The $100,000+ Polar Music Prize, awarded annually to one highbrow and one mass-market act, has been announced today.

The serious winner is the Afghanistan National Institute of Music (ANIM).

The pop winner is Metallica.

 

Martin Wittenberg, 39, formerly a Leipzig player, has been recruited to join the CAMI office of Doug Sheldon and Stefana Atlas.

He has cut his business teeth in New York as a Hemsing publicity flak and a booking manager with Alliance.

The St Petersburg Philharmonic will visit Israel for the first time in May to join celebrations for the country’s 70th independence anniversary.

Yuri Temirkanov conducts. Nikolai Lugansky is the soloist.

 

The Strad has published a hilariously condescending guide to string players on how to relate to the accessory they once called an accompanist. Someone should tell them that times have moved on.

The Strad list is beyond parody, but we’ll have a try:

1 Remember that the person at the piano is a human being. He or she may have human rights. And a musical background. Maybe even a name. Try to remember it.

2 Make sure they can read music. Then give them a score. Allow them time to absorb it. Check that they have a rehearsal diary and can read English.

3 Try to read the pianist’s part in advance. It might have something to do with what you’re playing.

4 If the pianist makes a suggestion in rehearsal, pretend to take it on board.

5 Make sure the pianist’s name appears in the programme and is properly spelled. The name does not have to be the same size as yours, but spelling is important. Practise taking a stage bow together. Do not take their hand and raise it above your heads (that would be too much equality). Make an effort to smile at their agent, that always eases the green room atmosphere. Do not pat any part of the pianist’s anatomy. This person is not your friend.

A week ago, the Los Angeles Philharmonic rolled out its centenary season, by far the most ambitious, forward looking, socially progressive and egalitarian program the country has ever seen. The season had been planned down to the last detail by the orchestra’s former president, Deborah Borda, before she left to become chief in New York.

Last night, Deborah unfurled the new season at the New York Philharmonic with the incoming music director, Jaap Van Zweden. Once again, the season had Borda’s career hallmarks – political awareness, social justice, new music and lots of roles for women.

These two launches set a clear blue ocean between the two Borda orchestras and the rest. The LA Phil and the New York Philharmonic are looking resolutely to the future, searching for broader audiences, determined to fill the hall and challenge the mind.

Most of the rest are doing same old music, same old faces, same old audience.

The Borda pill will either galvinize or terrorise the sector, it’s too early to tell. But America orchestras now have a clear-cut choice. They can adopt the Borda blueprint and try to sell it to their blue-rinse board of directors, or they can carry on regardless, booking seats in God’s waiting room.

 

The home page of Natalia Sheina, who was reported missing yesterday, is filling up with condolence messages.

Natalia was 49. We do not yet know how she died.

 

Guido Belgiorno-Nettis and his wife Michelle heard that the 1726 Belgiorno Stradivarius was up for sale. With the proceeds of his late mother’s estate, Guido snapped up the instrument and presented it to the Australian Chamber Orchestra, of which he is chairman.

The violin will be played by the ACO’s concertmaster Satu Vänskä.

More here.


Photo: Nic Walker

Caroline Morton-Hicks was leaving rehearsal at the Pinellas Park Performing Arts Center in Florida when she got into a row with another person in the parking lot.

Shots rang out.

Morton-Hicks, 59, was found dead. She was the orchestra’s trombonist.

Watch the TV news report here.

 

German social networks are alive with claims that a senior conductor has been underpaying, insulting and otherwise abusing musicians that he hired for a festival in the Tyrol.

The claims are contained in a local blog. Since the claims are anonymous, defamatory and unsupported by external evidence, we will not publish either the conductor’s name or any link to the blog. Nor do we necessarily believe the allegations to be true.

However, if you are musician who has been invited to a festival in that region, be aware that there may be issues.

If you wish to post a comment below, please do not identify either the conductor or the festival. If you attempt to do so, you may face heavy legal penalties.

 

Françoise Xenakis, a novelist and Télématin journalist, died on February 12 at Courbevoie, her daughter Makhi has announced. She married the Greek avant-gardist in 1953.

The French Socialist Party has published its condolences.

 

Prince Henrik of Denmark, husband of the Queen of Denmark and a published poet, has died at 83.

In 2014 and 2017 he was part of the artistic team of Verdensballetten – a Danish festival with dancers from London’s Royal Ballet, the Mariinsky Ballet and Staatsballett Berlin – in which he created choreography based on his poem “Côte á côte”, to music by Fauré.