The formidable Swedish director would have been 100 years old tomorrow.
His influence on film and theatre is limitless: without Bergman, there is no Woody Allen or Stephen Sondheim.
Bergman had a vast knowledge of music and was forever quoting snatches in his scripts.
He filmed an unforgettable Magic Flute in 1975 and staged a number of operas at the Royal Opera in Stockholm.
For an assessment of music in his life and works, start here.
The jury for the 4th Evgeny Svetlanov conducting competition looks particularly interesting:
The chairman is Alexander Vedernikov, music director of the Royal Opera in Copenhagen. The rest are: Andrey BOREYKO, Mauro BUCARELLI, Gidon KREMER, Jorma PANULA, Cristina ROCCA and Nathalie STUTZMANN.
This will not be a quiet jury room.
The contestants are:
TEYCHENNÉ Gabriella – Grande Bretagne – 25 ans, NG Wilson – Hong Kong – 29 ans
ORHAN Murat Cem – Turquie – 37 ans, PETRENKO Pavel – Russie – 37 ans
RAKITINA Anna – Russie – 29 ans, AHOKAS Lauri – Finlande – 34 ans
LI Haoran – Chine – 32 ans, GLATARD Antoine – France – 34 ans
KÁLI Gábor – Hongrie – 36 ans, SHANKAR Harish – Allemagne – 34 ans
FILATOV Dmitry – Russie – 39 ans, IBRAHIMOV Fuad – Azerbaïdjan – 36 ans
KHUKHUNAISHVILI Mirian – Géorgie – 28 ans, PITKÄNEN Joonas – Finlande – 31 ans
CHEREDNICHENKO Ivan – Ukraine – 31 ans, YASHIMA Erina – Japon – 32 ans
GUDEFIN Jordan – France – 29 ans, CAMPO Bruno – Guatemala – 36 ans
The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra has announced the sad resignation of its concertmaster, Timothy Lees.
Lees, who joined the CSO in June 1998, will remain a member of the first violin section. He has been on leave since December due to a nerve injury affecting the fingers of his left hand.
He has undergone cervical spine surgery since the condition first arose two years ago.
‘I continue to work hard, receive treatments and remain committed to my craft, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and the community we serve,’ said Lees. ‘While the timeline for my complete recovery is undetermined at this point, I look forward to returning to the Music Hall stage as a member of the CSO’s first violin section in the future. Given the important leadership role of
the Concertmaster week in and week out coupled with these ongoing medical issues, I have made the decision to relinquish that title. After two decades, I am truly honoured to be named Concertmaster Emeritus.’
From the Lebrecht Album of the Week:
I need to declare an interest. I have described Steven Osborne elsewhere as the most interesting British pianist of his generation, a declaration which practically precludes me from reviewing his recordings, predisposed as I am to praise them. It’s a dilemma which I try to resolve by listening to everything that Osborne does and allowing at least a year to elapse between one enthusiastic review and the next. You’ve no idea how taxing this can be.
That said, I am happily immersed in…
Read on here.
And here.
Daniel Barenboim’s Staatsoper on Unter den Linden sold 196,000 this season, playing to a 94 percent capacity, it was announced today.
That’s up from 91 percent last year.
Peter Gelb’s Met plays below 70%. Most nights it’s two-thirds unsold.
The Boston Symphony Orchestra has posted this warning about Tanglewood:
I hear Kuhmo in Finland is pretty bad.
Where should we send the swat team?
Credit: Curnow/NPR
The morning after Mariss Jansons pledged the rest of his working life to the city, Munich today contracted the architects for its concert hall – a sure sign that the project will go ahead.
The winning team, Cukrowicz Nachbaur, are Austrians from Bregenz.
There will be two halls, seating 1,800 and 600 respectively.
Here’s how it will look.
The contralto Gráinne Gillis will sing Ethel Smyth’s March of the Women at this afternoon’s women’s march against Trump.
She explains why:
Every new story brought tears to my eyes.
This was a few weekends ago, when the news of family separation in America was at its zenith. Those cries. That anguish. What can I do? was the question that gnawed at me.
I’ve been an immigrant for most of my life. Not an asylum seeker, or a refugee, like many of those children in cages. I have dual citizenship, both Irish and American. But when my American father and Irish mother brought us to Cork, we were the kids with the funny accents. We were the half and halfs who put the wrong emphasis on words like “tomayto”.
Amid all the uprooting and the sense of displacement that naturally ensued from the move from New York to Cork, we had our parents. We were going to a nice house by the sea. We were not venturing into the unknown with our immediate caregivers, our world, being torn from us in the most traumatic, violent way possible, to make some sort of weird, bullying, political point.
It’s the bullying that gets me with the Trump administration….
Read on here.
From Dallas News:
You might call it a tale of two operas in Texas. Ian Derrer, one-time artistic administrator at the Dallas Opera, returning now to run the whole show, and his partner, Daniel James, presiding over production media plus the chorus and orchestra at the Houston Grand Opera.
They have a lot in common: Both grew up in small cities shadowed by larger neighbors. Both trained to be performers. Both chose instead to make it happen, off-stage instead of on.
For Derrer, life began in Monroe, N.C., near Charlotte. A scout from Southern Methodist University discovered him at a state-sponsored summer program for high school musicians and lured him to the Meadows School of the Arts. There he plunged into the world of the baritone, or rather “bari-tenor,” as he puts it. But interning at the Dallas Opera, helping visiting British director John Copley mount Elektra, the maddeningly demanding classical music drama …
Read on here.
Daniel James is artistic media manager and music administrator at HGO. he is responsible for the management of the chorus, children’s chorus, corps dancers, and orchestra; for all recording activities; and for supertitles.
Statement today by Nikolai Znajder, president of the 2019 Carl Nielsen Competition:
‘I believe it is crucial to find the most honest and humane way possible of organising the competition process and for this reason we have set four premises for the violin competition;
‘Firstly, the jury will not include any teachers; Secondly, votes will be made public at every stage of the competition; Thirdly, the jury will not be provided with biographies in the first round and will be encouraged not to read up on the participants in their spare time;
‘And fourthly, as the first round of the competition takes place over two days, it allows us to split it into parts. On the first day the jury (not the participants) will be seated behind screens and the participants will perform, unnamed and in a random order, ensuring that the jury use only their ears. On the second day of Round One the jurors will be able to both see and hear the participants who will again perform in random order. The jury will vote after each day and the contestants will receive the aggregate from the scores of those two days. I think this will be very interesting and provides a way of freeing the violin jury of pre-conceived ideas and allowing for the competition to be both fair and honest.’
We’re getting there.
The EU chief had to be held upright at the NATO meeting with Trump.
Luxembourg’s finest appeared to be even worse for wear than Euope’s elected leaders.
This one’s better still.
The city of Genoa has decided to name a via Daniela Dessi after the glorious soprano who died two years ago of cancer, aged 59.
Daniela was born and raised in Genoa, leaving at 18 to study in Parma.
