They don’t call in the Windy City for nothing.

People catch cold.

On Saturday night, music director Riccardo Muti stopped in the middle of a Cherubini piece when the coughing got too bad.

Report here.

 

Nigel Simeone has written a fine obituary of Robert Pascall, editor of the critical edition of Brahms  symphonies who has died at 74.

Pascall was an exemplary musicologist. He studied the notes between the manuscript staves.

Read here.

 

The hottest young opera singer in America got ink on her fingers today.

Press release:

“I feel deep down that we can make a change in the right direction and that the right direction is about uniting people.” – Nadine Sierra

 

Nadine Sierra, 2018 winner of the Metropolitan Opera’s prestigious Beverly Sills Artist Award, has made her first album for Deutsche Grammophon and Decca Gold, having signed an exclusive contract with the labels last year. Recorded with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Robert Spano, There’s a Place for Us is scheduled for international release on 24 August 2018, in time to mark the 100th anniversary of Leonard Bernstein’s birth the following day. The album presents the soprano’s stunning vocal abilities in an eclectic choice of American classical music – as well as works by Bernstein, the repertoire ranges from Stephen Foster and Douglas Moore to Stravinsky and Villa-Lobos, and on again to Ricky Ian Gordon, Osvaldo Golijov and Christopher Theofanidis, with texts in Spanish and Portuguese as well as English. After singing the role of Norina (Don Pasquale) at the Paris Opéra in June and July, Nadine Sierra will perform music from the album at this summer’s major US festivals, including an appearance at Tanglewood’s star-studded Bernstein Centennial Celebration.

 

The Cleveland Institute of Music has announced a hole in its resident Cavani Quartet.

The quartet, it says, ‘underwent a personnel change in 2016 and last week the ensemble separated from its newest member.’

We assume this is cellist Si-Yan Darren Li.

Nobody’s saying why, and the quartet have put nothing on their website.

UPDATE: Cleveland fires Cavani Quartet.

 

 

Some of our readers have just spotted that one of six men convicted in a £108 million fraud case last year was Evdoros Demetriou, once a senior classical executive at EMI Classics and Warner Music.

But that’s not all. Demetriou, now 79, was also a director of Sinfonietta Productions and of Conifer Records.

He got six years.

 

Karin Hendrickson has won the new triple whammy of Associate Artist at Sage Gateshead, Assistant Conductor at Royal Northern Sinfonia, and Music Director of Young Sinfonia.

Karin, from Pennsylvania, has been mentored by Marin Alsop, acting as her assistant conductor at the BBC Proms, the Britten-Pears Orchestra, and the Sao Paulo Symphony.

She was one of six “fellows” who participated in the Hart Institute for Women Conductors at the Dallas Opera a few months back.

Nathan Medd, of Ottawa’s National Arts Center, has been named managing director of performing arts at the Banff Center for Arts.

Medd was responsible for English-language theatre at NAC.

Banff is in need of a reboot.

Naomi Shemer’s song Jerusalem of Gold was the soundtrack to the 1967 Israel-Arab war.

Now, the incoming music director of the Israel Philharmonic has arranged it for piano (himself), violin (Renaud Capucon) and the Austrian-Iranian cellist Kian Soltani.

It received a rapturous premiere this weekend.

The 1967 originaL

A new recording of Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream by Ivan Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra brings out a striking klezmer clarinet in the funeral march.

It also makes you wonder whether Mahler was processing Mendelssohn half a century later in the funeral march of his first symphony.

Listen.

From a Reuters report of Rattle’s long farewell to the Berlin Philharmonic:

On Saturday, thousands of people had braved driving rain to attend a full dress rehearsal, instead of watching the German team play in the World Cup.

From Deutsche Welle:

The playbill at Berlin’s Waldbühne  featured works by George Gershwin, Gabriel Faure and Aram Khachaturian, and Rattle’s wife, mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kozena, also performed as a soloist. 

Many musicians wore wigs in tribute to the conductor’s trademark curly white hair.

“See you very soon,” the conductor promised, as “Sir Simon” will not disappear completely from Berlin. Rattle plans to remain a resident of the German capital and to lead orchestral and opera performances there.

photo: Reuters/Tantussi

 

In a thoughtful interview with Asahi Shimbun’s Europe editor, the conductor reflects on the conditions required to deliver progress in the turbulent region. We’re positing this for Prince William to read today as head flies to Jerusalem.

Extract:

“Neither in the orchestra nor in the academy are we trying to practice a political line that everybody has to adhere to,” Barenboim said. “We believe one thing only, all of us: There is no military solution, there is no political solution, there is only a human solution. I expect them to agree 100 percent on Beethoven. But I don’t expect them to agree on a line for the conflict.”

In the summer of 2014 during an Israeli military attack of the Gaza Strip, orchestra members were split along Palestinian and Israeli sides and heated debate ensued with each side showing little sympathy for the other.

Reflecting on that time, Barenboim said he told orchestra members, “I don’t think that in this kind of a situation of conflict you can expect sympathy. It is not really rational to think that an Israeli will feel sympathy for Palestinians and vice versa. But you must expect and get compassion because sympathy is an emotional thing. Compassion is a moral attitude. An Israeli who does not feel compassion for the tragedy of the Palestinians has no place in this orchestra, and vice versa. I think this is what we have to work for, to get compassion and understanding for the suffering of the other…”

Read on here.