The violinist and conductor Julien Chauvin has put out an appeal for the recovery of instruments that were stolen from him yesterday in Paris.

Julien, founder of  Le Cercle de l’Harmonie and Concert de la Loge Olympique, issued the following message:

 

 

 

HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
My violin was stolen this morning
Giuseppe Rocca 1839
And Marie’s viola
Yair Hod Fainas 
Many bows including these

Please be aware and forward largely!!!

 

The Arnold Schönberg Center in Vienna is setting a quiz, with prizes, for those who think they really know all about the great man.

Only two things wrong with it.

First, it’s multiple choice, so designed for dummies.

Second, it insists on calling him Schönberg when the old man made it abundantly clear after emigration that he never wanted to see another umlaut on his name. He’s Schoenberg, if what the composer wants matters to anyone.

If you still want to try the quiz, it’s here.

That’s what Mirga has ordered for tonight’s Birmingham performance.

Three boy trebles to sing the angelic song.

This must be a first… I can’t find any precedent, or any indication that this is what Mahler wanted.

Here are the details.

Boys aside, it’s an interesting programme.

So what was it like? Here’s a first review.

 

The doyen of Italian musicologists Mario Bortolotto died yesterday at 90.

A widely read man, rooted in late romanticism, he belonged to the generation of Berio and Nono, challenging preconceptions and pushing music forward into present times.

Obituary here.

Rhinegold Publishing has let it be known that the quarterly Early Music Today is about to publish its last issue.

At which point Early will become late.

 

Michael Solomon, who was until recently Senior Press Representative for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, has been named Director of Audience Experience of Austin Opera, Texas.

The newly created position is financed by an Opera America Innovation Grant.

Guess we’ll be hearing good things out of Austin.

Members of the LA Phil say that what they hear depends on where they sit. Percussionist Perry Dreiman says: ‘The stage has 101 acoustical micro-climates. Every seat on that stage is different.’

That involves frequent changes of seating to deliver the best sound picture to the audience.

There’s some interesting detail in this podcast.

Listen here.

We have been informed of the death of Zuzana Růžičková, renowned the world over for her interpretations of Bach and revered by generations of students. Zuzana died early this afternoon in a Prague hospital at the age of 90.

 

A survivor of the Terezin, Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen death camps, she returned to Prague after the war and became the moral conscience of its musical life. Like her husband, the composer Viktor Kalabis, she never joined the Communist Party.

Bach, her refuge from the Nazi horrors, became her haven under Communist tyranny.

She lived quietly in Prague, true to her own lights. In the 1970s she was allowed to record for a western label, Erato, recordings which have recently been reissued by Warner.

The world has lost a great musician, a great teacher, a magnificent human being.

May her soul rest with the immortals.

Debate is raging in Australia,where opera is only ever to be seen in four or five cities, over why the art form gets such a huge slice of the funding cake. Can it be justified when almost the entire continent (and its media) is opera free, and when most Aussies would rather go to watch sports?

It is argued that opera represents the “highest” of artforms given its combination of music, theatre dance and the visual arts. Certainly it usually receives the most financial rewards from government and often also from private benefactors.

In 2015-16, Australian opera companies received $23.7 million from the Australia Council, representing 13.7% of the council’s overall grant allocation. Opera, while seen as an art that embraces other artforms, is located primarily within music. Music overall receives 53% of the council’s allocation. This compares with 2.7% given to literature and 9.7% given to the visual arts.

More here.

The inequality is even starker in the UK. Your views?

The Scottish Catholic composer is fed up with almost half a century’s happy-clappy dumbing down:

I’ve given up the liturgy wars since. I stepped back from parish music involvement and now just sit in the pews, suffering with the rest of the Catholic faithful. I still love writing for choirs, though, and from the sidelines I encourage the application of Gregorian chant in simple, vernacular ways, as well as in Latin. The Orthodox chant I heard in Romania in September was astonishingly beautiful. Perhaps there is a way of incorporating it into choral music for the liturgy here too?

Read full article here.

Zubin Mehta has pulled out of a Valencia concert next April with the Maggio Musicale orchestra of Florence, citing ‘personal reasons’ (involving the whole orchestra?).

They have quickly replaced him with the London Symphony Orchestra and Susanna Mälkki.

More going on here than meets the eye.