Here’s the next in the series of Bartok for Europe, played by the Munich Chamber Orchestra at the Allerheiligen-Hofkirche last night. This was the downstairs area. The galleries were completely vacant.

Of the 400 seats available about 120 were occupied, according to a visitor. And perhaps half of those were paid for.

Poor Bartok.

UPDATE: The programme was:

… and that’s way out in Forest Hills, according to a sharp-eyed reader.

Has Peter Gelb signed all other big screens in the city to exclusivity deals?

Here’s the defeated screening announcement from the ROH.

Le Point has been doing the small print on this month’s brutal public accounts report.

An army of highly-paid department heads is crippling the payroll, running at 103 million Euros a year for permanent staff alone….

Read the breakdown here (en francais). Be assured that nothing will change.

Message from Avi Avital:

Here’s something I doubt you knew: Shimon Peres was a mandolin player. Here he is, front row, with his mandolin orchestra in Vishnyeva (today Belarus).

photo: Times of Israel (right-click to enlarge)

Nobody on any side is saying much.

Brent Assink’s letter to staff, telling them he was leaving after 18 years as executive director, made it clear between the lines that he was doing so unwillingly.

Assink, 61, has no other job lined up, or even a clear idea whether he wants to stay in the orchestral business.

The general impression is that he did well to restore good working order after a damaging strike in 2013.

So why is he going?

Some of his less buttoned-up colleagues tell us he couldn’t get along any more with Sakurako Fisher, a member of the Gap clothing dynasty and president of the board since 2012.  When that happens, it is always the competent professional who has to go, while the dilettant donor gets to choose a successor.

Orchestra management in the US is not a job for the faint-hearted.

We have been notified of the closure of Launch Music International Ltd (LMI), an important service provider and distributor of small classical labels. The company, based in Staffordshire, will cease trading by the end of October.

Its labels include Somm, Priory, Guild, Clarinet Classics, Music&Media, Quartz and Stone.

Its founder, Philip Hateley, has decided to get out of business and go into music education. Here’s what he tells us:

Dear Norman – It is with a heavy heart that I announce the planned closure of Launch Music International. The company will cease trading by Monday 31st October. We are currently advising our labels and other clients. Over the last (almost) 8 years we grew from a small export only business offering replication services to small artist driven record labels – in to a complete supply chain for labels of all sizes – offering recording, design and manufacturing – global sales and marketing for both physical and digital products through an extensive network of multiple distributors in most territories – and developed a whole host of other services (online store, publishing, label management, short run duplication, storage, freight forwarding etc etc) along the way.

I hope we brought some new and exciting products to the market that otherwise wouldn’t have seen the light due to the size of the label. We grew to the point where my wife and I simply couldn’t manage it any further — we reached the point where the company needed serious investment in resources, facilities, systems and infrastructure — so, over the last few months we have been talking with companies and offering them our business with a view to being taken over by a larger company with all the things needed to grow already in place. Unfortunately – after long deliberation no deal could be reached – so winding down is the only option and we hope that our labels and manufacturing clients find good homes. I am proud with how LMI has grown and developed over the years – and pleased to have received support from so many people. But – I can’t say that the last 12 months has been fun. So – for me – I’ve decided to exit the industry completely in order to pursue opportunities in music education.

Official reports claimed that the Gasteig hall was half-full for the London Philharmonic’s ‘Bartok for Europe’ concert on Monday.

A reliable source in Munich paints a much worse scenario.

It appears there were fewer than 150 people in a hall of 2,387 seats.

Worse, many of these were ‘paper’ – people who had been invited on free tickets.

The ticket price was, reportedly, 40 to 85 Euros, way above the Munich Philharmonic subscription concerts which cost from 20 to 60 Euros.

The concert was managed from Hungary by Concerto Budapest.

The conductor, Vladimir Jurowsky, came out on stage, looked at the meagre audience and said ‘have I come through the right door?’ (UPDATE: We understand he made these remarks not on stage but some time later.)

Fiasco.

Last week, a Munich critic broke silence over the unrehearsed state of concerts conducted by Valery Gergiev, who is music director of the city’s philharmonic orchestra.

The London Times has now chimed in. Critic Anna Picard writes today:

It seems reasonable to assume that everyone on stage at the Cadogan Hall knew the notes in front of them. This was the first of three all-Prokofiev programmes from Valery Gergiev and the Mariinsky Orchestra: musicians who have grown up with this music and know its virtues, its vicissitudes, its mood swings and contradictory voices.

Precision has never been part of the Gergiev-Mariinsky rough magic package. While not exactly sight-reading, the orchestra played as though rehearsing for the first time, without stopping to correct infelicities of articulation, intonation, blend, balance and ensemble.

Rough, apparently, and by no means ready.

Read full review here (paywall).

Peter Dobrin reports: Any Philadelphia Orchestra-goer for more than four decades could look to the double bass section and reliably set eyes on a tall man with a big double bass and a warm smile. “Lee” to many, Emilio Gravagno will be missed.

Gravagno, 82, played in the orchestra from 1967 to 2009. He was a noted conciliator in frequent disputes between the musicians and the governing board.

After a musicians’ strike in 1996, he took a board member, Carole Haas, out to dinner. Readers, they married in 1999 and lived happily ever after.

Read Peter’s lovely obit here.

photo: Chris Lee

The flamoybant Russian-based conductor has called in sick, ‘with great regret’, on a new production of Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail.

His last-minute replacement is Maxim Emelyanychev, 27, leader of Il Pomo d’Oro ensemble.

If there is one thing that made Shimon Peres happy it was people coming around to sing to him.

The former Israeli prime minister and president, who has died at the age of 93, spent the last third of his life pursuing a peace settlement with the Palestinians. His efforts were widely applauded.

On his 80th birthday, Bill Clinton turned up to sing Imagine (he gets a solo around 1:30).

On his 90th, it was Barbra Streisand.

Earlier this year, an a capella group:

And there was a bold attempt by the late Ofra Haza to get him to join with his political arch-enemy Binyamin Netanyahu in the Hebrew song ‘You and I will change the world’.

As a young news correspondent, I had some dealings with Peres. Unfailingly polite, he gave me a lift back to Jerusalem from David Ben Gurion’s 85th birthday party at Sde Boker, deep in the Negev.

Peres, a cultured man, was so easy to talk to.

May he rest in peace.

Among the bizarre stories of 2016, this one takes the last biscuit in the Pyongyang tin.

The musicians, it seems, were just doing a day’s work. But who were the audience that paid good money to hear a pick-up orchestra conducted by a sworn supporter of the Dear Leader, who lives in Teaneck, New Jersey?

Read the full crackpot story in the Wall Street Journal here.

Sample:

Natalie Rogers, a 65-year-old classical music aficionado from Manhattan, said she was puzzled by the stern, well-dressed Korean men sitting in view of her third-row balcony seat during last week’s performance.

They were Ri Yong Ho, North Korea’s foreign minister, and his associates who were in New York for the United Nations General Assembly. A day later, Mr. Ri delivered a speech at the U.N. that promised to advance North Korea’s nuclear threat.

“I was wondering who they were,” said Ms. Rogers, a performance-anxiety coach, after she learned.