The Detroit Symphony conductor, recovering from heart bypass surgery, is writing an online history of himself and his heart:
My dad was 47, his father 56. It appears that longevity is not on the Slatkin side of the family…
The heart attack occurred in Rotterdam, at the end of a five-concert stretch… I was on the podium when it occurred, and the only signs that something was wrong were a sense of fatigue walking over to the hall, and feeling dizzy and out of breath on the podium. By the time I finished the Second Symphony of Rachmaninov, I did not know where I was.
In the dressing room I collapsed on the couch, drenched in sweat. The medical personnel on hand at the auditorium got to me quickly and said, “You are having a heart attack. An ambulance is on the way.” Ten minutes later I was at the Erasmus clinic, a feeling of great weight upon my chest. The only thing I remember saying was, “Make it stop.”…
The appointment of Antonio Méndez is the culmination of an almost three year process where musicians of the orchestra took part at several points. A process that begun much before the appointment of Mr. Parera as Technical Director of the orchestra and was held according to the internal agreements between management and musicians. Mr. Méndez was one of the 3 candidates the musicians proposed to the management the past October by the orchestra. The musicians gave a unanimous vote to these three candidates. According to proposal the board selected the Antonio Méndez. There is no doubt about Antonio Mendez’s artistic value and moral integrity. Therefore we reconfirm his appointment. We also have no doubt about the transparency of Mr. Parera’s designation in public competition one and a half year ago. His credentials were proved at the time and his references supported all the documents given by him.
The Orquesta Sinfónica de Tenerife would like to express their support to both Mr. Méndez and Mr. Parera. From now on we will not make any more comments on these defamations. We are looking forward to working and growing all together for our audience doing the best we know: music.
Orquesta Sinfónica de Tenerife,
Patronato Insular de Muísca del Cabildo de Tenerife
Cabildo de Tenerife
The Portuguese conductor Joana Carneiro, who gave birth to triplets in January 2017, has been delivered of a baby boy, Joao Joaquim.
The triplets are two girls and a boy, so she now has equal numbers.
Joana, 42, will return to the podium in Europe in August. She is also music director of the Berkeley Symphony in California.
One of the benefits of blind auditions – a report from Deseret News:
SALT LAKE CITY — There’s a lot that can go wrong for a violinist during an audition. The weather could affect the instrument’s sound, the violin could go out of tune, a string could pop or a bow break.
But Madeline Adkins had a more unusual problem when she flew from Baltimore to Salt Lake City in 2015 to audition for the Utah Symphony’s concertmaster position: a lack of proper attire.
While Adkins’ violin survived the cross-country flight, her luggage did not. So when it came time to audition, the musician had no choice but to wear her sweats and rely on her violin to do the persuading. Fortunately for Adkins, the symphony had started a new audition process where even the final rounds of the audition were blind…
The Provost and Fellows of King’s College, Cambridge are delighted to announce the appointment of Daniel Hyde as Director of Music at King’s, to take office on 1 October 2019. Mr Hyde will succeed Stephen Cleobury CBE, who has held the post with great distinction since 1982.
Instant second release:
The Rector, Wardens and Vestry of Saint Thomas Church Fifth Avenue announce that Daniel Hyde has been called back to the United Kingdom to succeed Stephen Cleobury as Director of Music at King’s College, Cambridge, under whose tutelage he studied as an organ scholar from 2000-2003. This is a prestigious appointment; The Choir of King’s College was founded by King Henry VI in 1441 but, remarkably, since 1799, Daniel will be only the ninth person to hold that title.
Social media update: Stephen Cleobury has posted: ‘Delighted at this news’.
The $30,000 Sir Georg Solti Conducting Award has been given to Roderick Cox, Associate Conductor of the Minnesota Orchestra, it was announced this morning.
Some readers have complained that we reported protests in the Tenerife Symphony Orchestra over the imposition of a new music director, Antonio Mendez.
Mendez, they say, is a young conductor whose career could be damaged by such revelations. And a symphony orchestra is like Las Vegas – what goes on in Vegas, should stay in Vegas.
Nothing, in our view, could be more wrong-headed.
Players in the Tenerife orchestra contacted Slipped Disc with a genuine grievance. Preposterous as it may seem in this day and age, they were not given a chance to vote on the new music director. The last time they voted, 52 percent said they never wanted to work again with this conductor. That ballot was ignored. The appointment was fixed by an ambitious manager and an aggressive agent. The players will now have to go to work with a boss they neither like nor respect.
This kind of thing should not happen in 2018 and any damage to the young conductor will arise from the manner of his appointment, not from the players’ reaction.
More concerning is the fact that opinion within the orchestra was evenly divided. Some will argue that if almost half the players are happy to work with the new guy, the appointment should go ahead. But that’s the worst course of action. If democracy teaches us one lesson it is that a decision that is split evenly down the middle needs urgently to be reconsidered. A majority of one is no majority.
The best thing Tenerife can do is revoke the appointment and resume the search for a music director who is acceptable to a large part of the orchestra. The best orchestras benefit from a
‘You don’t need a doctor, you need a new teacher,’ was the best piece of advice he received.
More than a dozen artists and staff have been taken to hospital in St Petersburg with abdominal pain and nausea during rehearsals for the White Nights Festival.
Details are being dribbled out about the forthcoming Classic Brit awards on June 13.
Among the latest highlights to be released is, wait for it, ‘the ultimate duet’ – Bryn Terfel with Andrea Bocelli.
Erm, it appears they’ve sung together before at the Brits, ten years ago.
But there’s also Katherine Jenkins, fresh back from childbirth.
And a 70th birthday feature for Andrew Lloyd Webber.
So who said there’s nothing new in classical music?
The state of Hesse has awarded Yannick Nézet-Séguin the Rheingau Musik Preis 2018, worth 10,000 Euros.
The Netrebkos have been gonged by Azerbaijan. Yusif has been named People’s Artist of Azerbaijan by President Ilham Aliyev and Anna was awarded the Order of Friendship for strengthening relations with Russia.
The German Film Music Award will go this year to a British composer, Rachel Portman.
The Swiss federal ministry for culture has given its SFr 25,000 Grand Prize to a jazz pianist, Irene Schweizer. Lesser winners include the composers Dieter Ammann and Thomas Kessler, the lutenist Luca Pianca and the Mondrian Ensemble.
Only 20 percent, mysteriously, in a camper van.
About 15 percent in a crowd.
No mention of the shrubbery at Glyndebourne, which used to be notorious for frantic rustlings.
