Violinist Barbara Govatos messages from Saratoga Springs:

‘So proud of my colleagues in the Philadelphia Orchestra especially tonight at SPAC when the lights went out on us toward the end of Vivaldi’s Spring Concerto from the Four Seasons with Josh Bell.

No one stopped playing and it was stupendous. The audience loved it. Another great moment in Philadelphia Orchestra history! Seemed appropriate for SPAC’s 50th anniversary….’

philadelphia saratoga

 

Horacio Salgán, who turned 100 in June, died this weekend in Buenos Aires.

He composed many classics of Argentine tango, among them  Del 1 al 5 (Días de pago), Entre tango y tango, Grillito and more.

Louis Stewart, a guitarist who played with Benny Goodman and George Shearing and was a member of Ronnie Scott’s quartet, has died at 72.

Ireland’s president Michael D Higgins paid this tribute: ‘It is with great sadness that I have learnt of the death of Louis Stewart, outstanding musician and iconic figure in the world of jazz in Ireland. His many admirers, of all ages, will miss him deeply – and in particular he will be missed by all those he encouraged and who, in a life devoted to music, he invited to join him in making music.’

louis stewart

The beautiful opera singer Daniela Dessi died in Brescia last night, August 20. She was diagnosed with cancer and began treatment only last month.

Our hearts go out to her husband, the tenor Fabio Armiliato, and their family.

daniela dessi

Fabio messaged: ‘A short, horrible and incomprehensible illness has taken her away in these months. The greatest opera singer of the last 20 years has gone.’

daniela dessi2

Engaged by Claudio Abbado at La Scala in the early 1980s, she was quickly taken up by Muti, Mehta, Sinopoli and other leading music directors, as well as major record labels. James Levine brought her to the Met.

She often appeared with her partner, Fabio Armiliato. The pair were singing Aida together in Berlin on the night in April 2001 when their friend Giuseppe Sinopoli collapsed and died in the pit. They never forgot the horror of that moment or the nearness of mortality.

 

The marvellous Israeli composer Andre Hajdu, who died at the beginning of this month, was a devout and learned man who saw no contradiction between his religious immersion and his advanced musical ideas.

In this clip from a TV documentary, he takes a familiar passages from the Talmud and works it through with his music students.

Yeshiva was never this much fun.

Music starts at 0:58.

Eckart Preu, a US-based German conductor, is to be music director of the Long Beach Symphony.

Preu, 47, is already in charge at two US orchestras, Spokane and Stamford. He’ll drop Stamford on moving to the beach.

eckart preu

A call went out on Facebook for volunteers to attend the funeral of a woman who died, aged 83, in a New York home, leaving no family or friends.

Some thirty people responded.

new york funeral

The rabbi said at the funeral that he had just discovered that Frances Stein used to teach piano at the Juilliard School.

Remember her?

 

Rare video of Ida Haendel playing Paganini and Bach in the 1980s, newly posted on Youtube.

This is how it used to be done.

It didn’t take Boris Giltburg very long to find a piano at Delft station in the Netherlands.

Boris is winner of the 2013 Queen Elisabeth competition.

But what’s he playing here?

Nothing easy.

UPDATE: As correctly identified by one reader below, it’s Prokofiev’s seventh sonata – not the stuff you expect to hear in a railway waiting room.

The remarkable Russian pianist has signed a book contract with Orion publishers for a memoirs that he has written together with the St Petersburg writer, Marina Arshinova.

The book, to be published in 2017, covers his early years and development in the Soviet Union, his debuts with Karajan, Giulini, Levine and other conductors, and his slowly-discovered love for the Yiddish language.

kissin karajan-8

Karajan’s wife Eliette said Kissin’s debut was the only time she saw her husband weep.

From the Lebrecht Album of the Week:

I am beginning to wonder if posterity will ever place Bohuslav Martinu where he justly belongs, as the last in a quartet of Czech geniuses, after Smetana, Dvorak and Janacek. With each passing year, Martinu (1890-1959) seems to recede further into the mists, his 16 operas unstaged, his six symphonies unperformed. Czechs find him too cosmopolitan – he lived most of his life in France and the US – while others are daunted by his mountainous output. There are more than 400 recorded works by Martinu, all of high proficiency. When the innocent ear catches Martinu for the first time, it recognises a  sound world that is at once distinctive and entirely approachable, ever the mark of a great composer.

Read on here… and here.

martinu cat

 

The London Symphony Orchestra has illustrated its new season brochure with specially commissioned pictures of its longest serving players and staff – anyone who has been on the books over 25 years.

It’s a lovely idea and, while no-one comes close to the international list of alltime longest-serving players, there are quite a few who have given their whole lives to the orchestra – none more so than director of planning Sue Mallet, with 49 years notched on the back of her chair (not that she ever sits down).

The longest serving musician is first violinist Colin Renwick, at 38 years.

All of which set us wondering who are the veteran players across the UK, the ones who have put in most years.

Post your candidates in Comments below.

belinda mcfarlane hilary jones

Belinda McFarlane (2nd Violin 25 years), Hilary Jones (Cello, 24)

photo (c) Ranald Mackechnie