Bramwell Tovey is moving up to emeritus in 2018 after a transformatory 18 years.

His successor will be Otto Tausk, a Dutchman presently engaged at St Gallen in Switzerland.

They seem happy.

The Austrian cellist Kian Soltani, 24, has been named winner of the Leonard Bernstein Award of the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festivals.

A former member of Barenboim’s WestEastern Diwan Orchestra, Kian has received a bursary for the past two years from the Anne-Sophie Mutter Foundation.

The Bernstein Prize is worth 10,000 Euros.

photo: Juventino Mateo)

From the Lebrecht Album of the Week:

I hope this is not Renée Fleming’s final record. The American soprano, in her late 50s, is closing her stage career with the voice unblemished and the memories fond. It would be a pity if her legacy on Decca was to be concluded by this album, which plays to all her weaknesses.

Read on here.

And here.