Hats off to Rebecca Allen, president of Decca Records, who has just been named Business Woman of the Year at the fourth annual Music Week Women in Music Awards.
Becky has turned around a dusty label into a consistent chart-topper, both pop and classical. Daughter of a sound engineer who started out as a press flak at Decca 17 years ago, she has the label insignia in her DNA and is one of the most straightforward people in the entire music industry.
She also runs a mean charity marathon.
From the Lebrecht Album of the Week:
Some records grab you by the ears, others take longer to impress. It is in no sense to Krystian Zimerman’s discredit that his first attempt at late Schubert took three spins on my deck before I grasped the originality of his interpretation. Rather, it is a mark of Zimerman’s thoughtfulness that the heart of the music is revealed layer by layer in a manner that makes you want to listen again and again….
Read on here.
And here.
Photo: Kasskara/DG
Yorgos Loukos, ballet director of the Opéra de Lyon, has been jailed for six months and fined 25,000 Euros for refusing to renew the contract of a dancer who was returning from maternity leave.
Loukos, 69, was convicted of charges of job discrimination and harassment.
The dancer apparently recorded their conversations.
Report here.
All year, record labels have been trying to sign a deal with Birmingham’s explosive music director Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla – and this is not it.
The conductor has decided to make her first record together with the young cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason, showcasing his extraordinary promise. As for the labels, they can wait a bit longer before she signs on the dotted line.
UPDATE: We’ve been reminded that Mirga recorded a Weinberg chamber symphony last year on a Gidon Kremer ECM release.
Details of the double record debut below:
Teenage cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason, is teaming up with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO) and Music Director Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla for his debut album ‘Inspiration’ – to be released on Decca Classics on 26th January 2018.
Recorded in Birmingham and Sheku’s hometown of Nottingham during two CBSO concerts conducted by Gražinytė-Tyla, the album features Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No.1 – the piece which propelled Sheku to fame as the first black winner of BBC Young Musician in the competition’s 38-year history.
Sheku’s debut album ‘Inspiration’ is a deeply personal collection of pieces which have inspired him in his career so far. From his school music teacher who first encouraged him to play ‘Evening of Roses’ to the great cellists – Mstislav Rostropovich, Pablo Casals and Jacqueline du Pré – who inspired him to play ‘Tears for Jacqueline’ and ‘Song of the Birds’, while Sheku’s passion for Bob Marley gave him the enthusiasm to write his very own arrangement of ‘No Woman, No Cry’. Sheku’s friends and fellow musicians are also a source of inspiration for the album, including BBC Young Musician winner Guy Johnston, who joins him for ‘Sardana’.
Inspiration – Tracklisting:
Yosef Hadar, trans. Sheku Kanneh-Mason, arr. Tom Hodge
Sheku Kanneh-Mason (Cello), CBSO Cellos
C. Saint-Saëns, arr. Tom Hodge
Sheku Kanneh-Mason (Cello), CBSO Cellos
Trad, arr. Pablo Casals
Sheku Kanneh-Mason (Cello), CBSO Cellos
Dmitri Shostakovich, arr. Levon Atovmyan
Sheku Kanneh-Mason (Cello), Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla (Conductor), CBSO
Dmitri Shostakovich: Cello Concerto No. 1 in Eb Major, Opus 107
Sheku Kanneh-Mason (Cello), Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla (Conductor), CBSO
Jacques Offenbach, arr. Thomas Mifune Werner
Sheku Kanneh-Mason (Cello), Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla (Conductor), CBSO
Pablo Casals
Sheku Kanneh-Mason (Cello), Guy Johnston (Cello), CBSO Cellos
Bob Marley, arr. Sheku Kanneh-Mason
Sheku Kanneh-Mason (Cello)
Leonard Cohen, arr. Tom Hodge
Sheku Kanneh-Mason (Cello), Didier Osindero (Violin), Alinka Rowe (Viola), Yong Jun Lee (Cello)
From Slipped Disc reader comments on Peter Gelb’s demolition of the wigs and makeup department:
… The old Zeffirelli production of La Traviata is in a dumpster somewhere, and the new one is a sea of cheap polyester black suits from the men’s warehouse (for the women too!). The ballet doesn’t exist anymore. The new productions are a snooze fest. toward the end of my career there I would stand onstage in my street clothes costume, usually with no staging except the direction ‘stand there til the curtain comes in’, and watch the audience sleep in the first 10-15 rows.
Read on here.
The composer Samuel Pellman, an electroacoustic specialist, was killed yesterday in upstate New York while riding his bicycle in the Oneida County town of Kirkland.
Pellman, 64, was a professor at Hamilton College and author of a respected how-to guide to making electronic music. On leave for the current term, he was riding his bike around Kirkland at midday when he was struck from behind by a car driven by an 86-year-old lady.
Sam Pellman leaves a widow, Colleen, and two children. He was an outstanding teacher.
A list of his compositions can be found here. Many have been recorded.
Vienna’s large Musikvereinsaal will be dark on Saturday night after the mezzo-soprano Elina Garanca pulled out late from a long-planned Lieder recital.
No refunds. The recital has been rescheduled for April.
Gustavo Dudamel has announced that his orchestra will present 50 commissioned works, most of them world premieres, in its 2018-19 season, marking the orchestra’s 100th birthday.
Among the composers involved are John Adams, Julia Adolphe, Billy Childs, Unsuk Chin, Natacha Diels, Ashley Fure, Philip Glass, Adolphus Hailstork, Vijay Iyer, Andrew Norman and Steve Reich.
The LA Phil has also commissioned Frank Gehry to design a permanent YOLA Center in Inglewood, for us by its outreach program among diverse communities in the city.
The London-based Hungarian pianist is giving up his teaching post at Yale after 30 years.
It’s proving to be a fond farewell:
“I was 52 years old,” he explained. “I had the impression that the young generation of pianists were more interested in reaching technical perfection than in involving themselves in the emotional and spiritual meaning of what each composer wanted to express in their works.
“Somehow I started feeling responsible towards the future of music-making,” he continued. “Instead of grumbling about this, I wanted to do something positive.”
… “The time that followed was one of my happiest,” Frankl recalled. “For many years, Boris Berman, the unforgettable Claude Frank, and I were a very special and enviable team of the piano faculty. All three of us were active in pursuing our performing careers. We helped each other with our teaching responsibilities without any problems. We were greatly assisted by Dean Ezra Laderman and subsequently Dean Robert Blocker to make this work. I’m extremely grateful to all the friends and colleagues who accommodated me…”
Read on here.
