Zurich Opera has named Michael Fichtenholz, 39, as its new head of opera.

A former music critic, born and still based in Moscow, Fichtenholz has been artistic director of the Handel festival in Karlsruhe since 2014.

 

It’s the Lebrecht Album of the Week:

I spent a morning with the great baritone in his Berlin home a couple of years before he died. Fischer-Dieskau was in morose mood. His wife Julia was out teaching, he told me twice, seeming to resent her absence. ‘I did too much,’ he confessed, regretting his dominance in Lieder, a field in which he covered not just German song but English, Russian and French…

Read on here.

And here.

Brandon Jovanovich has called in sick in Zurich.

At 24 hour’s notice, and only a day after singing Lehar’s Das Land des Lächelns, Piotr Beczala is replacing him.

He will sing from the wings while the director Andreas Homoki plays the part on stage.

It does look ever so Swiss.

Having announced Placido Domingo a few days ago as chief artistic advisor, the board have suddenly produced two more rabbits from the hat.

Joe Illick, 58, music director since 2002, has been named artistic director. Fair enough.

But there is also a new general director. He is Tuomas Hiltunen, 45, an adjunct lecturer in the Finnish studies at Columbia University and previously head of admin director for the Barenboim-Said Foundation USA, which operates out of Columbia.

He is from Rovaniemi, in the Finnish Arctic Circle.

More here.

 

In which our diarist Anthea Kreston gets her travel diary all tied up in strings.

 

We were packing to leave for our two weeks in Italy as a huge afternoon rainstorm began. Within 20 minutes, the sidewalk in front of our house had amassed enough water to come above my ankles, and I waded to our car in order to pick up our elder daughter from school. By the time we got home, Jason was in the main floor bathroom, nervously eyeing the bathtub as it was filling with dark murky water, eerily coming up through the drain. 

I quickly called our landlord (once again remembering how glad I was to be renting rather than owning!), as the tub reached the brink and began to overflow. A bucket brigade was started, all towels from the house were gathered, and every pot in the house began to be filled with water. Then, I began to nervously eye the toilet, as the level began to rise there as well. In addition, with the amount of water coming down (they later said that this was the heaviest rainfall in Berlin in the last century), our outdoor drains were backing up. 

As the toilet started to overflow, we made a quick retreat, closing the bathroom door and stuffing the pile of towels into the crack below the door.  Another call to the landlord, as Jason began to bring all of the furniture upstairs – and he and I moved the piano up to an adjoining room which was about one foot higher. He somehow managed to bring every single thing upstairs by himself, including bookcases, a bed and frame. 

Jason was on his belly outside, manually unclogging the outside drains, pulling up one handful of debris after another. His next handful was a huge living frog as he yelped and sent the frog flying. One drain problem solved!

The rains continued through the night, burning through the motors of two different pumps. Eventually there was more than a foot of water covering the floor, but the next higher room, which contained our piano, was not breached. All of our belongings (including our extra instruments and music) were saved by Jason’s quick evacuation.  

Two nights ago, Jason casually asked me what was going on this next week – how and when do we get home, when do we fly to the United States. I have to admit here, that more often than not in this past year and a half, I am so overwhelmed by my day-to-day life that I often don’t know where/when I am flying to for a quartet concert until dangerously close to take-off. Sometimes I don’t even know which country (or where that country exactly is).  I vaguely answered Jason – we drive back to Berlin, you drop me at the airport in Munich on the way, and I fly somewhere for a quartet concert and then fly home and then we fly to the States for a bunch of weeks. 

After everyone was asleep, I dug through my emails and documents (I always compile the basics into our family google calendar, but hadn’t done so for this next set of trips).  I blinked, rubbed my eyes, and took a few deep breaths as I noticed my flight back from the quartet concert landed in Berlin 2 hours after our family was supposed to depart for Spokane, Washington. Deep breath.

Ok – first – where is this concert?  Is it accessible by train, car or an earlier flight?  Answer – it is a part of the largest Scandinavian classical music festival, which is in Denmark. Ok. This must not be too hard. Google maps then pinpoint the location – it is in the Northern part of Denmark – then Wikipedia tells me it is the northernmost district of Denmark, separated from the main island by the Limfjord. This does not sound good. Fjords are big, right?  More deep breaths. The concert is a drive away from the small town of Aalborg, the closest airport. We fly out of Berlin as a family at 12:55.  How can I get from %<]€~^>{€|+{^ Denmark to Berlin between midnight Monday and 12:55 Tuesday?

Rent a car and drive to Berlin?  16 hours and several ferries needed. Drive to Copenhagen? 7 hours plus ferries (which don’t run between midnight and 8 am).  Change flights to USA?  6,000 dollars. 

I wake up our quartet assistant with my WhatsApp messages. There are some flights I could get, if I can get a ride to Aalsborg after the concert, which depart at 6:30 am. The connections are too close in Copenhagen or Amsterdam to show up, but I could buy two separate legs and run for it. 

So – $650 later, I have two flights that will have me arriving at Berlin Tegel at 11:15, where I will meet Jason and the girls, in (hopefully) enough time to make the flight leaving at 12:55.  

I bet northern Denmark is gorgeous – these destinations always are – and I know I will love to play Schumann, Webern and late Beethoven again with my quartet. On Tuesday, after my first two flights, I will meet my family and take the next two flights. After a 5 hour set of flights and a 17 hour set of flights, I will gladly collapse on the floor of my mother-in-laws condo rental, where I will sleep on a mattress for two days before heading to Philadelphia to teach at Curtis. 

Maybe when I get back to Washington, their newly built house will be finished and we will find ourselves all together again, enjoying daily swims in the lakes with a rotating calendar of visits from family and friends, as I prepare daily for this concert-packed next season with quartet.  

 

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The Piatti Quartet, winners of the 2015 Wigmore Hall Competition, have been forced to replace viola player David Wigram due to persistent injury. His seat will be taken by Tetsuumi Nagata.

The quartet say:

We must bid farewell to our most wonderful colleague and friend David Wigram. He has been with us from the very beginning and dedicated so much of his musical career to this quartet. Tragically, he has been coping with an injury that has made his position in the Quartet untenable. Words will never express our gratitude for Dave’s loyal dedication and inspiring music making over our ten-year journey together.

We are delighted to announce the appointment of Tetsuumi Nagata as violist to the Piatti Quartet. Tetsuumi brings with him a wealth of chamber music experience and an inimitable passion for quartet playing.  We felt an immediate connection with him on the concert platform from our first appearance together and we look forward to introducing this warm and generous musician to our audiences world-wide.

 

François-Xavier Roth, music director in Cologne, woke up on Bastille Day today to find his name had been added by President Macron to the distinguished roll of Chevaliers.

Nos félicitations!

The violinist Haïm Lipsky died on Haifa on July 4, at the age of 95.

He owed his life to playing the violin, which he had been taught by the village shoemaker. On arrival in Auschwitz, a German officer put an instrument in his hand and auditioned him for the camp orchestra.

There’s a beautiful profile of Lipsky and his family here, in French.

A handful have developed an unrivalled capacity for spotting baton talent way ahead of the field:

1 Rotterdam Philharmonic
Jeffrey Tate (1991), Valery Gergiev (1995), Yannick Nézet-Séguin (2008), Lahav Shani (2017).

2 The Metropolitan Opera
James Levine (1971)

3 City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
Simon Rattle (1980), Sakari Oramo (1998), Andris Nelsons (2008), Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla (2016)

4 Komische Oper, Berlin
Yakov Kreizberg (1994), Kirill Petrenko (2002) (Vladimir Jurowski, 1st kapellmeister, 1996)

5 Welsh National Opera
Carlo Rizzi (1992), Tugan Sokhiev (2003), Tomáš Hanus (2016)

6 Los Angeles Philharmonic
Esa-Pekka Salonen (1992), Gustavo Dudamel (2009)

7 BBC Philharmonic
Gianandrea Noseda (1992), Juanjo Mena (2011)

How do they pick them, often so young? By trusting the instincts of their musicians.

But then how do others get it so wrong?

And who have we forgotten?

The music streaming site has laid of 40 percent of its staff, saying its has just enough cash to last to the end of the present financial year.

The Berlin-based operation has closed its offices in London and San Francisco. Reuters report here.

Lots of irreplaceable, home-made music would be lost if it sank.

The Boston Symphony is quietly whooping up the PR on its forthcoming Tanglewood performance of the second act of Puccini’s Tosca, featuring Kristine Opolais and Bryn Terfel and conducted by Andris Nelsons.

Opolais and her husband Nelsons have pulled out of the Met’s showcase Tosca on New Year’s Eve.

press release:

On Saturday, August 26, Boston Symphony Orchestra Music Director Andris Nelsons will lead the orchestra in Act II of Puccini’s Tosca, featuring soprano Kristine Opolais in the title role, along with bass-baritone Sir Bryn Terfel as Scarpia. The performance will also feature tenor Russell Thomas as Cavaradossi; tenor Matthew DiBattista as Spoletta, and baritone Douglas Williams as Sciarrone (in his BSO debut). The Opera Gala program will also feature songs and arias from composers including Smetana, Dvořák, and Mozart. Ms. Opolais and Sir Bryn recently performed Tosca in concert together at the Llangollen International Musical Eisteddfod on July 4, 2017, under conductor Gareth Jones.

In May, it was announced that Sir Bryn Terfel would replace baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky, who withdrew from the concert for reasons of health.

Mr & Mrs photo (c) Marco Borggreve

The World Cup-winning footballer Lilian Thuram is a member of the jury of the first France Musique competition for amateur musicians.

Thuram, 45, is head of an anti-racist foundation called Démos which works with the Philharmonie de Paris to bring children from disadvantaged areas into the concert hall. He loves all forms of music.

From this 2014 interview:

Quand j’étais enfant j’adorais la musique classique mais je n’osais pas en parler. J’habitais dans une cité et je me disais que je n’allais peut-être pas être compris, donc je me taisais. Donc oui, il faut vulgariser la musique classique, c’est une évidence. Il faut même vulgariser toutes les musiques…. Dimanche je vais d’ailleurs à la Philharmonie de Paris, j’aime beaucoup ce lieu. Je m’adapte à tous les codes. Et d’ailleurs il n’y a pas une seule forme de musique classique ! C’est comme les gens qui disent ‘je n’aime pas lire’, ça n’a pas de sens : tout dépend ce que vous lisez, il faut aller vers ce qui vous intéresse. Dire ‘je n’aime pas la musique’ n’a pas de sens non plus, il y a plusieurs types de musiques, et pour le classique c’est pareil, il y a des compositeurs différents, des histoires différentes. C’est pourquoi il faut la vulgariser pour que les gens prennent conscience de cette diversité.

 

photo (c) Vincent N’Guyen/Fondation Lilian Thuram

Thuram, the most capped player in the history of French football, made no secret of his cultural interests. Did anyone ever see Wayne Rooney at the Hallé?