This is the February 1943 issue of Etude magazine showing Dmitry Shostakovich against the backdrop of besieged Leningrad.
It’s every bit as strong at the famous Time magazine cover, a mark of the talent and ambition of editorial staff on music magazines in those heady times.
Our thanks to Denis Plutalov for sharing this picture from a music school library.
During an event billed as ‘The Concert of a Lifetime’, the violinist Joshua Bell suffered a persistent nosebleed and was reaching for tissues throughout his performance.
The concert was a tribute to the late Herbert Axelrod, a controversial businessman and violin collector who mingled occasional philanthropy with outright fraud and went to jail for dodging US taxes.
Among Axelrod’s dubious enterprises was a sale of overvalued Italian violins to the New Jersey Symphony, almost driving the orchestra out of business.
Bell, however, was a recipient of one of his better Guarneris.
The concert took place before an audience of 400 at the Axelrod Performing Arts Center in Deal, New Jersey.
Nosebleeds can be brought on by emotion.
Read Martin Steinberg’s concert report here.
The drummer Alvin Queen, born in Mount Vernon, New York, has been notified that U.S. Homeland Security will not allow him to enter the US to perform at a long-planned Washington concert.
The concert, titled Jazz mmet France, is hosted by Wynton Marsalis and Dr. David Skorton , Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution.
Mr Queen, 67, who holds a Swiss passport, was informed that, due to a run-in with the law as a youth half a century ago he would require a special Waiver from the U.S. Dept of Homeland Security.
He says: ‘Sadly, this doesn’t surprise me one bit. I’ve spent months preparing for this concert. Dozens of others are also implicated in its planning. Funny thing, I gave up my US passport to make life simpler at tax time. I never dreamed I would one day be denied entry, and with such ridiculous reasoning. I am frankly disgusted to be disrespected in this way after a half century devoted to music.’
The only person who could grant an instant Waiver is President Trump and … let’s not go there.
More here.
It is now six months since the Chinese pianist suffered an injury to his arm.
Recovery is painfully slow.
Statement from the Berlin Phil:
Lang Lang very much regrets that he is forced to withdraw from his upcoming guest appearances as a
soloist in concerts with the Berliner Philharmoniker in Berlin, Frankfurt am Main and on a concert tour of Asia. He needs to allow additional time to recover fully from a tendinitis of his left arm. We hope Lang Lang gets better soon and look forward to him appearing with us as a soloist in the future.
We are grateful that the young Korean pianist Seong-Jin Cho has agreed to step in for him for the concerts in Berlin, Frankfurt, Hong Kong and Seoul. We are also grateful to Yuja Wang, who will step in for the concerts in Guangzhou, Wuhan, Shanghai and Tokyo.
We hear that the Czech Philharmonic will announce Semyon Bychkov on Monday to succeed the late Jiri Belohlavek as music director.
Bychkov, 64, is an outstanding conductor of immense international experience, and one who has worked fruitfully with the orchestra over the past few years.
The Czech Phil has always been at its peak with a Czech in the podium. There was an opportunity for Belohlavek to be followed by one of his proteges – Jakub Hrusa, Tomas Netopil, Tomas Hanus – but the Czechs, not for the first time, have chosen an international brand over local brilliance.
The Kansas City Symphony has quietly raised $55 million over five years to complete its endowment.
More than 1,000 donors pledged gifts ranging from $10 to $10 million.
Details here.
From Chicago pianist Lori Kaufman:
Nobody knew what to expect. Probably a quirky, Midwest-voweled reading of Ogden Nash or TS Eliot, you know, conventional texts that are suitable for a concert hall. Instead, a sold-out Chicago Symphony Center Tuesday night witnessed everything they knew about classical music upended by a two-hour hug from actor Bill Murray.
The comedic icon brought his elegant-playing friends on stage for a meditation on American poetry and European music that married common and uncommon threads while breaking all rules, including saying the N-word out loud. Great musicians know how to make a concert hall smaller and smaller. By the end of the evening, 2,500 of us felt Murray whispering the secret to life directly in our ear, as he famously did to Scarlet Johansson at the end of Lost in Translation.
Nothing was lost here, though, as Murray took us through a love letter to Hemingway, the existential pain of depressed French painters, nature seekers Walt Whitman and James Fenimore Cooper, our nation’s hapless political history, the gospel according to Van Morrison, his beloved comeback kids of baseball, the Chicago Cubs, and a heartrending, perfectly-voiced reading of Huck Finn’s self-revelatory paean to releasing slaves.
Each time we thought we saw the most poignant moment of the evening, Murray and colleagues Jan Vogler, Mira Wang, and Vanessa Perez added another layer of intimacy and depth to the performance, astoundingly elevating and giving new life to some of the most cliched musical works. Perez shone new pearls in her pianissimo phrases of “I Dream Of Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair,” and she and cellist Vogler somehow made “Moon River,” formerly concerto for elevator and disgruntled riders, into something newly profound.
Murray shot us right through the heart when he took violinist Wang’s hand and danced a soulful tango with her onstage to the accompaniment of tango master Astor Piazolla. In the middle of Wang’s virtuoso reading of Heifetz’s showy version of “It Ain’t Necessarily So,” Murray shocked us all by singing the Gershwin lyrics better than anyone since Satchmo. Murray’s singing was the best gift of the evening, in a rousing version of “When Will I Ever Learn To Live In God” that made soulful melancholy an art form.
But that was only a warm up: The cornerstone was a homage to centenarian Leonard Bernstein. Murray crooned a gut wrenching yet dignified “Somewhere” and immediately turned tears into giddy laughter with his barnstorming and unimaginable rendition of “I Feel Pretty.” He then teased and defied the most famous rhythmic motive in all of musical theatre by singing “I Like To Be in America” in his own invented way, underlining five words of Sondheim’s as an anthem for the woes of 2017, ending the concert by punctuating “Puerto Rico’s in America” to an avalanche of applause.
We thought we would get our Ogden Nash when Vogler and Perez started playing “The Swan” during the drawn out encore session. But Murray surprised us again, narrating Lucille Clifton’s stunning “Blessing the Boats,” sending us off with a graceful benediction.
If you are anywhere near New York, do whatever it takes to see and hear these four musicians make miracles anew at Carnegie Hall on October 16.
The esteemed pianist, who yesterday announced her imminent retirement, opened the Israel Philharmonic season last night with Beethoven’s third piano concerto, conducted by Zubin Mehta.
She will give ten performances of the work, up and down the country, over the next 12 days.
Not resting yet.
The tenor has reinstated the Barbican concert he cancelled with bronchitis in February this year.
The BBC Symphony concert has been rescheduled for Saturday 19 May 2018 at 7.30 pm and will include:
Strauss Selected Songs
Elgar In The South
Strauss Four Last Songs
People who booked for the previous event will have a priority booking period, starting this morning.
The first American to direct an opera at Bayreuth has been named among this year’s recipients of a $625,000 MacArthur ‘genius award.
Yuval Sharon, 37, was called in to replace Alvis Hermanis at next summer’s Lohengrin, conducted by Christian Thielemann.
His closest conductor collaborations so far have been with Franz Welser-Möst in Cleveland and Gustavo Dudamel in LA.
The other MacArthur winners this year are listed here.
The EUYO, founded in London in 1976, is moving its operational centres to Italy and Belgium.
press release:
The Orchestra has accepted an offer from Dario Franceschini, Italian Minister of Culture, and the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism, to establish a legal and operational seat in Ferrara and Rome, and a new broadcast partnership with RAI, alongside its current Italian work in Bolzano. The Orchestra is also announcing a new partnership in Brussels. These arrangements represent the Orchestra’s first change of headquarters since it was established in London in 1976.
… From 2018, Italy, the home of the EUYO’s Founding Music Director Claudio Abbado, is to become the
Orchestra’s legal and operational seat…
… From 2018, the EUYO will be establishing an office in Brussels following an invitation from the Brussels Philharmonic. The EUYO will assist a consortium of Flemish orchestras, concert halls and conservatoires in initiating the Youth Orchestra of the Flemish Community.
The Italian announcement follows Grafenegg and the EUYO’s recent announcement that from 2018 the EUYO is expanding its relationship and work with Campus Grafenegg, the Grafenegg Festival and the Government of Lower Austria, where the Orchestra has been in partnership with Grafenegg in the European Music Campus since 2014. The Orchestra becomes Resident Orchestra at Grafenegg and Partner in Campus Grafenegg, whilst Grafenegg becomes the EUYO’s summer home and principal summer venue partner.
Congratulations to Daniel Hope, 44, who has received the Bundesverdienstkreuz from Berlin’s cultural senator, Klaus Lederer.
A protege of Yehudi Menuhin, Hope, who has made his home in Berlin, was decorated for his efforts in ‘breaking down barriers and connecting communities’.
photo (c) Harald Hoffmann
