Krystian Zimerman was due to play in Bernstein’s Age of Anxiety symphony tonight n Paris but he’s not feeling well.

Kirill Gerstein jumps in.

Costa Pilavachi, former Universal Music v-p, has joined the board of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra.

He’s a rare catch for the Scots, who usually pack boards with local prominenti.

 

Dallas Morning News reports that special counsel Robert Mueller is investigating four major Trump donors with ties to President Putin and his inner circle. The four contributed $10 million to the Trump campaign and are being treated by investigators as ‘Putin proxies’.

Two are of close musical interest.

Alexander Shustorovich (left, below) is co-owner and chief executive of IMG Artists.

Len Blavatnik owns Warner Music.

Dallas report here.

 

Zubin Mehta, out for a shoulder operation, has left two weeks of February concerts unfilled with the Berlin Philharmonic.

Bernard Haitink will take the first.

The second week goes to Petrenko – not Kirill, who is the incoming chief of the Berlin Phil, but the unrelated Vasily Petrenko, music director in Liverpool and Oslo.

This will be Vasily’s Berlin Phil debut.

 

Walking down Abbey Road one summer’s morning in 2011, I found the the studios besieged by a thousand teenaged girls in scenes unseen since the Beatles.

Back at my desk I shared this pop phenomenon – a South Korean band called SHINee – on Slipped Disc. Withing an hour, the site surged with new readers.

It is with great sadness that I learn that Kim Jonghyun, the group’s lead singer, was found dead today in his apartment in the Gangnam district of Seoul. He had reportedly been suffering from depression.

May his soul rest in peace.

 

It’s exactly two weeks since the Metropolitan Opera suspended the conductor James Levine and called in its lawyers, Proskauer Rose, to investigate allegations of sexual misconduct dating back almost half a century.

Proskauer Rose LLP is a New York corporate law firm with offices in several countries. It represents the board of the Metropolitan Opera in hardball negotiations with the unions.

The man nominated to conduct the sexual abuse inquiry is Robert J Cleary, head of the investigations practice at Proskauer Rose. Cleary is a former US attorney for the district of New Jersey and the souhern district of Illinois. He was lead prosecutor in the Unibomber case. He joined Proskauer Rose in 2002. So far, so fine.

But let’s be under no illusions here. The job of Proskauer Rose is, in the normal run of things, to make the Met board come up smelling of roses. The board is its client in this case.

The test will be how it treats the complaints. In a normal inquiry, the first action is to interview all parties to the allegations and then to work outwards to others who might have information. Two weeks have passed and we see no sign of inquiry team members calling on complainants or issuing appeals for others to come forward. It may be that there is a mountain of paperwork to be examined before formal interviews can take place, but unless we see a rustle of activity from the lawyers early in the New Year, the objectivity of the exercise may be called into question.

The same test must be applied to the Boston Symphony, which has not announced a formal investigation but ought to be looking into multiple allegations at Tanglewood concerning more than one conductor. Institutions need to examine more than just their current procedures before faith can be restored.

 

 

 

The Mongolian composer and teacher Zhebo was – as we have reported – ordered to leave Germany by the end of the year. All Zhebo ever wanted from boyhood was to live and work in the shadow of J S Bach.

A week before Christmas, the immigration authorities have relented, granting him a three year renewable permit.

 

The universally loved pianist blew out his candles for us on Saturday night.

Sunday morning he sat down at the piano to learn a new quintet.

Simonetta Puccini, whose claim to be the composer’s illegitimate granddaughter was recognised after fierce legal battles, died yesterday at 89.

Simonetta Giurumello was the child of Puccini’s only son, Antonio, whose marriage was childless. Antonio died in 1946. His widow, Rita, who died in 1979, left the composer’s estate to her bachelor brother. His butler is alleged to have enriched himself on the proceeds.

Simonetta, on winning her case, took Puccini’s name and restored his home at Torre del Lago.

There are more twists to the inheritance saga, crying out for a good librettist.