The Bavarian Radio music director does not play the horses or the lottery, so far as we know.

His windfall comes today in the form of the 2018 Léonie Sonning Music Prize, awarded each year to an outstanding international performer.

All Jansons has to do to collect the money is to turn up in Copenhagen and conduct the Royal Danish Orchestra on March 9, 2018, according to Danish Radio.

photo: Chris Christodoulou/Lebrecht

From the Lebrecht Album of the Week:

Do not be put off by the cover, which shows two Victorians of different gender having a pre-Raphaelite snog. What they look like post-Raphael is left to the imagination, as is any thematic connection between Gilbert Baldry’s The Kiss and a set of Schumann pieces that evoke male friendships. Not long ago, when record companies employed picture researchers, their covers bore some relevance to the music inside. These days, the images seem to be picked by a computer linked to the Amazon sales chart.

Do not be put off either by the coupling of Schumann with a record newbie whose name you may not recognise…

Read on here.

And here.

And here.

Friends are reporting the death of Kristine (Kris) Jepson, a popular figure on the opera circuit.

Iowa born, she played Kitty Oppenheimer in the first San Francisco run of John Adams’ Doctor Atomic and replaced Susan Graham in Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking.

Kris sang Octavian and Siebel at the Met, as well as numerous roles at Covent Garden, La Scala, the Monnaie, the Liceu, Dreden and Munich.

She is widely mourned.


Photo: Stephan Trierenberg/AP

We hear that one of three live sheep hired for the upcoming UK premiere of Thomas Ades’s The Exterminating Angel has been fired from the show after a disgraceful performance at the pre-general rehearsal.

The miscreant is called Sheila and you’re advised to stay well upwind if you meet her.

The appearance of the other two sheep has been severely curtailed to the start and finish of the show.

Rumour has it they will not go quietly and their agents have got involved.

photo: © Monika Rittershaus/Salzburger Festspiele

 

We are saddened by the death, from cancer, of Philip Dikeman, flute player for 20 years with the Detroit Symphony, two of them as acting principal. He also played with Nashville Symphony.

Early on, he was Principal Flute of the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra.

Philip, who was 54 years old, was associate professor of flute at Blair School of Music.

He chaired the 2014 National Flute Association Convention in Chicago.

A prolific pianist, Gordon Langford composed and arranged extensively for brass bands – as well as for many films, including Raiders of the Lost Ark, Superman II, First Great Train Robbery, Clash of the Titans and Return to Oz.

He also wrote the test-card music for BBC Television.

His works were handsomely recorded by Chandos.

Gordon died this week at his home in Devon.

Three months before the launch of her first Vancouver Opera Festival, Kim Gaynor fell off her horse and suffered a serious leg fracture.

She’s back at her desk just before the festival begins, but it has been quite a saga.

With no WiFi in the hospital, friends wheeled her over to the closest Starbucks so she could get some work done. Further complicating matters, she was robbed twice during her ordeal – her phone and e-reader stolen from her hospital bedside while she was in a drug-induced sleep…

Read here.

The British collection agency today reports a ten percent rise in revenues.

It has paid out £527.6 million to songwriters, composers and music publishers.

What was your share?

Dick Contino held the alltime record of appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show – 48 times.

He was jailed for draft dodging, served in in the Korea War and eventually received a presidential pardon, events that are reacts in a James Ellroy novella, Dick Contino’s Blues.

Contino’s signature song was ‘Lady of Spain’.

He made his debut in December 1947 and died on April 19, 2017, after almost 70 years on stage.

The former music director of the Orchestre de Paris, and briefly of the Opéra de Paris, has been speaking about this weekend’s French election.

Daniel Barenboim said he could understand the rise of nationalism in France as a protest against the tide of globalisation, but the French should be aware that the present tendency is not to be confused with patriotism.

Patriotism, said Barenboim, is inclusive. Nationalism shuts out the world.

Report here (auf Deutsch).

What do do with the ENO orchestra when the Coliseum is rented out for six months of the year? A solution has just been revealed.

Press statement:

English National Opera (ENO) and Grange Park Opera (GPO) have today announced the formation of a three-year partnership, beginning in June 2018. Each year ENO’s award-winning Orchestra will play for productions presented by Grange Park Opera at West Horsley Place. West Horsley Place, the first opera house to be built in the UK in the 21st century, is the new home of Grange Park Opera and will open on 8 June 2017.

ENO’s Music Director, Martyn Brabbins, commented on the partnership:

’The orchestra of English National Opera is widely renowned for its musically dramatic contribution to countless successful opera productions at our home, the London Coliseum.  Grange Park Opera, in its spectacular new theatre-in-the- woods, has extended an invitation for our Orchestra to perform with them, and I’m delighted by this fantastic opportunity for both ENO, and GPO to enhance their already-excellent artistic profiles.’

Wasfi Kani, Founder and CEO of Grange Park Opera, said:

‘The curtain has raised on a new act for Grange Park Opera, West Horsley Place is an exceptional location: its beauty and historical glamour, its atmosphere and location, all add up to a magical setting for a fairytale that has come true. Part of that fairytale is this collaboration with the ENO Orchestra whom I’ve admired for 40 years. I am thrilled.’