The tenor was due back this week from a two-month layoff with a vocal injury. But what was first described as a minor delay with a severe cold is now classed as ‘health problems’.

He has cancelled next week’s recital at the Teatro Real in Madrid.

The Polish-American violinist Henri Temianka, who was born in Greenock and spent his childhood there, will be commemorated tomorrow, his 110th birthday, with the presentation of a bronze bust to his home town museum.

He left Scotland at the age of nine to study with Carel Blitz in Rotterdam but he remains Greenock’s most celebrated son.

Aside from his solo career, Temianka founded and played first violin in the Paganini String Quartet.

He died, aged 85, in 1992.

Headline in Rupert Murdoch’s Australian outlet today: Australia’s biggest taxpayer rip-off: Is it time for the fat lady to sing?

Headline in Murdoch’s London Times today: Taxpayer’s bill for English Opera hits £155,000 a show.

Do we catch the drift?

The Aussie article argues: Is opera the ultimate waste of public money? We give them big sums, but not many people actually attend. I have nothing against opera as an art form — I have been and enjoyed it. I support arts funding in general. But opera is just one genre of live music and we’re clearly putting too much money into it.

The English one claims: The cost to the taxpayer of each English National Opera performance has risen to £155,000 after the company scaled back its work to cope with funding cuts. The figure, an increase from £112,000 of subsidy for each show last season…

Since when was opera a value-for-money proposition?

And who’s stoking the flames of rampant philistinism?

The Government will sustain music hubs in schools over the next four years at a cost of £300 million – up from £271m for the past four years.

The hubs are designed to draw a wider demographic spectrum into playing instruments, singing in choirs and other musical activities, as well as providing casual employment for music teachers in deprived parts of the country.

Critics call them a patchwork solution, but they fill some of the wasteland left by local authority cuts.

More facts here.

It gets dark enough in Norway at this time of year without the musicians having to get kitted out in mortuary black.

So the Norwegian radio orchestra is trying out shades of green – women in green or blue-green frocks, men in ties of varying verdancy.

Does that work for you?

photos: Alexandru Dole

The Boston Symphony conductor won’t be back in Bavaria any time soon after last summer’s disastrous falling out with the powers-that-be.

Nelsons has committed twice as much time to Tanglewood in 2017 and – adding insult to injury – he will put on a first Rhinegold with the BSO, possibly the start of a Ring.

He will spend four weeks in Tanglewood, and they look jam-packed.

From the press release:

In what promises to be one of the highlights of the 2017 Tanglewood season, and a significant event in the world of opera, Mr. Nelsons will lead the first BSO concert performance of the complete Das Rheingold, the first of the four dramas that make up Wagner’s masterpiece Der Ring des Nibelungen. The performance will feature Thomas J. Mayer as Wotan, Sarah Connolly as Fricka, and Jochen Schmeckenbecher as Alberich, among other eminent and prestigious singers known the world over for their acclaimed performances of Wagner’s music. Mr. Nelsons will also conduct BSO Artistic Partner Thomas Adès’s Three Studies from Couperin, on a program with music of Haydn and Ravel, and Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 with Daniil Trifonov as soloist. Kristine Opolais joins Mr. Nelsons and the BSO for a performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 on a program with Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5 in A, with teenaged violinist Daniel Lozakovich in his BSO debut; Ms. Opolais will also be featured in a Nelsons-led opera gala program with baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky. For his first Tanglewood Opening Night concert, Mr. Nelsons will lead the BSO in Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, Resurrection, with soloists Malin Christensson and Bernarda Fink. Mr Nelsons leads the BSO’s season-closing concert, beginning the program with Ives’s “The Housatonic at Stockbridge,” from Three Places in New England, prior to the traditional performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, Ode to Joy.

It’s Andris’s birthday today. He’s 38.

Way to go.

Elisabeth Braw has written a smart piece today in the Economist on the rising competitiveness of Chinese orchestras and classical musicians:

It is in bringing orchestras, opera performances and top individual performers to the West that China is showing its real clout. Jindong Cai of Stanford University, who conducts in both China and the United States, describes the push in soft-power terms: “A product manufactured in China is not as important for China’s international profile. Cultural power is much more important.”

She’s absolutely right (full article here).

But we’re hearing rumbles of anxiety. The Chinese classical boost was powered by Lang Lang and Yundi Li. Both rose at the turn of the century.

Since then, however, there has been no Chinese star of comparable magnitude. Without another driver, the train will run out of steam.

Much of the new talent seems to be Korean.

A court decision in Berlin has aroused fears for the survival of major music publishers.

The court ruled that it was illegal for GEMA, the rights collecting agency, to share payouts to publishers as well as creative artists.

A Schott official warned immediately that several publishers might have to shut down.

More here.

Niklas Benjamin Hoffman, 26, was declared winner of the LSO Donatella Flick conducting competition last night.

A student of Nicolas Pasquet, Gunter Kahlert, Markus Frank and Martin Hoff at the Franz Liszt University of Music, Weimar, Niklas is chief conductor of the academic orchestra in Göttingen.

He wins £15,000 and an assistant conductor’s post with the LSO.

Runners up were Vlad Vizireanu of Romania and Kerem Hasan from the UK.

The competition is restricted to citiens of the 28 EU states. The rules may have to change, post-Brexit.

See here for past winners.

press release:

WILLIAM MATHEUS SULLIVAN FOUNDATION SINGER AWARDS ANNOUNCED FOR 2017

A viola player in the Gewandhaus orchestra, Tahlia Petrossian, had the cool idea of picking up soloists after the concert and taking them down to the Moritzbastei Club next to the concert hall for a jam session.

She calls it Klassik Underground. So far, Leif Ove Andsnes, Anne-Sophie Mutter and Kirill Gerstein have followed her down to the club. Joshua Bell is next.

Sometimes, she posts the performances on social media.

Her experiment has worked so well that the Gewandhaus are planning to make it official in the next few days, with funding provided by the Eliette and Herbert von Karajan Institute and Blüthner Pianos.

You read it here first.

Here’s one we made earlier.

The death is reported of Tomislav Neralić, a Croatian bass-baritone with an international career.

Recruited by the Vienna Opera in 1943, he sang there for four years before returning to Zagreb to develop his Wagner and Verdi roles with the conductor Lovro von Matacic.

Flying Dutchman was his signature role. he sang it 123 times, including epic performances at Berlin and La Scala. He was much in demand as Hans Sachs and Falstaff.

He often shared a stage with Birgit Nilsson.