Daniil Trifonov is the first recipient of the 50,000 Euro prize, awarded today in Salzburg (it was previously based in Baden-Baden).

Next year’s winner has already been chosen. It’s the cellist Sol Gabetta.

What either of them has to do with HvK is mysterious.

True, old Herbie liked working with Evgeny Kissin, who has much in common with Trifonov.

But he never worked with Jackie du Pre or other young female cellists, so far as we can remember.

Peter de Caluwe, modernist director of La Monnaie opera in Brussels, has received a contract renewal for a further six years, taking him to 2025.

He has run the Monnaie with a tone of high seriousness on ever-tighter budgets for the past ten years.

Mika Vainio, one half of the experimental electronic duo Pan Sonic, has died in France, aged 53.

No cause has been given.

He had an international following.

English National Opera has just scrapped its plan for a residency in Blackpool. 

Here’s the official version:

As you are aware, we have been in discussions with Blackpool Council and with the Winter Gardens to confirm new dates for ENO’s postponed performances of The Mikado. We have discussed a number of different options and all parties have worked hard to try to confirm a feasible date and budget for these performances.  

The Arts Council have recently shared with us their serious concerns regarding future levels of arts funding available to local authorities. Given that this project was to be underwritten by funding from Blackpool Council, in the current economic climate we consider that it is unwise for us to continue to develop this project. We are therefore no longer working on presenting The Mikado to Blackpool in 2017/18.

Instead, we are investigating alternative partnerships for our summer work that can make the best use of our resources, and that continue to share more of our opera with the widest possible audience. We look forward to announcing our projects for Summer ’18 and several new partnerships which will present ENO to new audiences going forward.

ENO are not having much luck at the moment.

© Chris Christodoulou/Lebrecht Music&Arts

Official statement:

Lang Lang regrets to announce that he is forced to cancel performances through the end of June due to inflammation in his left arm. Under his doctor’s recommendation, Lang Lang will take this time to rest and allow his arm to heal in order to make a full recovery.

photo (c) Peter Hönnemann

The Chinese pianist has not played much lately, missing most of March with flu.

Statement from the BBC Singers:

This evening’s BBC Singers at Six concert of Slavic Choral Music has had to be cancelled, due to the conductor, Andrew Griffiths being taken ill.  Due to the programme of new and challenging repertoire it would not have been possible to find a replacement conductor at such short notice.

The BBC Symphony Orchestra did the same in January.

Whatever became of understudies, stand-ins, step-ups and other musical improvisations?

Why is the BBC’s default position always to cancel?

From the Lebrecht Album of the Week:

Never a big Easter bunny, I generally receive the springtime festival releases with the same excitement as I’d feel about a Placido Domingo Christmas record. What comes round, comes round.

This one, however, is pure class…

Read on here.

And here.

Sir Bryn Terfel has called in sick, cancelling his appearances as Wotan and Wanderer in Wagner’s Ring at the Vienna State Opera.

He will be replaced by Egils Silins in Das Rheingold on April 30, by Tomasz Konieczny in Die Walküre on May 1 and Siegfried on 7th May and by Thomas Johannes Mayer in the second cycle.

Thierry Vagne has updated his post-war operatic chronology.

By his reckoning the world’s opera houses have staged 7,900 new works by 2,900 composers.

Check the list here.

In my new monthly column in the Spectator, I write about London’s fading fortunes as an orchestral capital.

Since the column is pay-walled, all I can offer here is a taster:

(There used to be) a buzz around our concert halls. Principal players turned down fat orchestra jobs in Germany, half the work for twice the pay, because London was too exciting to leave. Every hot conductor came to be tested in the London furnace. Competition sizzled between the bands.

And then it died.

You’ll have to buy a copy, out now, or subscribe.

Pictured: LPO at the exit gates

We thought you might like to be reminded of a recent United ad campaign.

Who will they drag off next?

And which orchestra played on this video?

Now watch the updated parody version: