The Newport Contemporary Music Festival, which was meant to feature Philip Glass, Andre Previn and Howard Shore this summer, fell apart in mid-movement and has left an army of furious musicians.

The festival was the brainchild of a 25 year-old impresario, Paul Van Anglen. He blames the collapse on donors who failed to cough up. Musicians found the event amateurish, with insufficient chairs on stage and Van Anglen’s claims to be a conductor unproven.

More than 100 orchestral musicians have gone unpaid.

The Boston Globe has the full gruesome story here.

Van Anglen continues to describe himself on Facebook as Music Director of the Newport Contemporary Music Festival.

 

Meet the New York Philharmonic All-Stars, an online campaign to engage concertgoers with the top players.

 

 

Missing from the set is the principal horn, Phil Myers.

Phil has been principal horn since January 1980 and is still listed as such on the NY Phil website. The orchestra has refused to comment on reports of a disciplinary issue that led to his departure. 

Local media have kept shtum. But Phil’s absence from the all-stars appears to confirm he has blown his last.

 

 

 

 

The music director of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Vasily Petrenko, was named Artist of the Year at the Gramophone Awards last night.

He almost didn’t make it to the gala dinner after his flight from Moscow was cancelled at the last minute.

But some really nifty footwork from the Liverpool midfield and a rerouting via a couple of cities that have never played in the Champions League somehow got the maestro there in the nick of extra time.

Just as desserts were being served.

 

Eat that, Mourinho.

(A small prize for naming the lady in the designer black frock)

 

The former director of the Vienna State Opera, Ioan Holender, has given a grouchy interview to Die Presse in which he insists that he never rode in taxs or stayed in five-star hotels.

Singers who asked him to pay their taxi ride from the airport were bluntly refused.

He maintains the top nightly fee at Vienna is 12,500 Euros, as it was in his time, but he thinks the opera house gets too much state subsidy and he’s angling to get appointed as an adviser to the incoming director Bogdan Roscic.

Full interview here (paywall).

 

Our observer at the Bartók violin competition, held at the Liszt Academy in Budapest, was encouraged to see several unfancied outsiders get through to the semi-finals.

That was before the judges woke up. In the final, all the contestants are students, or past students, of members of the jury.

Gabor Hamoki, Hungary, attended Liszt Academy and studied with a juror, Barnabas Kelemen

Yoerae Kim – South Korea, has studied at the Liszt Academy for 8 years

Chisa Kitagawa, Japan, student of juror Takashi Shimizu

Agnes Langer, Hungary, local favourite

Cosima Soulez Lariviere, Netherlands/France, student of juror Krzysztof Wegrzyn

Una Stanic, Serbia, had masterclasses with Krzysztof Wegrzyn

Ririko Takagi, Japan,  student of juror Takashi Shimizu

The finals are tonight.

The outcome: Teacher’s pet wins all.

What was it Béla Bartók once said? ‘Competitions are for horses, not artists’.

The increasingly Islamist and authoritarian regime has ordered the replacement of Chopin’s funeral march with one by an Ottoman composer which has lyrics from the Qur’an.

More here.

 

We hear that the prodigious Michael Winfield, who played oboe on Strawberry Fields Forever, has died.

Mike played oboe and cor anglais in the Halle and London orchestras for almost half a century. He taught oboe at the Royal College of Music, in London, and was hugely influential on three generations of players.

The funeral will be at 12.30 on Friday September 22 at St.Mary’s church. Causeway, Horsham RH12 1HE.

 

 

After 18 years as music director of the Vancouver Symphony, the British conductor Bramwell Tovey is to be Director of Orchestral Activities at Boston University School of Music, starting this month.

He succeeds succeeds David Hoose, who ran the program from 1987 to 2015.

Announcement here.

Brian Schembri has been dumped as artistic director and principal conductor of the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra. He was replaced in the last concert of the season after allegedly failing to show up for rehearsal.

Schembri has reacted on social media: ‘This decision is an absurd contradiction with the general consensus that the unquestionable and notable artistic development that the orchestra has gone through these last few years was the direct result of my contribution’.

And the tenor Joseph Calleja has offered his support: ‘Whereas I am not privy to the other side of this sad story, I can definitely vouch for the fact that we don’t have artists like Brian Schembri growing on trees in Malta. Brian is an accomplished musician and consummate artist with still a lot to give in our ever growing and dynamic musical scene. There is no denying the great work he has already achieved with the now excellent maltaphilarmonic  and it would be a great big pity if a compromise to retain the Maestro’s services is not reached. In the hope that good sense will prevail.’

 

Jakob Hrusa and Tomas Netopil are local favourites to succeed the late Jiri Belohlavek as music director of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra.

They met last night in Prague for the first time in years.

 

Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, 73, has told the BBC Today programme she will never sing in public again.

She said she stopped performing a year ago, but had not announced her retirement until today.

The Revopera site has come up with a table of the biggest spenders in Europe.

The top five are:

1 Salzburg – 62.5 million Euros

2 Verona – 44.3m

3 Glyndebourne – 31.1m

4 Bayreuth – 23m

5 Aix-en-Provence – 22.5 million

Then there’s a huge drop to the next batch, spending nine million Euros or less.

These figures look somewhat partial. They do not include Lucerne (!), the BBC Proms, Verbier or Edinburgh, let alone any of the big-city festivals in Vienna, Berlin and Zurich.

On a more entrepreneurial note, the site lists the festivals that are best at self-financing. Glyndebourne comes top at 94%, Orange is second on 85%, Savolinna third at 82%. Lucerne, once more, is a notable omission.

Lots more statistics right here.  Fascinating stuff, not just for nerds like us, but bare in mind the ones they have overlooked.