From the BSO:
Due to the severe weather conditions forecasted for the greater Boston area tomorrow, the Thursday, February 9 Boston Symphony Orchestra concert, featuring BSO Music Director Andris Nelsons, countertenor Bejun Mehta, and the Lorelei Ensemble, has been postponed.
Programme:
RAVEL Le Tombeau de Couperin (February 9 & 11)
BENJAMIN Dream of the Song (BSO co-commission)
BERLIOZ Symphonie fantastique
Rumours had been floating for a while that Lang Lang was unhappy at Sony Classical.
Tonight, they have been confirmed.
The Chinese pianist has signed a contract with Universal president Sir Lucian Grainge to return to his first label, Deutsche Grammophon.
Lang Lang says: ‘When I met Lucian and his team I was amazed by their open-mindedness and passion for innovation. This is exactly the spirit we need to promote classical music in the 21st century. My dream has always been to share music with as many people as possible, and I can’t wait to start working with the Universal teams around the world.’
This a shock to Sony and a blow to its chief Bogdan Roscic, himself on borrowed time until he becomes head of the Vienna Opera in 2020.
It’s the first musical night raid of 2017.
UPDATE: Why Lang Lang left Sony.
The 2017-18 season, announced today, will include the Philip Glass Double Concerto for two pianos. It will be the first time, Mr Glass tweets, that the Philharmonic has played a concert work by New York’s best-known composer.
Philip Glass has just turned 80. Carnegie Hall celebrated the event.
But the New York Phil just walked on by.
The distinguished and sometimes controversial piano teacher has been awarded the Israel Prize 2017 by the Netanyahu government for ‘his tremendous contribution to the advancement of musical culture in Israel.’
Professor Vardi, 80 this year, is mostly seen these days as a jury member on international competitions.
The Seattle Symphony is putting on a protest concert tonight, titled, Music Beyond Borders: Voices from the 7.
Here’s the reasoning:
The arts community across the country has been contributing in meaningful ways to the discussion around immigration following the recent executive order restricting travel and immigration from these countries. As artists and Americans, we are committed to freedom of expression and the open exchange of ideas which create an environment of mutual understanding and the capacity for empathy. At the Seattle Symphony, we are inspired to add our voice in the hopes that we can come together through music.
Full details here.
The Hollywood star is rehearsing Sondheim on Broadway.
Leon Botstein, music director of the American Symphony Orchestra and president of Bard College, has published an article in the New York Times on the dangerous reality of ‘alternative facts’.
Botstein states the case with great clarity:
Not since the era of witch hunts and “red baiting” has the American university faced so great a threat from government. How is the university to function when a president’s administration blurs the distinction between fact and fiction by asserting the existence of “alternative facts”? How can the university turn a blind eye to what every historian knows to be a key instrument of modern authoritarian regimes: the capacity to dress falsehood up as truth and reject the fruits of reasoned argument, evidence and rigorous verification?
The atmosphere of suspicion and insecurity created by the undermining of truth provides the perfect environment for President Trump’s recent actions on immigration. The American university’s future, indeed its most fundamental reason for being, is imperiled by a government that constructs walls on the Mexican border, restricts Muslim immigrants and denigrates the idea of America as a destination for refugees.
Although American universities did not always welcome the huge influx of refugees after the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, that intellectual migration transformed a provincial and second-rate higher education system into the finest in the world. Manufacturing may have fled our borders, but American higher education remains a powerful and competitive force…
Read on here.
Gayane Khachatryan, 23, from Yerevan, has won the audition for Vorspieler of the Gewandhausorchester cello section, equivalent to assistant principal.
Gayane is a former member of the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra and a graduate of the Gewandhaus Mendelssohn-Orchesterakademie.
In the midst of Deutsche Oper rehearsals of his opera DIDO, a companion piece to Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, the composer Michael Hirsch has died. He was 58.
Born in Munich, Hirsch moved to Berlin in 1981, writing several operas for the German circuit. He was also a stage performer, a member of the Freyer-Ensemble.
DIDO continues its run tomorrow. The Deutsche Oper website makes no mention of the composer’s sudden and unexpected death.
From an interview with the composer on KQED:
The idea of a Trump opera doesn’t interest me in the least. First of all, because so much of what he does is theater to begin with. It’s a terrible form of exploitative theater, but there’s no point in trying to make theater about theater. Furthermore, you don’t want to spend time as an artist giving your very best to a person who is a sociopath. He’s not an interesting character, because he has no capacity for empathy. The only empathy that he can extend is to his family, who are just extensions of his own ego, and beyond that, he doesn’t care. Everyone else is someone to be manipulated and controlled.
The thing with Nixon was he was interesting because he was vulnerable. His weaknesses were marvelously mixed up with his idealism. At the moment in Nixon in China where he comes off the plane, and he greets Zhou Enlai, he sings this aria about being aware of himself as president, and being like the Apollo astronaut. He’s the pilot who’s piloting the ship through shoals. You can believe that there’s a part of Nixon that is actually noble despite all his paranoia and his faults.
I couldn’t imagine doing that with Trump, because there’s just nothing there except this raw, very dangerous ego, and overwhelming vanity. Maybe if I live that long, I will find some story that reflects this crisis, but I would have to approach it from an oblique angle.
Philip Gossett – general editor of the complete Giuseppe Verdi for the University of Chicago Press and Ricordi, and of works of Gioachino Rossini for Bärenreiter – has donated his personal library to Juilliard.
Gossett, 75, lives and teaches in Chicago. But he specifically wanted his research material to be kept within easy reach of the Metropolitan Opera so that performers could consult scores at source.
We’re hearing of people losing their jobs this month at Entertainment One Distribution, which looks after many small and medium-sized classical labels, among them Analekta, MDG and WigmoreHallLive.
Where will they go now?
