A new photoshoot has landed from the Italian pianist Vanessa Benelli Mosell.
She plays Stockhausen.
First Bob Dylan with the Nobel.
Now the minimalist composer has been presented with the 2016 Chicago Tribune Literary Prize.
What the heck’s going on?
The Czech Museum of Music has acquired a legacy of letters and memorabilia of the great soprano Emmy Destinn, formerly owned by her close friend Hilda Schueler. They have been donated to the Czechs by Mrs Schueler’s Swedish grandchildren.
Destinn is of such national significance that she has appeared on the currency. The bequest was accepted in person today by the Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka at the Czech Embassy in Stockholm.
More here.
This weekend, Christopher Warren-Green is conducting Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’ marvellous piece An Orkney Wedding with Sunrise with the Charlotte Symphony.
Chris was friends with the composer and visited him at home in Orkney not long before his death earlier this year. Max inscribed the following instruction on the front of his score:
(right-click to enlarge)
‘Think about Highland Park or Scapa (MY favourite!) before lifting the baton – & afterwards, down a FEW most generous glasses! Much love & infinite thanks, Max.’
Sorely missed.
CLEVELAND – On November 2, 2016, members of the string section of The Cleveland Orchestra performed the National Anthem at Game 7 of the 2016 World Series.
(No-one asked the Chicago Symphony, apparently.)
The eight musicians included first violinists Takako Masame, Chul-In Park, and Jeanne Preucil Rose; principal second violinist Stephen Rose; second violinist Carolyn Gadiel Warner; cellist David Alan Harrell; and bassist Mark Atherton as well as violinist Stephen Warner, who retired from the orchestra earlier this year.
photo: Cleveland Orchestra/Getty press
Chicago, however, won the Series.
Khatia Buniatishvili, the Georgian superstar pianist, has decided to grow her profile in English speaking territories by signing up with Stefana Atlas and Doug Sheldon at Cami for UK and North American management.
Khatia, 29, has a huge public and media following in France and Germany. It’s not yet clear if she will retain her original Paris management, Jacques Thelen, for Europe. She has played rarely in the US in the past three years and was previously with Lang Lang’s agency, CAMI Music, which did not know what to make of her.
This is a fresh start with two experienced and dedicated agents.
Some sixty to a hundred Juilliard students turned out this morning to face down three envoys of the Westboro Baptist Church who denounced the school as a den of pride and vanity.
Police kept the two groups fifty feet apart.
First report and pictures here.
The ROH has announced it is streaming 12 productions of opera and ballet to Russian cinemas this season.
It’s not clear what, if anything, the Met is doing in Russia. Click on their website for overseas webcasts and you get directed to cinemas in the New York area.
Press release, just in:
The great Siberian baritone Dimitri Hvorostovsky will give a rare recital this Remembrance Sunday, the 13th of November in the stunning surroundings of the Raphael Gallery at the Victoria & Albert Museum. Dimitri will perform songs by Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov and Richard Strauss accompanied by Ivari Ilja on the piano.
This gala evening is being given to raise funds for the ArtPointFoundation’s work providing bursaries at the Royal College of Musicians.
To purchase tickets please email 13november@artpointfoundation.org.
Jean-Michel Damian died in the night of November 1. He was 69.
The most erudite and unassuming of French radio presenters, he was loved by generations of listeners who discovered music through his programmes.
The South Bank’s CEO, Alan Bishop, announced his retirement today, effective next year.
A former Saatchi ad man who was inserted by the Gordon Brown government in 2008, Bishop has maintained an invisible profile while steadily diluting the arts centre’s offer from high culture to general recreation.
Tributes are trickling in for his outstanding achievement.
Bishop’s successor is more likely to be recruited from industry than from the arts, more’s the pity.
The solo flute of Russia’s National Philharmonic Orchestra, Vladimir Shamidanov, was attacked by three men in a Moscow subway station, robbed of his instruments and money and beaten badly, according to local music media.
He suffered a dislocated shoulder and has issued a desperate appeal for the return of his instruments.
He said one flute, made in Boston was bought for him by the conductor Vladimir Spivakov for the specific purpose of playing Shostakovich symphonies. Its estimated value is half a million rubles ($16,000).
