The roving Hans Gabor International Belvedere Competition – different city every year – held its finals in Moscow this week.

An outlying Russian mezzo, Aigul Akhmetshina, came first.

Second was the Australian tenor Kang Wang, third the South African Mandla Mndebele.

The venerable Norman Ayrton, long-serving head of LAMDA, the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, has died at 92.

He coached to the young Joan Sutherland with her wooden acting and helped her at several Covent Garden productions. He directed opera at the ROH, Sydney Opera House, Juilliard and Harvard.


photo: BADA

Jay R. Morgenstern died on July 4.

A perceptive publisher of great stage musicals, he was vice-chair of the performing rights organisation Ascap from 1987 to 2007.

The federal cultural minister Monika Grütters has announced a pot of cash that orchestras can apply for to attempt new ideas and initiatives that are beyond their budget.

The fund, worth €5.4 million, is open to all publicly funded orchestras.

Grants will be awarded in tranches of 50,000 to 450,000 Euros.

How clever of Ms Grütters to spot this really vital need.

The former intendant of Trier, Karl Sibelius, and the city’s culture chief, Thomas Egger, are under criminal investigation over two years of overspending.

It is alleged that they ran up million-Euro deficits.

Presumptions of innocence apply. It is rare for the prosecuting authority to get involved in cultural affairs.

Extraordinary first person reminiscence in the Spectator:

Because I’d been reading about Stradivarius on the bus home, my helpful iPhone suggested a related story: the Totenberg Ames Stradivarius, stolen and ‘silent for decades’, was to be played again in concert….

There are moments in life when a light shines suddenly backwards on the past. Phil Johnson, the violin thief, was my first love; the first bloke to really unsettle my icy little teenage heart. Quite unknowing, I’d listened to him play the Totenberg Strad for hours on end. Unknowing, I’d played it myself.

You will want to read on here.

It’s a proposition that Joe Horowitz examines in close detail with a couple of radio pals here.

I’ve put it to one side for weekend listening, but there can be no doubt that America changed Dvorak – and for the better. Without his trip, there would have been no New World symphony and no cello concerto.

How much of America he morphed into music is the subject of Joe’s examination.

Le Monde reports the death yesterday of Pierre Henri, inventor of musique concrète and the most important French modernist after Pierre Boulez.

Working in 1950 with Pierre Schaeffer, Henri composed a Symphonie pour un homme seul, followed by several works of electronic abstraction. In 1958 he founded his own studio.

His works achieved wide currency through the ballets of Maurice Bejart and he stood for several decades at the centre of public debate on the shape of modern music.

Ramón Tebar, principal conductor at Florida Grand Opera and music director of the Palm Beach Symphony, has been named chief conductor of the Orquesta de Valencia in his native Spain.

 

 

The Columbus Symphony and its music director Rossen Milanov have confirmed Joanna Frankel as concertmaster.

An international soloist, she was previously concertmaster of the KwaZulu-Natal Philharmonic in Durban, South Africa.

 

The veteran Spectator critic lets rip with a rant:

Mahler said his time would come; the question now, for me, is when it will go. For the symphonies, up until the last, are all flawed; in different ways, but primarily because they peddle sentimentality as courage, heroism, defiance and piety. Furtwängler, who only conducted any of the symphonies fairly early in his career, told his second wife that when he got to the end of the Third Symphony he felt as if he had slept with a meringue in his mouth.

Read on here.

Furtwängler’s hostility to Mahler is well documented, and he’s entitled to his view. But if Mahler’s symphonies are flawed, compared to Furtwängler’s windy symphonies they are the greatest works of mankind.

Carmen Giannattasio has posted:

Hello Friends, unfortunately my knee is again under pain. I’ve partially broken meniscus during last rehearsals and as soon as I terminate this summer run, will operate and fix it. Meanwhile wearing a brace which is not very appealing but helping me a lot. My beautiful collegue Jelena Kordic, who sings Lola in Cavalleria is also under injury.. at least I am not alone;))

Being an Opera Singer can be dangerous;))

Tomorrow last performance as Nedda/Colombina at Semperoper, then off to Torre del Lago for an exciting premiere of Turandot at Puccini Festival which opens on July 14th.

 

 

 

So she’s literally in the cast.