The yellow label has signed  an exclusive agreement with the Juilliard-trained pianist Víkingur Ólafsson. He’s Artistic Director at Reykjavík Midsummer Music.

His debut album will be a Philip Glass tribute.

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The pianist and ensemble leader Diana Ambache has given a large sum to the Association of British Orchestras Trust to fund performance of music by women composers. The only condition? The composer has to be dead.

From the rules:

-Each year £19,000 will be shared between 4 to 5 projects for concerts, tours, recordings and education work deemed to be doing most to advance and promote the understanding of music by women.

-Pieces should be for orchestra including opera and choral works that require an orchestra.

-Please note that if the composer is still alive the piece will be ineligible. Pieces by living women composers may be included in the programme, as long as the historical piece is the main work for which you are seeking funding.

The money was raised by from the sale of a Guarnerius del Gesu violin discovered by Nachman Ambache. The violin was restored by Peter Biddulph and loaned to the Vienna Phiharmonic Orchestra. It was sold in 2013.

Apply here.

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We’ve just been told that the Natalia Ensemble – former members of the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra – are about to attempt the first movement of Mahler’s second, unconducted.

Impossible? Insane? Illegal in the EU?

Looks like they’ve already done a selfie reduction of Mahler 5.
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I helped make a short film for Sotheby’s about the forthcoming sale of the Mahler Second Symphony manuscript.

Sotheby’s say: No autograph of a complete symphony by Mahler has come for sale at auction for nearly 60 years. Indeed, since Sotheby’s sold Mahler’s first symphony in 1959 no autograph of a complete symphony by any of the great late Romantic composers -Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Bruckner or Mahler – has been sold at auction.

Symphonically speaking, this is the sale of the century.

The sale takes place on November 29. You can watch the film below.

mahler second ms

(In the film, I appear to say that Gil Kaplan conducted the symphony 160 times. It was actually 116.)

An Op-ed on this theme in USA Today is getting some mileage. It’s by a lawyer, Jonathan Kaledin, a former player in the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra.

Core argument:

What does it say about us that our federal government spent $245 billion bailing out financial institutions that were “too big to fail,” but it will not consider meaningful support for our magnificent but financially distressed symphony orchestra institutions? Our next president has a huge opportunity to help write the story of America’s orchestras and the arts in general, in a way that has not happened since the Kennedy administration…

Wishful thinking?

More here.

 

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press release:

Nine US composers from nine states have been selected for the 2016 Copland House Residency Awards. They are Nilo Alcala, 38 (North Hollywood, CA); Daniel Gilliam, 37 (Louisville, KY);  Christopher Hopkins, 59 (Ames, IA); Howard Kenty  36 (Brooklyn, NY); Mark Kilstofte, 57 (Greenville, SC); Texu Kim, 35 (Hillsboro, OR); Peter Van Zandt Lane, 31 (Athens, GA); Eric Nathan, 32 (Providence, RI); and Juri Seo, 34 (Lawrenceville, NJ). David Biedenbender, 31 (Mount Pleasant, MI) was selected as an Alternate.

9-composers

 

The violinist and conductor Petra Müllejans, artistic director of the Freiburger Barockorchester since the 1990s, is calling it quits at the end of this season. But Petra intends to remain a regular member of the ensemble and will continue to lead some concerts.

Her successor, for the next three years, will be the fortepianist Kristian Bezuidenhout.

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press photo ©Marco-Borggreve

A mover and shaker in the 60s and 70s, Milt Okun was a classical pianist who propelled Peter, Paul and Mary to brief stardom. He then hitched another client, John Denver, to the operatic tenor, Placido Domingo, making their fortune with ‘Perhaps Love’.

Placido has posted: ‘Milt Okun, my dear friend, great producer and musician left us yesterday November 15th, 2016 at the age of 92 after a long life of innumerable successes and happiness. To the man with great vision that firmly believed in me and gave me my breakthrough role in the world of pop music through our collaboration with John Denver and Lee Holdridge in the unforgettable and very successful “Perhaps Love” duet , I thank you dearly Milt.
You will be missed. My condolences to his surviving widow and also dear friend Rosemary and their family.’

placido-domingo-milk-okun

Among Milt’s other acts were Harry Belafonte and Shlomo Carlebach, ‘the singing rabbi’.

Lovely story about Wendy Cheng, a viola player who has been deaf since childhood.

‘Even though I have a hearing loss; I keep thinking, Beethoven would approve,’ she says.

Watch here.

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Wendy is the founder of the Association for Adult Musicians with Hearing Loss.

Oper Schenkenberg, a picturesque enterprise with private backers, has filed for bankruptcy with debts of about half a million Swiss francs.

The company blames its demise on poor attendance at Rigoletto, directed by Giancarlo del Monaco.

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The Volkswagen Foundation has donated 400,000 Euros to develop the world’s largest collection of Wagner memorabilia outside Bayreuth.

It’s at Eisenach, Bach’s birthplace, and it endured prolonged neglect under Communism.

The collection was established by an Austrian industrialist, Nicolaus J. Oesterlein (1841-1898).

Volkswagen wants to put it back on the superhighway.

wagner-portrait

We report with regret the death of Vico Chamla, a photographer who chronicled classical music in Milan for three decades, especially early music.

He was a close friend of many artists, among them Gustav Leonhardt. Ton Koopman, Philippe Herreweghe, Radu Lupu, Yuri Bashmet, Jordi Savall and Andras Schiff.

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Of French and Greek origin, he would invest huge amounts of time in capturing the moment. He once spent two days with Riccardo Muti and came away without a single exposure.

He was about 66 years old.