The BBC Proms features one concert with Daniel Barenboim’s West-East Diwan Orchestra.
Aside from the Brahms violin concerto and Scriabin’s Poem of Ecstasy, it features a new work by Barenboim’s assistant, the British conductor David Robert Coleman, for soprano and orchestra. The title of the work is Looking for Palestine.
The BBC has strict rules for observing balance in the coverage of international conflicts.
Since the BBC Proms contains no work by an Israeli composer, or anything marking the 70th anniversary of the State of Israel, the Barenboim search for Palestine appears to be in contravention of the BBC Charter.
I feel sure there will be complaints.
The German record prize – given this week to a pair of Holocaust-joke rappers – has lost its first major sponsor.
Voelkel, an organic food company, says it does not approve of belittling genocide.
For his final concerts as music director of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra on May 24-26, Jaap van Zweden has programmed the world premiere of a violin concerto by the American composer Jonathan Leshnoff.
The soloist will be the DSO concertmaster Alexander Kerr.
As the providers roll out another hot summer of same old music, quite a few of our readers are still busily commenting on a 2014 post listing the pieces that have outworn their welcome.
2 Committed to his faith. He attended Fifth Avenue Synagogue on Yom Kippur.
3 He was an avowed Zionist who spent several months in Israel during the 1948 War of Independence.
4 He celebrated Israel’s 1967 victory with a performance of Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony on Mount Scopus.
5 He never criticised the Israeli government’s treatment of Palestinians.
6 He was gay.
7 He married and had children.
8 As music director of the New York Philharmonic he did nothing to promote diversity.
9 He was a Democrat.
10 He was the best advocate for music ever seen on television.
If any of these attitudes and contradictions conflict with your strongly-held prejudices, you may have a problem.
Charles Castronovo has been called in to sing the male lead in all performances of Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette at the Met, opening next week. He replaces Bryan Hymel who has not recovered from the illness that forced him out of Munich’s Vespri last month.
We wish him better.
Here’s the programme, announced this morning:
– Hector Berlioz’ Les Troyens (14 October 2018 – conductor: Alain Altinoglu; directed by: David McVicar; with: Brandon Jovanovich, Adam Plachetka, Peter Kellner, Jongmin Park, Paolo Fanale, Rachel Frenkel, Anna Caterina Antonacci, Joyce DiDonato, Margarita
Gritskova);
– Johannes Maria Staud’s und Durs Grünbein’s Die Weiden (The Willows, world première, Wiener Staatsoper commission; 8 December 2018 – conductor: Ingo Metzmacher; directed by: Andrea Moses; with Rachel Frenkel, Tomasz Konieczny, Thomas Ebenstein, Andrea Carroll, Herbert Lippert, Monika Bohinec, Alexandru Moisiuc, Zoryana Kushpler, Wolfgang Bankl, Sylvie Rohrer);
– Gaetano Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor (9 February 2019 – conductor: Evelino Pidò, directed by: Laurent Pelly; with: George Petean, Olga Peretyatko-Mariotti, Juan Diego Flórez, Jongmin Park);
– Manfred Trojahn’s Orest (first performance at the Wiener Staatsoper; 31 March 2019 – conductor: Michael Boder; directed by: Marco Arturo Marelli; with: Thomas Johannes Mayer, Thomas Ebenstein, Daniel Johansson, Audrey Luna, Laura Aikin, Evelyn Herlitzius);
– Richard Strauss’ Die Frau ohne Schatten (25 May 2019; conductor: Christian Thielemann; directed by: Vincent Huguet; with: Stephen Gould, Camilla Nylund, Evelyn Herlitzius, Wolfgang Koch, Nina Stemme);
– Giuseppe Verdi’s Otello (20 June 2019 – conductor: Myung-Whun Chung; directed by: Adrian Noble; with: Aleksandrs Antonenko, Olga Bezsmertna, Vladislav Sulimsky)
James Wishart, lecturer in composition at the University of Liverpool, has died of a stroke at 61.
A reticent, private man, he was content for his music to be appreciated locally.
A Moscow judge has extended the house arrest of Kirill Serebrennikov by three months to mid-July, ensuring that the controversial director cannot attend the Cannes Film Festival where he has a significant entry for the Palme d’Or.
Serebrennikov, director of Moscow’s Gogol Theater and an innovative opera producer, was arrested last August on charges of embezzlement. An outspoken critic of the Putin regime, his punishment is presumed to be political.
Walter Vergnano quit the Teatro Regio di Torino last night after 19 years as sovrintendente. His departure triggered the instant resignations of Gianandrea Noseda, the music director and Gastón Fournier-Facio, the artistic director, leaving the theatre headless.
The reasons are political. The mayor of Turin aims to replace Vergnano with the veteran director Giancarlo Del Monaco, who is a close friend of the Five-Star party leader Beppe Grillo (pictured).
We have regaled you for several years with the comic maladministration of the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, a Geneva ensemble that achieved world fame under Ernst Ansermet and subsequently subsided into provincialism.
Latest reports from Geneva suggest that the company may be undergoing a slow recovery in the hands of the partner of a talented young conductor. One sign of its revival is a spot at the BBC Proms in the orchestra’s centenary year.
Other visiting orchestras include the Berlin Philharmonic with Kirill Petrenko – whom Proms bosses turned down just three years ago – Rotterdam with Yannick, Musica Aeterna with Currentzis, Minnesota with Vanska, Paavo Järvi’s Estonian Festival Orchestra, along with Boston, Baltimore, Bergen and Budapest.
