The Loesje Sanders agency has shared the sad news that Paul Brown died yesterday at his home in Wales.

Paul, who was 57, was the director Graham Vick’s regular design partner; teir last production together was Mahagonny in Copenhagen.

Paul also collaborated frequently with Jonathan Kent at Glyndebourne and Covent Garden.

He will be widely missed.

 

The Hungarian-born violinist who taught in St Petersburg from 1868 to 1917 is generally acclaimed as the ‘father’ of the Russian school of violin playing.

But was he?

In a challenging new essay, the young violinist Yevgeny Chepovetsky, himself a student of an Auer-linear teacher, asks as uncomfortable question. Why is it that from 1868 to 1903 Auer did not produce a single star pupil?

From 1868 to 1903, Auer was completely unknown as a teacher beyond Russia’s border.

So what changed in 1903?

He met an 11-year-old child named Mischa Elman. It happened at one of those godforsaken outskirts of Russian Empire within a Jewish Pale of Settlement where Elmans lived for generations. Auer accepted the child into his class in St. Petersburg.

Sixteen months later Mischa made his sensational debut in Berlin, the most important musical city of that time. Elman started concertizing internationally right after,  never returning to Auer’s class…

Read on here.

Ahead of its first European tour this month, the Orchestre Métropolitain is getting branded up with Quebec labels, who are kitting out the musicians in new gear and shoes.

‘Yannick wants the orchestra to look modern,’ says Marie Saint-Pierre, the costume designer.

 

 

Shoes are supplied by Aldo.

This orchestra is going to look chic and neat.

 

US media are lamenting the death of Frank Corsaro, a New York director who had a decisive impact on City Opera but was only once engaged at the Met, and that was because he came as part of a Canadian Handel package.

A former actor who remained close friends with Marlon Brando and Paul Newman, Corsaro was a go-to director on Broadway.

He taught for 21 years at Juilliard and staged three productions at Glyndebourne in its glory years – Where the Wild Things AreThe Love of Three Oranges and the Ravel double-bill of L’Heure Espagnole and L’Enfant et les Sortilèges.

He died in Georgia on November 11, aged 92.

The BBC is facing a wave of complaints about its new costume drama Howard’s End, with viewers saying the dialogue is made inaudible by a high level of background music.

The series has been scored by Nico Muhly, whose opera Marnie opens this week in London.

Sample complaints:

 

 

‘The sound was awful you couldn’t really hear the dialogue clearly because of the jarring background music.’

More here.

Berklee College of Music has come clean on its record after a Boston Globe investigation found that it had allowed three professors to leave quietly following accusations of sexual assault or harassment.

The college president now says 11 faculty members were fired over 13 years in connection with such charges.

Yesterday, students walked out of classes to protest the college’s record.

 

Judy Drucker is 89 and going strong.

She made her name in the biz in 1967 by starting a concert association in Florida.

Since then, hardly an artist of note has been left of her radar.

They are about to celebrate her half-century in music.

Tribute here.

The posh people’s opera festival plans two shows at the Empire Theatre in 2019, the first time it has played on Merseyside for almost half a century.

Until 1972, Gly used to work at developing opera audiences all over the country. Then they got bored with the less fashionable bits.

Good to see they’ve got their mojo back.

 

The Polish composer is receiving an honorary doctorate from Indiana University today.

On Wednesday he will conduct IU Jacobs School musicians in his St Luke’s Passion.

 

The memoirs of harpsichordist Zuzana Ruzickova, who died in September aged 90, have been bought by Bloomsbury, the original Harry Potter publisher.

Ruzickova survived three Nazi concentration camps and a brutally antisemitic Communist regime.

Publication is scheduled for Spring 2019.

 

Publicists for the Korean pianist Yeol Eum Son are claiming that her performance of Mozart K467, due for release on a boutique label next spring, will have been the prolific conductor’s last word on record.

Neville, who died last year aged 92, never knew exactly how many records he made, only that he was the second most recorded conductor after Karajan.

But before we get too excited about this valediction, it’s worth knowing that most of Neville’s recordings in his 90s were done as favours – either to his orchestra, to keep them in work, or to friends in the music biz who needed to give their artists a shard of limelight.

He was the most generous of men.

 

Christoph Eschenbach, 77, was installed this morning as chief conductor of Berlin’s Konzerthausorchester, succeeding Ivan Fischer.

When we first foretold the move, many regarded at as wierdly regressive.

He won’t come cheap, either. Eschy’s last Washington DC pay packet was close to $2.5 million a year.