The great Russian baritone, hospitalised with pneumonia in St Petersburg on December 20, does not yet have a release date. But he is so determined to go ahead this month with a recital in Yekaterinburg that Russian sources say he is rehearsing in his hospital bed.
Hvorostovsky, 54, is receiving treatment for a brain tumour.
From the Lebrecht Album of the Week:
With devastating precision, Giltburg — Moscow-born and winner of the Reine Elisabeth prize (first claimed by Emil Gilels) — has interpolated between the (Shostakovich) concertos his own piano reductions of one movement of the second string quartet and the entirety of the eight quartet, contemporaneous with the two piano concertos, exposing the composer’s seditious inner thoughts. This is a constantly illuminating, almost faultless project.
And here.
It is reported that the international violinist has reached an agreement with his former pornstar girlfriend, Ashley Youdan, also known as Kendall Karson, who was suing him in New York for $12 million.
The terms of the settlement are being kept confidential.
Ms Youdan
The only group from California to participate in the presidential inauguration is…
Merced County Sheriff’s Posse – Hilmar, California.
They’re holding a fund-raiser in Merced to solicit donations. A posse rally.
Here is the updated list of inauguration performers, and decliners.
Trump that.
Anthea Kreston’s weekly Berlin diary:
This week marks the one year anniversary of my audition for the Artemis String Quartet. When I think back to it – that final Skype meeting where I was asked to come to Berlin on two weeks’ notice, to prepare 6 works for a two-round audition – I was exhilarated and in shock. Sitting in our beautiful 1920’s craftsman in our small rural town of Corvallis, Oregon, I cleared my schedule, and we picked up and moved into Jason’s parents house for the next two weeks, so I could have the time and space to prepare. I needed someone else to clean and cook – to watch the children (ages 3 and 6), a library to copy music from, a good night’s sleep. As the mom of two little girls, my preparation was nonetheless done with many interruptions, and frequently with a three year old clinging to my leg. But I knew I could do it, and so did my family. This week, my quartet lifted our glasses to that week – a culmination of a 7 month search for their fourth member – and the beginning of a new life for all of us.
This week, amidst a heavy schedule preparing new works for quartet, and with two additional quartets to be started Monday, my new String Trio (Humboldt Streichtrio) makes its official debut in Berlin. Volker Jacobsen, the original violist of the Artemis Quartet, and Jason Duckles (cellist and husband) join me in a program this Sunday, and NPR Berlin will be there to interview and fill out a story they are working on. In two weeks time we are playing at the fabulous new hall in Hamburg – Elbphilharmonie – as a part of their opening season. This incredible structure – situated on an island in the city, perched atop an old brick warehouse – looks like a gigantic floating silver ship. I have just heard that the concert is sold out.
I know that it might seem a little crazy to start a new group, or even to continue playing with my piano trio (Amelia Piano Trio), considering the fullness of the quartet schedule. But – I also know that there are dangers in our decision to move here, and I am working to anticipate and avoid common pitfalls. One of these possible pitfalls, as a quartet musician, is to relinquish yourself fully to the ensemble. Playing in a quartet is similar in some ways to being in an obsessive, co-dependent relationship. You get sucked in, it becomes your world – your circle of outside friends can dwindle. Because I have experienced this before, I wanted to head this off before it could even begin. That is why I have reached out, played with others here casually and professionally. I need a frame of reference, a mixed bag.
I first met Volker at Juilliard when Artemis and Avalon were working with the Juilliard Quartet. He was hilarious – a big laugh and a physical ease, and quick with his quirky humor. Several year later, Jason and I met up with him again in Bavaria, and shared a string of nights drinking and laughing in the Ratskeller in Schloss Elmau, as a part of a music festival for ARD winners. When our manager Sonia Simmenauer called with a possible string trio concert earlier this year, Jason and I immediately asked Volker, and our new little trio was born.
I can say that these upcoming concerts make me significantly more nervous than quartet concerts. The parts for string trio are technically very challenging, exposed, and soloistic. I have to be front and center. There is nowhere to hide (not that hiding is in my nature), and I have extremely high expectations for myself. Intonation and balance is a whole different ball game compared to piano trio or string quartet. I really like playing with Volker and Jason – they are love-able and easy-going, and let me be free and a little crazy. More than once, our rehearsals broke down into a fits of spontaneous laughing, tears flowing with our guffaws.
So tomorrow, after quartet rehearsal, the three of us will spend 2 and a half days together, reworking, performing (house concert and debut concert), and developing our new sound. And also having a pint or three.
Anthea Kreston’s weekly Berlin diary:
This week marks the one year anniversary of my audition for the Artemis String Quartet. When I think back to it – that final Skype meeting where I was asked to come to Berlin on two week’s notice, to prepare 6 works for a two-round audition – I was exhilarated and in shock. Sitting in our beautiful 1920’s craftsman in our small rural town of Corvallis, Oregon, I cleared my schedule, and we picked up and moved into Jason’s parents house for the next two weeks, so I could have the time and space to prepare. I needed someone else to clean and cook – to watch the children (ages 3 and 6), a library to copy music from, a good night’s sleep. As the mom of two little girls, my preparation was nonetheless done with many interruptions, and frequently with a three year old clinging to my leg. But I knew I could do it, and so did my family. This week, my quartet lifted our glasses to that week – a culmination of a 7 month search for their fourth member – and the beginning of a new life for all of us.
This week, amidst a heavy schedule preparing new works for quartet, and with two additional quartets to be started Monday, my new String Trio (Humboldt Streichtrio) makes its official debut in Berlin. Volker Jacobsen, the original violist of the Artemis Quartet, and Jason Duckles (cellist and husband) join me in a program this Sunday, and NPR Berlin will be there to interview and fill out a story they are working on. In two weeks time we are playing at the fabulous new hall in Hamburg – Elbphilharmonie – as a part of their opening season. This incredible structure – situated on an island in the city, perched atop an old brick warehouse – looks like a gigantic floating silver ship. I have just heard that the concert is sold out.
I know that it might seem a little crazy to start a new group, or even to continue playing with my piano trio (Amelia Piano Trio), considering the fullness of the quartet schedule. But – I also know that there are dangers in our decision to move here, and I am working to anticipate and avoid common pitfalls. One of these possible pitfalls, as a quartet musician, is to relinquish yourself fully to the ensemble. Playing in a quartet is similar in some ways to being in an obsessive, co-dependent relationship. You get sucked in, it becomes your world – your circle of outside friends can dwindle. Because I have experienced this before, I wanted to head this off before it could even begin. That is why I have reached out, played with others here casually and professionally. I need a frame of reference, a mixed bag.
I first met Volker at Juilliard when Artemis and Avalon were working with the Juilliard Quartet. He was hilarious – a big laugh and a physical ease, and quick with his quirky humor. Several year later, Jason and I met up with him again in Bavaria, and shared a string of nights drinking and laughing in the Ratskeller in Schloss Elmau, as a part of a music festival for ARD winners. When our manager Sonia Simmenauer called with a possible string trio concert earlier this year, Jason and I immediately asked Volker, and our new little trio was born.
I can say that these upcoming concerts make me significantly more nervous than quartet concerts. The parts for string trio are technically very challenging, exposed, and soloistic. I have to be front and center. There is nowhere to hide (not that hiding is in my nature), and I have extremely high expectations for myself. Intonation and balance is a whole different ball game compared to piano trio or string quartet. I really like playing with Volker and Jason – they are love-able and easy-going, and let me be free and a little crazy. More than once, our rehearsals broke down into a fits of spontaneous laughing, tears flowing with our guffaws.
So tomorrow, after quartet rehearsal, the three of us will spend 2 and a half days together, reworking, performing (house concert and debut concert), and developing our new sound. And also having a pint or three.
It must have been the E-flat that didn’t sound right.
Checking over a Broadwood upright for a community group in Shropshire, an unnamed tuner took off the back and was dazzled by a stash of gold coins.
Who owns the hoard is now a matter for the local coroner. The piano was sold in 1906 by a music shop in Saffron Walden, Essex. No-one knows where it went until 1983, when it was bought by a Shropshire family after a house clearance.
If the original owner of the gold coins cannot be traced, the piano tuner will have the strongest claim in law.
When did you last take the back off your piano?
There’s a real-life opera unfolding in the Sardis Baptist Church of Morris, Alabama.
Read all about it here in The Christian Post.
The trial is over. There is now a vacancy for music director.
AskonasHolt have just announced they have signed Long Yu, chief conductor in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou and by far the most powerful musician in the People’s Republic.
Long Yu was formerly with Cami Music’s Jacques Cesbron, superagent to his close friend and pathfinder, Lang Lang.
Something appears to have gone wrong there.
It remains to be seen in Lang Lang follows his pal.
Tanja Dorn’s boutique agency has signed Stanley Dodds, a Berlin Philharmonic violinist with conducting ambitions.
Dodds has assisted Simon Rattle on various projects and is principal conductor of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, playing seven times a year in the Philharmonie.
His bio:
Stanley Chia-Ming Dodds was born in Canada, grew up in Australia and as a dual German-Australian citizen is now based in Berlin. He began playin violin and piano in Adelaide at age four, attended the Bruckner Conservatorium and Musik High School in Linz before studying violin and conducting at Lucerne Conservatorium. He continued violin studies at the Karajan Academy of the Berlin Philharmonic before receiving tenure as a violinist in the orchestra in 1994. He studied conducting in Australia, Switzerland and Germany, his most important mentor being the acclaimed Finnish professor Jorma Panula.
The rattlers are out in force in today’s newspapers, arguing that if Hamburg can build a new concert hall so should London – the more so now that the City of London has voted £2.5 million for another feasibility study.
Here’s what they fail to grasp:
1 Hamburg cost 866 million Euros – three quarters of a billion pounds.
2 The Elbphilharmonie was several times over budget, several years late and has abandoned its original projection that its built-in hotel and apartments will meet the actual running costs of the concert hall.
3 Nobody objected because it is a local project, locally funded and consensually supported on a national basis.
4 Hamburg is in Germany where classical music is part of the national DNA. The German head of state and the head of government turned out for the hall’s opening.
5 London’s hall, presently budgeted at quarter of a billion pounds, will certainly cost twice that amount.
6 There is no national support for the hall, and not much local backing. Nowhere beyond the M25 ringroad does anyone believe that money should be spent on a new hall in London.
7 Where culture is a vote-winner in Germany, it’s an election loser in the UK. That’s why there has been no public consultation on the new hall.
8 The City’s feasibility study will not be published before 2019, by which time the UK will have left the EU with economic consequences that cannot be foretold. It is hard to imagine that this hall will be greenlit in conditions of existential uncertainty.
9 London has over-capacity of classical space. The South Bank Centre has mostly been turned over to other art forms for want of public demand.
10 This is the wrong hall in the wrong place at the wrong time. QED.
