The death has been announced of the Saratov Conservatoire chief, Lev Shugom.

 

 

An exponent of the Heinrich Neuhaus school of Russian pianism, he was a Rachmaninov specialist who performed a wide repertoire in Russia and abroad.

He stepped down last year as rector of the Conservatoire.

The orchestra is ahead of the world in digitising its archives and making them universally available online.

Archivist Barbara Haws traces the process from small beginnings:

When I was finishing archive school in the 80s, I was reading a magazine that talked about the first PC. That was just mind blowing: it changed completely my understanding of where we were going based on how I had been trained. I could see the possibilities in the future. At the Philharmonic, I was the first staff member to have a PC on my desk. And we started creating the databases of our performance history.

Read on here.

If you have ever run an archive, you need to read this piece.

The town of Enniskillen has put up a plaque in memory of a pianist who played at the BBC Proms – and also owned the town newspaper.

Joan Trimble appeared mostly with her sister Valerie, playing four-hand piano and appearing at the 1943 Proms with Sir Adrian Boult. The BBC later commissioned her to write a television opera, Blind Raftery.

Back home, her father owned and edited the Impartial Reporter.

When he died in 1967, Joan took over.

Joan died in 2000. A plaque in her memory was affixed this week to the newspaper’s wall.