The violinist Betty-Jean Hagen died on December 27, 2016 in Poughkeepsie, New York, at the age of 86.

She won the 1955 Leventritt Competition, earning concerto dates with the New York Philharmonic, the Cleveland Orchestra, and the Pittsburgh Symphony. In Europe she played with the Concertgebouw, the London Philharmonic, and the Orchestre de la Suisse romande.

Canadian born, she went on to teach at Vassar, marrying Vincent Greicius, a violinist in the Met orchestra.

NBC’s Today ran a five-minute segment on Joyce DiDonato’s work with longterm prisoners.

Watch. Feed the hope.

 

Joyce says: ‘I consider this to be some of the most significant work I have ever taken part in. Please share this with anyone who questions the power of music (and yes, opera) to transform lives.’

The Turkish tenor Mert Sungu has walked out of Bologna’s upcoming production of Die Entführung aus dem Serail.

He accused the director Martin Kusej of causing a ‘blemish to the dignity of a nation’, and misleading the audience’s ‘understanding of geo-political causes of our biggest problem today: TERRORISM.’

Bologna has made no comment on his departure, which was announced on social media a matter of hours before the New Year’s Day attack on an Istanbul nightclub.

Sungu, 31 and from Istanbul, works mostly in Italian opera houses.

Italian media have failed to report his action.

 

 

Stuart Hamilton, first music director of Canadian Opera Company’s Ensemble of young singers and a significant influence on numerous careers, died on New Year’s Day, aged 87.

Appreciation here.

When Zubin Mehta steps down in 2019 it will have been half a century since the Israel Philharmonic last picked a music director. There is no template for a selection process. If there ever was one, they’ve forgotten where it got buried.

So first the orchestra has to decide how it wants to go about the process.

Zubin’s long tenure has been covered for most of its duration by the long-standing chief executive, Avi Shoshani. It is safe to assume that Shoshani, who was hired initially as company secretary in 1973, will step down when Zubin goes but no-one is quite clear what role this wily fixer will play in the succession.

Once they have sorted out who chooses the next music director, they’ll need to decide what kind of chief they want – a brilliant young Israeli like the incoming Rotterdam chief Lahav Shani, or an international figure like Gianandrea Noseda – to mention just two maestros who have a close association with the ensemble.

Shani would wake up the musicians and the audience alike, and both have been falling off for a while. He will also have the authority and courage to break the taboo by which no Arab-Israeli musician has been admitted to the IPO.

Noseda will guarantee international tours and will have the Washington-based authority to convince Israeli politicians of the need to protect the orchestra’s subsidy.

There will be other names in the hat, but these two are front-runners. Both would be agents of significant change.

The German tenor tells Corriere della Sera today that he is ready to return to singing after a four-month break caused by bleeding on his vocal cords.

He expects to appear as Lohengrin in Paris on January 18.

‘It was really tough,’ he says. ‘I love to sing and never before have I been forced to such a long break. It was not easy, but what else could I do? I tried to be patient and do what the doctor prescribed. And ignore the gossip going around about my health…. Christa Ludwig, the great mezzo-soprano, had the same problem. She warned me: Jonas, do not come back to sing before the swelling has completely subsided.’

Full interview here.

Justin Doyle started work last night at Berlin’s Philharmonie as chief conductor of the RIAS Kammerchor with a performance of Handel’s oratorio Theodora.

Soloists included Fflur Wyn, Anna Stéphany, Tim Mead, Robert Murray and Roderick Williams but the biggest applause went to the conductor…. they do like a British chorus chief in Berlin.

Justin is presently staff conductor at conductor at Opera North and music director of the Haffner Orchestra in Lancaster.

There is an utterly inspirational story on the New Yorker site about a longterm prisoner who set about learning to play the piano. Read it here.

It will start your year on the right note.

Here goes:

On my bottom bunk bed, I sat in deep thought. I had an unusual problem. The prison choir that I sang in needed a piano player, and they needed one quickly. I thought to myself, How could I teach myself to play? I had no prior experience with the piano, but I can still remember running down the hallways of my grandmother’s house as a boy. Every time I ran past her old upright piano, I would slam all the keys at the same time. Sometimes in the mornings before school, as I listened to cassette tapes of my favorite R. & B. and gospel songs by Mary J. Blige and John P. Kee, I imagined myself playing the piano. I sang in the church choir from the age of seven on. In the sixth grade, I learned to play the xylophone. I had an uncle who played piano professionally at Las Vegas casinos and on cruise ships. When he came to visit, I sat in awe as he played our upright. Music has been my constant companion. It’s like my DNA has tiny quarter notes infused into it….