductor, one of the first to leave Germany in 1933.
The award’s aim is to further Busch’s ideals by ‘promoting a more just and civil society through an annual award for individuals and organizations using music for social good.’
Do you do any of that?
There’s a $10,000 prize. Applications close on June 30.
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The French Ambassador to the Ukraine, Isabelle Dumont, has been seen playing in the cello section of the Kharkiv Regional Philharmonic, an act of pure diplomacy and no little pleasure.
Ms Dumont had considered becoming a professional musician before a different career beckoned. She still keeps up her cello practise.
Next posting, Vienna?
It’s not often we find ourselves on the same side of the barricades with Julian Lloyd Webber on two consecutive major issues but – as with the London concerthall farce – Julian has called out the BBC for losing Young Musiain of the Year in its schedules and ending live transmission of any of the rounds, even of this afternoon’s final.
It is – as we’ve pointed out – a hopeless bureaucratic cock-up, like so much else in the BBC’s classical management.
Julian goes further in a Times article. (Tonight), he writes, the BBC will screen the final of its Young Musician 2016 competition. This will probably come as news to you as the BBC has been systematically downgrading its invaluable showcase for young classical musicians to the point where it now comes and goes almost unnoticed. This is hard on the competition’s brilliant participants who nowadays find it increasingly difficult to get any exposure for their talent and for the results of their countless hours of gruelling practice.
The Swedish wunderkind Daniel Lozakovich, 15, has won first prize at the international Spivakov competition in Ufa.
Joint second were Agnes Langer, 23, from Hungary and Mai Suzu, 26, from Japan.
The jury was chaired by the competition’s founder Vladimir Spivakov, who spotted Daniel when he was a child and gave him a debut with the Moscow Soloists at the age of nine. As soon as Daniel’s name appeared among the entrants, it was clear that this was intended to be his coming-of-age. Spivakov had originally announced Mikhail Kopelman as jury chair, but decided to take the seat himself to make sure all went smoothly.
Daniel, who wins a pedigree 19th century violin, is unquestionably a considerable talent, He has a UK-based agent and is being lined up for a major-label deal. He did not need this lopsided competition.
