Results in the Copenhagen-based Malko Competition:
1 Ryan Bancroft, 28, US, who also won the audience prize.
2 Anna Rakitina, 28, Russia
3 Alessandro Bonato, 23, Italy
Originally from Los Angeles, Ryan Bancroft works in the Netherlands and the UK with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Residentie Orkest, Gulbenkian Orchestra, Ulster Orchestra, South Netherlands Philharmonic, North Netherlands Symphony Orchestra, nieuw ensemble, and the BBC Singers.
Staatstheater Cottbus has placed its General Music Director, Evan Alexis Christ, on immediate leave.
Christ has been the subject of recent ructions from musicians, prompting the resignation of the theatre’s intendant.
He has been put on paid leave until the end of the current season 2017/2018 while the Staatstheater Cottbus reviews the allegations.
The all-conquering young American soprano tells its straight to Zsolt Bognar in his latest edition of Living the Classical Life, shown first on Slipped Disc.
Nadine says it’s her Portuguese mother who keeps her grounded.
‘I was always told the truth in a very forceful way… I always text her in the break and ask her, how did I do? And I know she’ll tell me the truth. And when she does tell me, “actually, it was terrible,” it humbles me and I accept the fact that next time I’ll try to be less terrible.’
Watch.
We hear that the 24×7 “Met Opera Radio” channel on the North American Sirius XM satellite network has removed all recordings conducted by James Levine.
This means the 40 years of broadcasts while Levine was music director has been silenced.
The Levine operas have been replaced with full-length broadcast recordings from the 1930s, 1940s, and especially 1950s with often dubious technical quality despite great singers.
Now everyone knows that Levine and the Met are only speaking through lawyers these day, but this vindictive editing of institutional history is reminiscent of Stalin at his worst, when Trotsky and other undesirables were whited out of party pictures.
The radio channel is emasculated so Peter Gelb can sleep easy at night.
Ridiculous.
Post from the Ukrainian pianist Dinara Klinton:
Just seen a comment on some random channel that posted my other recording of “Feux follets”. The guy was accusing me for not being as fast as Kissin. I hope this one reaches him with my sincere apology for having upset him.
Compare for yourselves.
There’s an illuminating article in History Today on the Tunisian singer Habiba Messika, whose music was received as a covert call for an Arab uprising.
Habiba was brutally murdered in 1930.
Chris Silver writes:
Between 1924 and 1930 Messika released a staggering number of phonograph records – close to 100 – for the Pathé, Gramophone and Baidaphon record labels. She was an accomplished actress, heralded as the ‘Second Sarah Bernhardt’ by her 21st birthday. Her style and looks also earned her a coterie of (male) fans known as the ‘soldiers of the night’, an ‘army’ which included Habib Bourguiba, who would become the first president of independent Tunisia in 1957. That Messika achieved so much, so quickly and did so at such a young age meant that her interwar funeral constituted one of the largest and most significant Tunisian gatherings of the early 20th century….
Read on here.
