A student of Pierre Monteux, Sidney Rothstein was music director at several US orchestras.
He founded the Orchestra Society of Philadelphia and was its music director from 1964 to 1976.
From 1980 to 1984 he was with the Charleston Symphony Orchestra and later with the Florida Symphony in Orlando, finally settling with the Ridgefield Connecticut Symphony Orchestra from 1996 to 2006.
Throughout, he led the Reading Symphony in Pennsylvania for 30 years.
The Queen of Soul, 74, says she’ll retire this year to spend more time with her grandchildren.
Just one more album to go.
The family has confirmed the death, on January 8, of the great Swedish tenor, one of the most lasting ornaments of the opera stage. He was a fixture of the international opera calendar from 1952 to his retirement in 2003.
He mastered 70 roles and made 200 recordings.
News of his death was given today to the forumopera site by his daughter, Tania.
Rising in the footsteps of his compatriot Jussi Björling, Gedda made his Paris debut in Weber’s Oberon in 1954 and was immediately awarded a company contract. He appeared at Covent Garden that same year and at the Met in 1957, returning regularly for quarter of a century.
A master of controlled power, he excelled as much at recital as in opera. He stood up to conductors, famously resisting the demands of Herbert von Karajan, and was kind to colleagues.
He endured two turbulent marriages before finding domestic contentment.
In a nutshell: he wasn’t loved enough.
The US-based Chinese pianist is high maintenance. He needs to know he is appreciated. And while his label, Sony Classical, was behind him all the way, he didn’t get the feeling that the company as a whole supported him. Memories of the $3 million signing-on fee in 2010 soon faded.
Having left DG in a huff with its former boss, he would still drop into the Berlin office to see old friends. The breach was never total. And when Sir Lucian Grainge, chairman of Universal Music Group, took him to lunch in LA, Lang Lang felt the love once more. Universal offered him a global 360-degree marketing plan that Sony could not match. Last night, he signed on with DG.
Sony are left licking the costs. His defection is a serious loss of face and a blow to its faltering Chinese presence. Lang Lang never sold as many records as Sony expected but he was a Sony poster boy and the label is poorer without him.
Perhaps his last record cover revealed more than intended.
MPs of the Scottish National Party were rebuked by the Deputy Speaker last night for whistling and singing the Ode to Joy during the vote to permit the UK Government to trigger Article 50.
One reason given by the Deputy Speaker was that ‘some of them haven’t quite got the voice’ for it. Actually, they were doing quite well. Oh, F-f-f-freude….
The eminent Estonian conductor, 79, has cancelled two concerts at the Berlin Philharmonie on Feb 24 and 25 with Igor Levit as soloist.
Manfred Honeck steps in with the Deutsches Sinfonie-orchester.
The chief director of the Pokrovsky chamber music theatre in Moscow, Mikhail Kislyarov, has resigned after differences with its veteran chief conductor.
Apparently, they could not see eye to eye on Mozart’s Clemenza di Tito.
A Russian source adds: ‘The truth is Mr. Rozhdestvensky ordered to fire Mr. Kislyarov from his position of Principal Director of the theatre where Mr. Rozhdestvensky is Music Director.
Previously, a couple of years ago, Mr. Rozhdestvensky ordered to fire (with no apparent reason) from his position the Principal Conductor of the same theatre, Mr. Agronsky.
As in both cases there were no legal reasons for firing these quite distinguished artists, it was done by eliminating the positions of the Principal Conductor and Principal Director accordingly.
There has been indeed an artistic disagreement between Mr. Kislyarov and the conductor Ignat Solzhenitsyn, who, and not Mr. Rozhdestvensky, is the Music Director of La Clemenza di Tito production which was supposed to be premiered in a month and now is left without the director.
Pokrovsky Chamber Opera was founded 45 years ago by Boris Pokrovsky, Mr. Kislyarov’s teacher, the most famous Russian stage director of the 20th century. And the theatre has always been considered a ‘director’s opera theatre’ where staging is no less important than musical matters.’
Andreas Buschatz, concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic since 2010, will join the Leipzig Gewandhaus in that position from next season. The difference? In Berlin, he was one of four concertmasters. In Leipzig he will be one of three.
