In one of the BBC’s more dubious recent appointments, apparatchik James Purnell has been named director of radio, with responsibility for the corporation’s orchestras and education departments.
Purnell, a Labour Islington councillor who joined Blair at Downing Street in 1997, was promoted to the Cabinet as Culture Secretary in 2007 and to Work and Pensions Secretary a year later. He resigned under Gordon Brown.
Purnell’s former senior civil servant at the Culture Department, Alan Davey, is now head of Radio 3.
Neither man has experience of making programmes.
In order to compensate for Purnell’s shortcomings, ‘The BBC is to look to appoint an experienced radio executive under Purnell to run the operation day-to-day to make up for his lack of hands-on experience.’
So that another £250k job created.
The BBC’s D-G Tony Hall said recently ‘I’ve talked a lot about a BBC that’s more digital, more open and more global than ever.’ This appointment is a direct contravention of his policy. It is even more questionable in the current political environment where the Blair era is discredited by all major parties.
Purnell will be a key player in charter negotiations with a Government that regards him as a loser. He will also have the ultimate say on the survival of BBC orchestras.
His chief merit is having the ear and confidence of Tony Hall.
The Guardian now tips Purnell to be Hall’s successor. It’s a bleak day for the BBC.
Czech media have reported the death of Karel Ruzicka, one of the country’s foremost jazz pianists, educators and composers who features on many recordings.
His son, bearing the same name, teaches at the New York Jazz Academy.
Peter, who will be 81 at the weekend, was taken to hospital with a heart related issue and will not return to the jury. We send him warm wishes for a swift recovery.
UPDATE: Peter has undergone a surgical procedure and is raring to return to the jury for the semifinals.
Stefana Atlas, whom many knew at the right hand of the late Kurt Masur, has set up her own New York agency inside faltering CAMI.
Her first signing, announced today, is the Singaporean conductor Kachun Wong, winner of this year’s Mahler Competition in Bamberg. Wong started out as a Kurt Masur protege.
Stefana’s biggest catch so far is the new CBSO music director Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla.
Earlier this week Riccardo Muti, music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, played piano at a recital for more than 60 young men, average age 16, at the Illinois Youth Center, Chicago.
Joyce DiDonato and Eric Owens sang a programme of arias accompanied by Maestro Muti at the piano. CSO musicians Cynthia Yeh (Principal Percussion), Gene Pokorny (Principal Tuba) and Jennifer Gunn (Flute/Piccolo) also performed.
A Todd Rosenberg photograph of the event has just been released (right-click to enlarge it).
Joyce DiDonato sang:
Handel: “Lascia ch’io pianga” from Rinaldo
Jake Heggie: “Si, son io” from Great Scott
Eric Owens sang:
Verdi: “Infelice! E tuo credevi” from Ernani
Harry Thacker Burleigh: “Deep River” (Traditional/Arr.)
Reuben Malusi Khemese, cellist of the Soweto String Quartet and pioneer of South African chamber music, collapsed on Wednesday and died at 62.
The group, built around brothers violinists Sandile and Thami and cellist Reuben Khamese, played at Nelson Mandela’s inauguration in 1994.
Sandile Khemese said: ‘Reuben lost his wife in a tragic car accident five years ago and he never really recovered from that.’
The tenor may have cancelled Meistersinger in Munich and other early-season engagements. But his Puccini night at La Scala is being traded like hot chestnuts on the media market.
Sky has taken U.K. broadcast rights for the La Scala opera production featuring the acclaimed singer, with Sky Arts additionally taking rights in Germany and New Zealand. Starline has also closed a deal with DTS (CanalXtra) in Spain. Further rights have been to sold to HRT for Croatia, Czech TV for Czech Republic, YLE for Finland, NRK for Norway, and SVT in Sweden. Air Emirates has secured the film for in-flight broadcast.
In the new issue of Standpoint magazine, I write about the quest for the elusive audience – the one that never coughs, sits on the edge of its seats and seems to need the music more than the musicians need to play it.
Pierre Boulez called it l’idéale audience, a listenership so avid it practically sucks the music out of artists. Most performers go through their entire lives without ever encountering an audience of this intensity. I think I may have found one a few miles up the road from Toscanini’s.
The Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra has named Joachim Becerra Thomsen of Danish Radio as its next principal flute.
Joachim, who is 21, has been principal previously at Finnish Radio and the Royal Danish Orchestra.
A New Jersey music store owner says the Republican candidate shortchanged him of $30,000 in a piano sale.
My relationship with Trump began in 1989, when he asked me to supply several grand and upright pianos to his then-new Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City. I’d been running a music store for more than 30 years at that point, selling instruments to local schools and residents. My business was very much a family affair (my grandsons still run the store). And I had a great relationship with my customers — no one had ever failed to pay.
I was thrilled to get a $100,000 contract from Trump. It was one of the biggest sales I’d ever made. I was supposed to deliver and tune the pianos; the Trump corporation would pay me within 90 days. I asked my lawyer if I should ask for payment upfront, and he laughed. “It’s Donald Trump!” he told me. “He’s got lots of money.”
But when I requested payment, the Trump corporation hemmed and hawed. Its executives avoided my calls and crafted excuses. After a couple of months, I got a letter telling me that the casino was short on funds. They would pay 70 percent of what they owed me. There was no negotiating. I didn’t know what to do — I couldn’t afford to sue the Trump corporation, and I needed money to pay my piano suppliers. So I took the $70,000….
Adrian Naidin, solo cellist of the Bucharest radio orchestra, says masked police on a drugs raid burst into his apartment early Wedneday morning. Panicked, he jumped from a first floor window, broke a finger in his right hand and was taken to hospital. He maintains the police mistook his address for a neighbour’s.
The police say they got the right address and found 500 grams of cannabis and 5 grams of cocaine.
Whatever the outcome, Adrian has cancelled his concert on October 10.
He says: ‘I am in the hospital because of police incompetence. This morning, a masked intervention patrol of the police raided one of my neighbours. Unfortunately, the police officers got the wrong door and thought that my apartment’s door gives them access to a haven for drug addicts, so they broke it and entered my place.’
The influential Opernwelt magazine has published its annual awards for 2016.
Director of the year: Barrie Kosky (Komische Oper, Berlin)
Conductor: Teodor Currentzis
Singer: Christian Gerhaher
Orchestra: Bavarian Opera
Chorus: Dutch National Opera
World premiere: Georg Friedrich Haas, ‘Koma’ at Darmstadt
