Violinist Zhan Shu has won a vacancy in the Cleveland Orchestra.

Trained in Beijing and at Mannes, he joined the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra in 2014 after several years in the Milwaukee Symphony. Before that, he was concertmaster of the Terre Haute Symphony Orchestra and Symphony of Southeast Texas.

 

 

Fluency in the Catalan language is the new policy of the socialist government of the Balearic Isles, and it is being imposed right away on the symphony orchestra.

Just one problem: half the existing players are foreign nationals and the music director, Joji Hattori, is Japanese.

Read this.

 

From Amy Adams, in Springfield, Oregon.

Today at the memory care facility:

It was a robust and responsive group, glad to sing – even the ones who slip in and out of sleep did so gently, just under the surface of a nap. Glenn was tickled by “Brand New Key” enough that he went dancing with a caregiver.

I love seeing things like that.

But the real hour’s blessing for me was how they listened to the beginning of this country ballad – several of the ladies searching their memories, thinking, thinking…
I took it slow.
“She was forty-one, her daddy still called her baby.”
More thinking, nodding from the residents…suitcase in her hand…
…mysterious….dark-haired man…some recognition.

Then ah, that chorus, like a congregation they all slowly sang with me, I swear…even the sleeping woman’s lips moved:

Delta Dawn,
What’s that flower you have on?
Could it be a faded rose from days gone by?
And did I hear you say he was meeting you here today, to take you to his mansion in the sky…?

I’m telling you, you haven’t seen anything like an elderly sleeping woman, singing about the mansion in the sky.

Labour MEP Richard Corbett has posted a paper, outlining the real and present danger that Brexit poses to the classical music community:

Only 2% of people in the music world thought that Brexit would be good for their industry. Recent reports show the government has done little to win over the other 98%. As the Tories rush to drive us over the Brexit cliff edge, the government’s “creative” solutions fail to address the scores of issues facing classical musicians and orchestras across the country….

Read on here.

 

Sr Andrew Davis will not renew his contract as music director of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.

The Brit vet has confirmed he will leave next year, joining a growing exodus.

Myung Whun Chung, injured a month back in a road smash, was expecting to be back in the podium in a fortnight.

Sadly, he has cancelled this week in Dreden, where he is principal guest.

Semyon Bychkov jumps in.

 

A photograph unearthed by the National Museum of American Jewish History in New York shows Leonard Bernstein (right), 29 years old, with a group of concentration camp survivors who are being housed in May 1948 in a displaced persons’ camp near Munich.

The survivors had formed their own orchestra and, hearing Bernstein was in town, reached out to him to conduct.

More here.

The image gains poignancy from a 2017 movie I have just seen, Bye Bye Germany, detailing the lives of DP camp refugees.

Catch it as and where you can.

From a new Scottish book review by the composer Sir James MacMillan:

… And ‘classical’ music? The editors are quite clear – they write of the ‘mythologisation of dead, male, white composers in the art tradition,’ and that ‘it is safe to say that the “pale and male” lineages of composers of classical music still hold great signification in the public square.’

For this, they blame ‘those Tory politicians who have repeatedly sought to reinstate and aggrandise “dead, white Germans” within the English GCSE and A-Level music curricula.’ … There we have it – it’s the Tories’ fault. And the Anglo-Americans. And maybe even the Germans too this time….

Read on here.

 

Name the ten foremost pianists of the 20th century.

In no particular order:

Horowitz

Rubinstein

Richter

Gilels

Gould

Schnabel

Rachmaninov

Brendel

Argerich

Ashkenazy…

 

So who have we forgotten?

Him.

How could we?

 

Happily, his record label has just remembered. See special offer in Slipped Disc banner ads.

Three plum performances of the Brahms Double Concerto fell vacant in Vienna this week when the Dutch star called in sick.

Who’s up for it?

None other than the Vienna Symphony Orchestra concertmaster Anton Sorokow.

The cellist, unchanged, is Pablo Ferrandez, the conductor David Afkham.

UPDATE: Anton explained how he jumped in:

The Metropolitan Opera’s orchestra Carnegie Hall concerts, a highlight of the Levine regime, have fallen into other hands in the interim months between Levine’s dismissal and Yannick’s succession.

The next one, on May 18 at Carnegie Hall, will be conducted by Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, who has never yet been seen at the Met.

The other two, in May and June, are with Gianandrea Noseda and Michael Tilson Thomas.

Friday, May 18 at 8 PM
Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, Conductor
Anita Rachvelishvili, Mezzo-Soprano
DEBUSSY Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune
MUSSORGSKY Songs and Dances of Death (orch. Shostakovich)
TCHAIKOVSKY Symphony No. 4

Wednesday, May 30 at 8 PM
Gianandrea Noseda, Conductor
James Ehnes, Violin
MOZART Violin Concerto No. 5, “Turkish”
MAHLER Symphony No. 5

Tuesday, June 5 at 8 PM
Michael Tilson Thomas, Conductor
Pretty Yende, Soprano
RUGGLES Evocations
MOZART Exsultate, jubilate
MAHLER Symphony No. 4

Apart from the World Cup, which she has been ordered by Gergiev and Putin to open in Moscow, Anna Netrebko will perform at the Vienna Philharmonic’s free open-air midsummer’s concert at Schloss Schönbrunn.

Last year’s event drew 90,000 spectators.

This year’s, on May 31, is expected to break into six figures.

All the arias will be Italian, as befits a football star.