Word is out that casting director Cindy Tolan is seeking actors for the four lead roles in West Side Story – Maria (18-20), Tony (18-23), Bernardo (20-24) and Anita (20-24). All have to sing. Three must speak Spanish.

Tony Kushner is said to be writing the film script for Stephen Spielberg.

OK, guys: beat this:

 

Press release:

 

 

The Boston Symphony Orchestra, in collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will offer ConcertCue, an innovative real-time program note app during the orchestra’s “Casual Fridays” program on Friday, February 9.

ConcertCue presents contextual program notes and images on concert-goers’ mobile devices in real-time during the musical performance. ConcertCue will run during the second half of the BSO concert, when the orchestra performs the world premiere of American composer Sean Shepherd’s Express Abstractionism, a co-commission of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Gewandhaus Orchestra.

In addition to insightful program notes, the app will include work by such abstract artists as Alexander Calder, Gerhard Richter, Wassily Kandinsky, and Piet Modrian whose work inspired Shepherd’s new piece of music. The ConcertCue app was developed by Eran Egozy, the founder of Harmonix Music Systems, which is best-known for the wildly popular video games “Guitar Hero” and “Rock Band.” Eran is a member of the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s Media and Technology Committee, which is headed by former MIT president Susan Hockfield.

 

The hall unfurled its 2018-19 season today with Yuja as one of four key components.

That’s quite some rise for a pianist who would not spring to mind as first choice for any single concerto.

The season:

Migrations: The Making of America
Citywide Carnegie Hall festival traces the worldwide journeys of people who helped shape and influence our American cultural heritage

Debs Composer’s Chair: Chris Thile
Composer, vocalist, and mandolin virtuoso leads season-long residency featuring songs written for his public radio show Live From Here, new music commissioned by Carnegie Hall, and performances with longtime collaborators including Nickel Creek and Punch Brothers

Perspectives: Michael Tilson Thomas & Yuja Wang
Conductor Michael Tilson Thomas curates seven-concert series including performances with the National Youth Orchestra of the USA, San Francisco Symphony, Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, and New World Symphony

Pianist Yuja Wang featured in five-concert series, including performances with Leonidas Kavakos, Gautier Capuçon, Martin Grubinger, Michael Tilson Thomas and the New World Symphony, and an evening of musical comedy with Igudesman & Joo

 

The Polish tenor has signed  an exclusive, multi-album contract with Pentatone.

He is the second international artist in a week to switch from a Universal label to the Dutch indy.

Something’s going on.

pic: Beczala signing for DG in 2012

Beczala said today: ‘I truly look forward to a new challenge and to this collaboration with PENTATONE – a company with a glorious past that now seems ready for a bright future. I look forward to working with an enthusiastic team that understands the modern age, but also cherishes traditional values. This combination creates fabulous prospects for beautiful recordings. Stay tuned!’

It’s carnage day in Scotland.

Among 20 organisations to lose their public funding for the next three years is the phenomenally popular Edinburgh Fringe Festival, creatively far more significant than the official festival. The Fringe received £200,000 a year.

Scots arts officials have a lot of explaining to do.

 

Creative Scotland has removed the Dunedin Consort from its list of Regularly Funded Organisations for 2018-21.

The Consort is internationally renowned. Here’s its statement:

As Scotland’s leading specialist period instrument ensemble, and the most decorated of any Scottish music company (with two Gramophone awards, a Grammy nomination and two Scottish Album of the Year nominations to our name), this comes as a significant disappointment. In the landscape of Scotland’s musical culture, no other organisation focuses on this vital area of the repertoire, uniting excellence in scholarship and performance to explore new ways of encouraging listener engagement. Dunedin Consort has achieved great success with very limited resources. Our artistic output, recognition in the industry and impact in the international and national music landscape in proportion to the level of funding and our turnover, cannot be matched by any other music company in Scotland.

Creative Scotland … funding currently accounts for 20% of our annual turnover (other music organisations receive 32-82%) representing exceptional value for public money and without it, Dunedin Consort will be forced to capitalise more on its opportunities elsewhere. This, in turn, will reduce the performance opportunities for our Scottish audiences and supporters, including the valuable outreach work we undertake in schools and with young performers. … Our national and international profile continues to develop – only yesterday we confirmed a further seven concerts in our residency at London’s Wigmore Hall, which sits alongside residencies at the Misteria Paschalia festival in Krakow and the Handel Halle Festpiele in Germany in 2018, and tours planned for Spain, France, Bolivia, Brazil, the USA and others over the next three years. Without support at home, this international impact – vital to Scotland’s reputation – must be at risk. What is certainly clear, is that the lack of Creative Scotland commitment will mean that it will not be possible to match this international demand with performances on home soil. 

UPDATE: Edinburgh Fringe is also defunded.

UPDATE2: As is the  Hebrides Ensemble, which performs contemporary music.

UPDATE3: Dunedin gets its funding back

I have written a short commentary on Lahav Shani’s appointment to the Israel Phil for the JC.

Seventy years ago, the Israel Philharmonic was the pride of a young nation. Today, Lahav Shani needs first to recapture the young.

Read on here.

 

Two nights ago, the Royal Festival Hall went dark when its solo pianist called in sick.

Angela Hewitt is made of tougher stuff.

Last night in Oxford, we hear, the Canadian pianist fell down a flight of steps within two hours of start time. One ankle was twisted so badly she couldn’t stand on it.

Cancel?

Forget it.

Ms Hewitt was brought onto the stage in a wheelchair and performed Bach’s Book I of the Well-Tempered Clavier using just one foot on the pedals.

The audience was enthralled.

Tomorrow she’s playing Wigmore Hall.

On a Fazioli.

Should be interesting.

 

photo: Facebook

 

Nathan Cole, first associate concertmaster for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, is not a man to suppress an opinion. Nor is his wife, Akiko Tarumoto, the assistant concertmaster.

In his latest podcast they crack on about working with the inexperienced Gustavo Dudamel, Daniel Harding and others younger still. What happens when things go wrong?

When a conductor arrives with a laundry list, only addresses the front of the string sections, rehearses without a score….

Or right? ‘Charles Dutoit spoke with a familiarity with the score that we’re not used to hearing.’

And who’s the young one with a phoney European accent?

Listen here.

 

The Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh is about to premiere an oratorio based on the songs of Bob Dylan.

Did someone say he’s not classical?

Read more here.

There will be a New York performance in May.

It’s all about chasing the late-middleaged audience.

   

Spot the difference.

 

Both pics: Lebrecht Music&Arts

January is not yet done and the daily diet of Bernstein material is starting to feel jaded.

Yesterday, the centennial machine dug up a late rehearsal video of Copland’s third symphony. Watch here.

It’s wonderful, exhilarating, nostalgic, moving and inimitable.

At the same time, it inspires a sense of definite déja vu. Aimed as it is at classical loyalists, it neither extends the Bernstein audience nor does it add to our understanding of a unique figure in American and western music.

The big books about Bernstein have all been written. His life is an open book and his works are a mixed bag. By the end of the year we will have heard everything he wrote. What bugs me is that the commercial machine driving the centennial has already made it feel stale, without any obvious benefit.

There are exhibitions, recordings, films and festivals to come. The BBC has a Total Immersion day this weekend. This summer will be wall-to-wall Bernstein.

I hesitate to open today’s mailbag for fear of more vaguely familiar, over-familiar LB. And I am a sworn admirer, someone who had the privilege of brief acquaintance with him. If I’m feeling a surfeit of Bernstein….

Anyone out there feel the same way?

 

Our Berlin diarist Anthea Kreston, herself a violinist in a leading international string quartet, took time out to catch up with the Emersons on tour. Here’s what happened.

The Emerson Quartet is f***ing brilliant. It’s the real deal – a transformative event – in turn I was swept away, fascinated, impressed, and transported to a different time. As I slogged back to my hotel after the concert in Munich, the chubby flakes of snow lazily drifting by, and my feet totally sopping wet, I felt, and still do feel, like I was just let in on a secret, that it was a dream, that someone just spoke to me and tied together all of the loose ends of my life.

Here is what I love about them:
1- total honesty – there is nothing extra, nothing for the audience – it is what it is.
2- rock-solid technique – they are out there, with complete command of their instruments – beautiful set-ups, climbing around their instruments like acrobats.
3- individualism and collectivism finely balanced – each member has such a strong personal vision, and yet they can become one voice instantly, drawn together like neodymium magnets.
4- they are incredibly nice people, which you can feel in the audience.
5- they are patient, loving teachers
6- can I say that their hair looks terrific? It really, actually, does.

Their program – with pianist Evgeny Kissin – was perfectly balanced. Mozart and Faure piano quartets (with Phil Setzer and Eugene Drucker each playing one piece) started the program, and after intermission the Dvorak Piano Quintet. The piano quartets allowed me to more deeply understand the players as individuals – Kissin’s approach to the music was strong – powerful lines, and a reading of the score which allowed the listener to hear every single note, every line with its own shape, meaning. His ability to spin an immensely long phrase was a perfect match for the Emersons – it was as if each movement only had a handful of phrases – each moment transforming into the next, a story slowly unfolding.

Their strength comes from their ability to, each of them, be simultaneously vulnerable, approachable, comfortable with themselves, which makes them so approachable, and makes their art inviting, inclusive, and authentic – it makes you wish you could know them better.

How is it that music can feel like it is speaking directly to you – it takes you by surprise, and you find yourself thinking about something you haven’t thought about in years, or something you don’t even want to think about, or something you never thought about before in your entire life. And then you snap back into reality because Larry just did some crazy C String shift or Phil was just so tender in the counter melody in the Dumka or Eugene just started that note from the air with a whip stroke on the tip, or Paul just played so crispy during the fugue, or Evgeny somehow just looked up and away, and something struck him, and magic happened.

When I got back to the University this week, my groups in the final stages of preparation for their concerts, I was bursting with joy. I was so happy to share my experience, to encourage the students to trust themselves and to not stop until they had found their own truths. To take chances, to become vulnerable, to demand personal perfection. What did I learn from the Emersons? As a student I learned to love the process – to never be satisfied with the depth or complexity of my musical desires, and that these desires are the foundation for everything we do.

To every group this week, I also told them about Ralph Waldo Emerson, what he and the Transcendentalists believed, and how these beliefs are also fundamental to our lives as musicians. I read each group some of my favorite Emerson quotes, which you will find below.

Thank you, Emerson String Quartet, for everything.

“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”
“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”
“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”<