For all who wish to express sympathy and perpetuate the memory of a great singer and human being, Dmitri Hvorostovsky’s family have issued the following message:

The Hvorostovsky family would like to thank everyone for the outpouring of love and support during this difficult time. In lieu of flowers, they suggest that donations be made to Cancer Research UK.: bit.ly/DHVCancerResearch.

Given that the greatest composer lived most of his life in Vienna, and that Vienna makes a fortune from exploiting its musical past, you’d have thought someone would have opened a proper Beethoven museum in the composer’s house.

Well, they have now.

In good time for his 250th birth anniversary in 2020.

The European Commission today annulled the UK’s bids to host the European Capital of Culture after 2019, when Britain leaves the EU.

Several UK cities that were bidding for 2023 have voiced outrage and dismay. So did a Government minister. But what did anyone expect when they voted for Brexit?

 

At least, according to her violin case.

We wish her growing family all the best.

 

 

The Welsh baritone, rehearsing Falstaff with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, tweets this morning:

RIP. To the king of the 1989 Cardiff singer of the world. He certainly inspired us all to pull our socks up. Confident, crazy, talented, caring man. My thoughts and prayers are with his family.

Bryn was the red-hot favourite to win in Cardiff when he was upstaged by the Siberian outsider.

Over the next 28 years, there were no hard feelings.

Read more tributes from singers here.

Read also: What we have lost in Dmitri Hvorostovsky.

A year after he stopped playing with a severe movement disorder, we hear at first hand that Milos Karadaglic has taken up his guitar again and will be back on stage in recital in the spring of next year.

Even more encouraging, Milos has started practising the first of two concertos that have been written for him and that he will perform in the next couple of years.

It is not many performers of whom it can be said that without them an instrument falls silent. But Milos is such a towering figure in classical guitar that his presence is desperately needed to give the instrument back its profile.

This is very, very good news.

 

Joshua Kosman is first in print with a review in the San Francisco Chronicle of the world premiere of the John Adams-Peter Sellars opera, Girls of the Golden West.

He’s unimpressed with what he calls as ‘operatic tofuturkey’:

Bloated, repetitive, self-righteous and dull, this commission by the San Francisco Opera (in partnership with the Dallas Opera and Dutch National Opera, Amsterdam) represents a miscalculation of astonishing dimensions….

“Girls of the Golden West” is a work that seems to have taxed Adams’ prodigious creative energy to its breaking point, leaving him to recycle favorite stylistic tics from his earlier work (and from other composers) amid a stream of discursive monologues and choppy ballads.

All of this, needless to say, comes as a huge shock from a team that has given us such operatic masterpieces as “Nixon in China” and (on balance) “Doctor Atomic.” 

Photo: Cory Weaver/San Francisco Opera

Read on here.

Next review by Janos Gereben of SFGate (but on his own site) is no less of a let-down: 

It is the music that’s the surprising, almost shocking disappointment. Meandering, uninteresting vocal lines are heard against a monotonous orchestral background that takes the listener back to the early days of Minimalism — not even Adams’, but Philip Glass’ at his worst. It’s only at the very end of the opera, during a lengthy death-and-lamentation scene that musical beauty appears, but it’s too late: some of the audience have left, others sit numb, and a small group of fans applauds enthusiastically.

Full review here.

There are gung-ho reviews in the Mercury News  and the SF Examiner. Nothing yet in the New York Times, NPR or other national media.

Mark Swed in the LA Times is more measured.

Tests conducted at a Dutch University showed that every section of the orchestra, including strings, are exposed to sound levels of 90 decibels in some sections to more than 100 decibels.

The tipping points for damage to hearing is calculated at 90db.

Risers and screens to do significantly diminish the damage.

Here‘s an abstract of the research:

Symphony orchestra musicians are exposed to noise levels that put them at risk of developing hearing damage. This study evaluates the potential effectivity of common control measures used in orchestras on open stages with a typical symphonic setup. A validated acoustic prediction model is used that calculates binaural sound exposure levels at the ears of all musicians in the orchestra.

The model calculates the equivalent sound levels for a performance of the first 2 min of the 4th movement of Mahler’s 1st symphony, which can be considered representative for loud orchestral music. Calculated results indicate that risers, available space, and screens at typical positions do not significantly influence sound exposure. A hypothetical scenario with surround screens shows that, even when shielding all direct sound from others, sound exposure is reduced moderately with the largest effect on players in loud sections. In contrast, a dramatic change in room acoustic conditions only leads to considerable reductions for soft players. It can be concluded that significant reductions are only reached with extreme measures that are unrealistic. It seems impossible for the studied physical measures to be effective enough to replace hearing protection devices such as ear plugs.

Ten years from now, is that what we’ll all be wearing?

 

The violinist Olga Guy invites us all to a recital in Brussels on December 20.

Rear view.

The culture-friendly Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, has sent a strong signal to the RTE to forget plans about merging two orchestras.

‘I certainly would share your concerns about any diminution of the RTÉ orchestra or any other orchestras,’ he told a Labour TD.

Varadkar has pledged to double Ireland’s arts spending over seven years.

We might all have to move to Ireland after Brexit.

The vocalist Jon Hendricks has died at 96 and the great Columbia Records producer George Avakian at 98.

Tributes at Jazz Times.

photo: John Ross/Masterworks

The Latvian-born conductor has been named the 104th recipient of the Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medal.

He will receive the medal at a London concert tomorrow night.

What took them so long?