The resignation of Gianfranco Mariotti today came as a shock to the Italian opera infrastructure. He seemed both indestructible and indispensable. The festival at Pesaro is one of the best of its kind.
But the Court of Auditors has raised questions about his contract and Mariotti decided to step aside.
The Russian protest group, imprisoned by the Putin regime and later kicked out of the country, have received the ultimate cultural accolade of respectability – a cover version on a classical album.
Matt Haimovitz and Christopher O’Riley have included their Punk Prayer in a forthcoming Pentatone release titled Troika.
Matt explains:
‘With our cover of Pussy Riot’s Punk Prayer, we celebrate the band’s courage and the spirit of protest in an age of Orwellian intimidation. In the opening and closing chorales, I use a glass slide on the strings as I pluck with the right for an eerie theremin-like effect. The grunge punk distortion in the bass is also acoustically achieved with a styrofoam cup smashed behind the cello’s bridge.
The traditional three-horse-drawn troika moved across the Russian landscape with its own elaborate system of bells and whistles, used to herald its arrival to the coming town. Here, the composers and songwriters of TROIKA, each in their own way, use the power of their voices to warn and to cajole, to resist and to remember.’
We have drawn your attention before to the eclectic performing talents of Nora Fischer, daughter of the conductor Ivan Fischer.
Today she got signed up by Intermusica, the London-based classical agency.
The death is reported in a Glasgow hospital of John Maxwell Geddes, composer of three well-received symphonies and many other orchestral works, including several film scores.
He taught at the Royal Conservatoires in Glasgow and Copenhagen and was performed internationally.
Adrian Higginson, a cellist and euphonium player, was jailed today for six months for stealing instruments from the Royal Marines band store rooms in Plymouth and Portsmouth.
Higginson, 29, admitted stealing 13 instruments and an amplifier to pay off debts.
The Athens State Orchestra (KOA) has begun disciplinary proceedings against Panayiotis Drakos, a flute player who was arrested this week on charges of abusing three girls aged nine to eleven.
In a statement, the orchestra said the Greek music community was shocked by the ‘abhorrent’ nature of the alleged offences. Panayiotis Drakos, 60, is a full-time flute player and teacher.
He has been referred to as ‘the most important flute soloist in the country’.
The criminal history of Barrett Wissman, co-owner of IMG Artists, is well-known to Slipped Disc readers.
Wissman pleaded guilty in 2009 to defrauding a pension fund of the state of New York. He stayed out of jail by paying a $12 million fine and blowing the whistle on his associates. He got to keep the ranch in Montana
Now, he is trying to whitewash his past by turning the ranch into a summer refuge for artists and musicians, according to a release from his PRs.
Turns out you can fool all of the people all of the time.
Read the sanctuary news here.
According to ‘172 of the world’s leading opera singers’ polled by BBC Music magazine, the all time greats are:
1 Marriage of Figaro
2 La Boheme
3 Rosenkavalier
4 Wozzeck
5 Peter Grimes.
Well, the sample is rather small and anyway, professional singers stand too close to the flame to judge the heat.
A list of greats in which Verdi and Wagner figure first at 9 and 10 cannot be representative.
The orchestra’s chief executive, Heung-sik Choe, has abruptly resigned.
Local reports indicated that Choe, 65, is about to be named head of the national Financial Supervisory Service, in a breach with tradition that gives the key clean-hands job to a veteran public servant.
Choe, a former university professor linked to the disgraced Park regime, was an unsatisfactory chief of the orchestra. He undermined the return of its former music director Myung Whun Chung and threatened players with demotion or dismissal if they joined Chung’s new One Korea orchestra.
Few will weep to see him go.
The first final of this year’s ARD competition was a washout.
All three finalists played Prokofiev’s first violin concerto with Michael Francis conducting the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra.
The jury chaired by Mauricio Fuks of Canada decided to withhold the first prize. Sarah Christian and Andrea Obsio shared second. Kristine Balanas (pictured) came third. Sarah Christian won the audience prize. Obiso won a prize for best interpretation of the commissioned work. No-one went home happy.
