Another tale of musical woe.

The Cleveland music director is to be awarded  the 2017 Pro Arte Europapreis award tomorrow by the Herbert-Batliner-Europainstitut in Salzburg.

The citation reads: ‘Franz Welser-Möst is not only the ambassador of European culture in America, but has also set new standards with his particular interpretation of 20th century works.’

The biennial prize, worth 30,000 euros, was previously awarded in 2013 to Zubin Mehta and in 2015 to the outgoing Salzburg Festival director, Alexander Pereira.

The BBC classical station lost 6.3 percent of its listeners in the second quarter of 2017, compared to the same period last year.

Classic FM was up 4.9 percent.

Radio 3 reaches just over two million listeners, Classic FM 5,781,000.

Source: Rajar.

I just withdrew this new release from my player and it cracked.

Are major labels saving on raw materials?

 

Anyone else experience this?

The papers of the Austrian conductor Karl Böhm have been consigned to the University of Salzburg, which will curate and make them accessible to researchers.

Although the acquisition is being presented in a positive light, the announcement makes clear that Böhm twice accepted key positions from Adolf Hitler – as music director of the Semper Oper in Dresden and later at the Vienna State Opera.

He also lived in a mansion that had been stolen from Jewish owners and presented to him by the Vienna Gauleiter Baldur von Schirach.

Curiously, Böhm never joined the Nazi party though he made no secret of his enthusiastic support for its aims.

Böhm died in August 1981.

Read on here.

Tha Salzburg Festival describes him as its most influential post-War conductor, after Herbert von Karajan.

Drew McManus has reached the third and last segment of his charts of high earners in US orchestras.

You’ve read the presidents’ and conductors’ salaries for 2014/15. Now the concertmasters, who have apparently suffered a pay cut for three successive years:

1 San Francisco Symphony: $640,714 (Alexander Barantschik)

 

 

2 Chicago Symphony: $549,963 (Robert Chen)

3 Los Angeles Philharmonic: $524,910 (Martin Chalifour)

4 Cleveland Orchestra: $501,155 (William Preucil)

5 Boston Symphony: $443,715 (Malcolm Lowe)

6 New York Philharmonic: $437,538 (Frank Huang)

7 Philadelphia Orchestra: $406,355 (David Kim)

8 National Symphony: $378,254 (Nurit Bar-Josef)

9 Dallas Symphony: $299,539 (Alexander Kerr)

10 Cincinnati Symphony: $294,868 (Timothy Lees)

You may notice a gender imbalance.

Natalie Clein has withdrawn from the world premiere of Brian Elias’s concerto at the Proms on August 9.

No reason given.

The BBC have been incredibly lucky to find Leonard Elschenbroich free and willing to jump in.

He has less than a week to master a new concerto.

Toi, bloody, toi!

UPDATE: Natalie Clein is undergoing surgery tomorrow.

Slipped Disc readers have been asking about an advertisement for auditions in the AFM’s International Musician for principal horn of the New York Philharmonic.

The post has been held since January 1980 by the outstanding Phil Myers, one of the orchestra’s defining personalities.

Rumours of a disciplinary issue leading to Myers’ departure were denied to us by the NY Phil press office a month ago. Myers himself has not responded to emails or phone messages. He is still listed on the NY Phil website as principal horn.

But his job is apparently being advertised.

The tenor Andrea Bocelli took 60 kids from Haiti, aged 9 to 15, to sing for Pope Francis yesterday after his weekly general audience. The chorus, known as Voices of Haiti and drawn from the poorest parts of the island, is touring Italy as a project of the Bocelli Foundation.

They sang ‘Amazing Grace’ and ‘Ave Maria.’


photo: L’Osservatore Romano