The embattled British prime minister turned up at the London Philharmonic Orchestra on Wednesday and Daniel Barenboim’s West-East Diwan Orchestra on Saturday in aid of multiple sclerosis research.

She should think of buying a season ticket.

 

photo: (c) South Bank Centre/Ben Larpent

 

The Albany Symphony Orchestra wakes up today $7 million richer, thanks to a legacy from Professor Heinrich Medicus, a Swiss-born nuclear physicist, who died in February.

The Albany Symphony, conductor David Alan Miller, has an annual budget of $2.3 million and an endowment of $500,000. It will need to scale up to accommodate this generous gift.

The Austrian Architekturbüro Cukrowicz Nachbaur has won the contract to design Munich’s new concert hall.

Here’s the winning model:

We have been informed of the death in Massachusetts of Raymond Hanson, three weeks after his 98th birthday.

Raymond studied piano with Harold Bauer at the Hartt School of Music in 1946 and taught there until his retirement in 1992, though he continued teaching privately until this year.

His wife Anne Koscielny died two years ago.

There’s a fascinating John Mortensen interview with him here.

Anna Netrebko has told the Bavarian State Opera she cannot sing Tosca next July because she is required to appear at the FIFA World Cup in Moscow.

Since it is unlikely she will appear on the pitch for the Russian XI, it is safe to assume she has been summoned by Vladimir Putin as associated entertainment.

Munich has replaced her with the experienced Angela Gheorghiu.

Netrebko is due to make her role debut as Tosca next April in New York.

 

The Quatuor Ebène has named Marie Chilemme as its new viola player.

She replaces Adrien Boisseau, 26, who quit suddenly after two years to pursue a solo career.

New lineup:

Analysis by data scientist Dr Abigail Lebrecht reveals that the country is so divided that no party can win an election by relying exclusively on Leave or Remain voters.

Off-topic, perhaps, but political dynamite.

Read here.

From our pals at Ludwig Van Toronto:

I’m tone deaf. I can’t sing. It’s usually accompanied by a smile or laugh, but the message is both clear and absolute. And wrong.

Lorna MacDonald is Professor of Voice Studies and Vocal Pedagogy at the University of Toronto, and she puts it even more strongly. “That’s a blatant lie.”

Of all creative endeavours, singing is perhaps the most poorly understood. To the chagrin of vocal teachers everywhere, singing is the one pursuit where you will be told, you can’t sing, so don’t bother. Parents will readily pony up the resources for acting lessons, or soccer, but when it comes to the ability to sing, many people are still under the impression that it’s something magical – you either have it, or you don’t.

A study of undergrads at Queen’s University, found that about 17 percent reported themselves as being tone deaf. It’s such a common fallacy in our society that it has led to a world of singers — the small minority — and non-singers — the vast majority. But is that really based in reality? Science — and those vocal teachers —  say no….

Read on here.

The Lebrecht Album of the Week has the first review of a premier album of orchestral and film music by George Martin, the Beatles’ man behind the glass wall.

How good a musician was the Beatles’ producer? I talked to George Martin three or four times and, while I found him very likeable, was unimpressed by his musical curiosity. Like many other producers I knew at Abbey Road, he was a purposeful fixer who knew what needed to be done to make a track work and which of London’s hundreds of freelancers he had to call in to patch up a session that, somehow, lacked the finishing touch. String quartet for ‘Yesterday’, piccolo trumpet for ‘Penny Lane’, George Martin knew who to call and how to integrate them. He had a quirky turn of mind, rather than an original concept.

This first album of his orchestral music and film scores, elegantly played by Craig Leon’s Berlin’s Music Ensemble, gives us an opportunity to see what might have been going on behind George’s determinedly bland musical façade…

Read on here.

And here.

And here.

 

A last minute intervention by Rome stopped the auction of a cache of Verdi manuscripts and letters at Sotheby’s London yesterday. The Italians agreed to pay £358,000 to make the documents, privately owned in America for half a century, available for scholarly and public perusal.

The Italians will also pay Sotheby’s commission.