There has been general consternation abroad at the decision by Zurich’s Tonhalle orchestra to sack its young music director, Lionel Bringuier, after just one four-year term.

lionel bringuier

Musicians tell us they found his rehearsals boring and unstructured and decided it was time for him to go.

Is that so? The most boring rehearsal conductor in recent memory was Claudio Abbado, who drove most of the London Symphony Orchestra and some in the Berlin Philharmonic to despair. But the players persisted until they got used to his methods and eventually they reaped great rewards.

Bringuier has been assistant to Esa-Pekka Salonen and Gustavo Dudamel, both of whom vouch for his talent. What he didn’t learn from them should have been augmented by experienced musicians in the Tonhalle orchestra. But they showed no patience or sympathy for a conductor on a learning curve and let it be known that they’d had enough.

A weak manager and a dumb board of bankers and local worthies simply did their bidding.

That’s how the Swiss run their orchestras.

In Geneva, where two managers walked out of the Orchestra de la Suisse Romande, they still don’t know if Jonathan Nott will sign his contract as music director. If he sees what’s happening in Zurich, he should decline.

Zurich and Geneva are the two premier orchestras in Switzerland and their clockwork has broken down.

Happily, the Lucerne Festival has saved the nations reputation. Its new music director Riccardo Chailly has begun with a Mahler Eighth blast and the orchestra is the envy of the continent.

Bringuier, meanwhile, made his Salzburg Festival debut this week.

The soprano put out an international call for illustrations to express the spirit of her new DG album, Verismo.

She picked an Argentine entrant as the winner.

netrebko design1

Her name is Luz Diaz.

Anna-Netrebko-Designcontest

The biographer, opera librettist and novelist, one of the co-founders of the Salzburg Festival, has been finally commemorated in the town with a Stolperstein outside his former house, marking him as one of Hitler’s victims.

Zweig and his second wife, Lotte, committed suicide in Brazilian exile in February 1942.

Stefan_Zweig suicide

Based on searches recorded between 28 July and 16 August 2016.

1 David Helfgott – 705 average daily searches

david helfgott

2 Daniel Barenboim – 491

3 Andre Previn – 475

4 Martha Argerich – 414

5 Lang Lang – 397

6 Yuja Wang – 377

7 Philip Willcher (Australian children’s composer and pianist) – 234

8 Valentina Lisitsa – 231

9 Khatia Buniatishvili – 223

Khatia+Buniatishvili+photo+Julia+Wesley

10 Evgeny Kissin – 180

 

 

We have been sent a list of the 100 most searched classical pianists on Wikipedia, the global reference site. Since the site lists every musician who ever touched a keyboard as a pianist, it’s not suprising that Mozart comes first with an average 5,631 searches a day, Beethoven second with 4,668 and Chopin third with about half as many.

The big eye-opener is who comes fourth. It’s John Cale, one of the founders of Velvet Underground and about as classical as Johnny Rotten.

5 Gershwin

6 Liszt

7 Stravinsky

8 Ludovico Einaudi, the icy Italian minimalist

einaudi cold

 

9 Herbie Hancock

10 Leonard Bernstein, averaging 1,077 searches a day

11 Rachmaninov

12 Shostakovich.

No one else tops 1,000 searches a day.

The findings, collated over viewings in the past two weeks, suggest that Wikipedia needs to tighten up its search criteria to define what is classical and what is a pianist. Among other personalities listed are Samantha Bentley, an English porn star (421 views) and Mark Rutte, Dutch prime minister (338). It may be safely assumed that those searching their names on Wikipedia are not planning to book them for a Liszt concerto.

From the above data, we have compiled a mini list of professional concert pianists still alive and playing. Click here for thrills and spills.