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Happy birthday, Riccardo Muti! E multi anni!

Best after-dinner speech:

Best pre-dinner symphony:

Best encore:

From Krysia Osostowicz, 1st violin of the Dante Quartet and professor at the Guildhall:

krusia

 

Last night at 7pm my violin was stolen from outside Brixton tube station while I was unlocking my bike.

The violin is by Francesco Goffriller, but not labelled and is in an oblong brown Gewa case along with three bows: a Voirin, a Tubbs and an Ouchard.

The case contains a Kun shoulder rest and Melos rosin. The zip compartment has no music but one A4 sheet of handwritten paper.

As you can imagine, I am desperate to recover my violin and bows. Please share this with all your musician friends and colleagues and if you come across it please contact me on 07976755082 or 07917261441 (a reward is offered). PLEASE SHARE!

 

UPDATE: A swift and happy ending.

 

Before

andrew davis proms2

After

andrew davis proms

Terrific action pics of Andrew Davis by Chris Christodoulou/Lebrecht Music&Arts

The Vega Quartet have been resident at Emory University in Atlanta for the past decade.

In that time, they’ve kept changing leaders.

The new first is Elizabeth Fayette, 28, a Curtis and Juilliard grad.

 

elizabeth fayette

The PSO have announced the winners of several months of auditions:
Max Blair, associate principal oboe, is a graduate of the Juilliard School and was a fellow with the New World Symphony in Florida for two seasons.

Joseph Campagna, bass, joined the Pittsburgh Symphony in May. He is a former member of the New Jersey Symphony (2011-2016) and a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.

Will Chow, cello, is a 2016 graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. This is his first professional orchestra position.

Jeffrey Dee, principal bass trombone, is a former member of the Buffalo Philharmonic (2007-2016) and the Jacksonville Symphony (2002-2007).

Victoria Luperi, associate principal clarinet, was principal clarinet with the Fort Worth Symphony from 2006 to 2016 and the Winnipeg Symphony from 2002 to 2006. She is the wife of Andrés Franco, assistant conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony.

Brandon McLean, associate principal bass, is the former principal bass (2015-2016) with the Colorado Symphony in Denver. He also served as associate principal bass with the Vancouver Symphony from 2013 to 2015, assistant principal bass with the Florida Orchestra from 2011 to 2013 and a fellow with the New World Symphony from 2008 to 2011.

Karissa Zadinsky, cello, is finishing her studies at the Colburn Conservatory of Music in Los Angeles. This is her first professional orchestra position.

 

karissa zadinsky

The show is a co-production with Aix-en-Provence, where the New York Times headline said it had been reimagined in a ‘violent, racist world’ (though its critic wished the director had gone further).

Edinburgh first circulated the glowing review to prospective ticket buyers, then got cold feet.

It has now alerted patrons that the opera contains ‘adult scenes’ that would be ‘totally unsuitable for children’.

A spokeswoman said: ‘We don’t want to offend anyone. If somebody has bought a ticket, doesn’t think the show will be suitable for them and doesn’t want to come then we will obviously try to help them.’

 

cosi aix

From a thoughtful essay in the New Statesman:

Notions of pluralism are under intense scrutiny in the current US presidential election. Now more than ever, diversity and difference are under attack from the narrow-minded politics of Donald Trump. Harvey Seifter and Peter Economy, the co-authors of Leadership Ensemble: Lessons in Collaborative Management from the World’s Only Conductorless Orchestras, think the Republican nominee could learn a few lessons from the tenets of conductorless orchestras.

“Leadership ensembles are high-performing multi-leader teams that share and rotate leadership roles based on knowledge and expertise, and operate collaboratively on trust, mutual respect, emotional intelligence and integrity,” Seifter says.

“In each of those respects, they are the antithesis of the politics of Donald Trump, and the ethos of Trumpism.”

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Read on here.

The Romanian candidate stormed America’s Got Talent again last night.

This time with some difficulties in her lower register.

It didn’t matter. She got a standing ovation from Simon Cowell, Heidi Klum, and Mel B, along with the obligatory audience hysteria.

‘This is why we made this show,’ said Cowell. ‘So that we can find people like you.’

Laura is now 14. Watch her performance below.
Laura-Bretan-AGT-Quarterfinals-Video-266x200

The Bayreuth music director has given a guarded interview to the London Times.

The feature appears to have been prompted by the BBC Proms, where Thielemann will appear with his Dresden orchestra in September, and by SkyArts, which is livecasting the Bayreuth Ring.

Thielemann, apparently at his most relaxed, says precisely nothing.

Why did Andris Nelsons walk out from Bayreuth? No idea, nothing to do with me. ‘An enigma.’

Why was Serge Dorny fired before he could start his job in Dresden? Blank.

Are you a dictator? ‘No. Not at all. I never was. I have a north German way, half-Saxonian and half-Prussian, and this is very direct; a little rude, but also nice.’

The interview is so guarded that even the photograph is credited on the page ‘courtesy of Christian Thielemann’.

You’ll find it here, behind a paywall.

Christian-Thielemann

The Southwest German Philharmonie has named Ari Rasilainen, 57, as its new chief conductor. He is presently with the Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz in Ludwigshafen.

Like most Finnish batons, Ari is a former student of Jorma Panula, with top-ups from the late Arvid Jansons.

 

ari rasilainen

Marseille-based oboist Patrice Barsey, concerned that some people were unable to attend his concert in the church, repeated the Mozart concerto afterwards in the car park.

 

The critic and psychiatrist Amir Mandel has published a stinging attack in the Haaretz newspaper on the national orchestra, accusing it of failing to renew its repertoire since he first became a subscriber 45 years ago.

I decided to compare what was played in 1966 to what the orchestra is offering next season. One statistic is especially prominent: Over 75 percent of the 2016-17 program contains nothing written in the past 50 years. Quite the opposite was true in 1966, when over 60 percent of the offerings had come from the previous 50 years.

And furthermore: There are even instances when it seems that the IPO is not just treading in place but rather even moving backward, presenting an even more outdated artistic policy than it did half a century ago. For example, in 1966, we find in the program works by William Walton, Michael Tippett and Alban Berg – all 20th-century composers who were part and parcel of the contemporary and vibrant discourse of the world of new music. Not only is a 2016 discourse absent from the upcoming season’s program: Those composers featured in 1966 have almost completely disappeared from its radar screen.

This may have something to do with the IPO having the same maestro and manager team for much of the past 50 years.

Read the full article here.

Israeli Philharmonic conductor Zubin Metha receives an ovation after finishing Mendelssohn's Ouverture The Hebrides  ("Fingal's Cave") op 26 at the Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles late 05 February 2007. Founded by Polish violinist Bronislaw Huberman in 1936, the original orchestra was formed by first-chair musicians of eastern European and German orchestras, who had lost their jobs as a result of nazism. Huberman convinced the musicians to immigrate to Palestine and created the Israel Philharmonic. AFP PHOTO / HECTOR MATA (Photo credit should read HECTOR MATA/AFP/Getty Images)