The board president of the orchestra has come up with a centenary offering:
CLEVELAND, Ohio ― Richard and Emily Smucker have pledged $15 million to The Cleveland Orchestra in celebration of the Orchestra’s 100th season and launch of its Second Century. Their gift will be used to fund artistic and education programs, with an emphasis on programs for young people. A significant portion of their gift will also support funds for the Orchestra’s future, including the endowment.
Richard and Emily are designating $3 million of their total pledge as challenge grants, which will be used to inspire the Northeast Ohio community to support the Orchestra as the ensemble enters its Second Century of musical excellence and community engagement.
“Emily and I love The Cleveland Orchestra. The work these musicians do inspires audiences and young people throughout our community, across the nation, and around the world,” stated Richard K. Smucker, Board President of The Cleveland Orchestra. “From my own life experience, I know that music has the power to change lives. It has transformed how I think about the world, and I revel in the experience of sharing a performance with family and friends, all of us together. I find myself renewed through music.”
“This Orchestra has inspired me throughout my life,” continued Richard. “And I want to share that feeling and understanding. Emily and I want to encourage everyone who loves music, who loves this Orchestra, and who loves this great Cleveland community, to celebrate this 100th anniversary and to be part of the launch of the Orchestra’s Second Century. Music matters. Music makes life better.”
“The Orchestra’s musicians and I are deeply moved by Richard and Emily Smucker’s support. Their generosity and enthusiasm for the music we offer is deeply gratifying,” said Franz Welser-Möst, the Orchestra’s Music Director. “The Cleveland Orchestra is what it is today because of the community that created it. Generations have benefited from the vision and generosity of this community. Music helps us all understand the world and view life in new and positive ways. Richard and Emily are also teachers, leading by example that sharing and working together for good is a noble and empowering act. They are deserving of thanks, not just from us today, but from future generations who will be inspired by The Cleveland Orchestra.”
About Richard K. Smucker
Richard K. Smucker was elected as the thirteenth Board President of The Cleveland Orchestra in March, 2017, and has served on the Board of Trustees since 1989. He stepped down as Chief Executive Officer of The J. M. Smucker Company in 2016, after serving in leadership positions with the family-owned company for more than four decades; he now holds the title of Executive Chairman.
Cristian Măcelaru called in sick for this week’s concert with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra in Glasgow.
They called in Sergey Neller as replacement.
Then Neller was unable to make it.
Hit the phones for 12 hours. They finally landed the Venezuelan José Luis Gomez, music director in Tucson, who got off the plane this morning with a score of Shostakovich 12 in his pocket.
He’s rehearsing right now.
The concert consists of the World Premiere of UK Composer Daniel Kidane’s Zulu, Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No3, Rachmininov Vocalise and Shostakovich 12th symphony.
The French composer Philippe Manoury had his suitcase was stolen on November 6 on a train between Strasbourg and Mannheim. Inside were 40 pages of drafts for a new work for string quartet as well as copies of the fourth movement of Pierre Boulez’s String Quartet “Livre pour Quatuor”.
He’d like the thief to know that he can do what he likes with whatever else was in the suitcase, but the scores, which have no value to anyone else, are invaluable to the compose. The loss is a great blow for Manoury.
He appeals to the thief to leave the scores in a public place where they can be found.
If anyone sees or hears anything, please contact info@karstenwitt.com
The Salzburg-born violinist Byol Kang passed her probation year and was confirmed today as concertmaster of the Deutsche Sinfonie Orchester.
She made her first appearance on the Philharmonie stage at 12 years old.
More than 300 violinists from 51 countries have applied for the next competition, to be held in Geneva in April 2018.
The youngest is just seven years old.
We trust the organisers will exercise discretion.
Michael Dervan in the Irish Times believes the national broadcaster is trying to merge its two orchestras. Twenty posts have gone already.
Developments in RTÉ over the last few years have been eating away at the national broadcaster’s employment of musicians. The station has been using a form of atrophy, by not filling posts as they are vacated, as well as a more active strategy of allowing its orchestral musicians to avail of voluntary redundancy schemes.
More than 20 jobs have already disappeared in this way, and one highly placed source in RTÉ has said that by next June about one in five of the total of positions in the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra and the RTÉ Concert Orchestra will have been vacated…
That nice new Taoiseach needs to get involved.
Read on here.
Patricia Kopatchinskaja is artistic director in June 2018.
Among the artists listed are her parents, Viktor and Emilia Kopatchinski, folk musicians from Vienna.
‘Kopatchinskaja welcomes her parents for this effusive concert showing the energy of her roots and traditions in full force,’ says the blurb.
Pat Kop took over at short notice after the withdrawal of Esa-Pekka Salonen.
Programme here.
The once-powerful relationship has been reduced to just two concerts next summer, both at the festival’s fag-end.
Kirill Petrenko will conduct both performances – one with Yuja Wang in Prkofiev 3, the other featuring the little-heard Franz Schmidt 4th symphony.
The LSO will play two concerts with Simon Rattle. The Orchestre Symphonique de Montreal gives an all-Penderecki concert with Nagano.
The Salzburg Festival has just rolled out its 2018 lineup.
Hans Werner Henze makes a significant return with The Bassarides, premiered at Salzburg in 1966. Nagano conducts, Krzysztof Warlikowski directs.
Sonya Yoncheva stars in Monteverdi’s Poppea, William Christie conducting.
Bartoli is Rossini’s Italian Girl in Algiers.
Mariss Jansons conducts Tchikovsky’s Queen of Spades.
Welser-Möst takes charge of Salome and Matthias Goerne is the headline name in Magic Flute (Carydis conducting).
Full details here.
Henze also features in a Welser-Möst oncert with the Vienna Philharmonic.
The Romanian diva has given an interview to Opéra magazine in which she talks fondly, for once, about her ex-husband and asks him to get in touch. There are some specific recordings she wants to make with him.
‘I knew that blessed time when records were still selling and I could leave a trace of myself, my roles, on audio and video,’ she says. She goes on to say: ‘I’m not done yet.’
Read extract here.
Alagna is now married to the Polish soprano, Alexandra Kurzak.
The tombstone of the late conductor was consecrated yesterday in Leipzig.
The former Gewandhaus Kapellmeister died on December 15, 2015.
