Daniel Barenboim is having trouble with his Buenos Aires compatriots.
His Brahms concert started at 8.20 because the audience were late to arrive.
They applauded between movements.
Barenboim stopped the music and asked for them to wait before clapping until the sound had died away. He also put in a request for no applause between movements.
The next time he stopped the concert was because people were taking phone pictures.
‘It hurts my eyes,’ he said.
Read here.
Countertenor Edward Button (28) and bass-baritone Nick Ashby (31) will join the Kings Singers in January, replacing Timothy Wayne-Wright (second countertenor) and Christopher Gabbitas (second baritone).
The Singers are in their 50th anniversary year.
Natalie Murray Beale, a member of the first Dallas Institute for Woman Conductors in 2015, has been signed by HarrisonParrott.
She’s a London-based Australian.
The Dallas scheme has done wonders for at least a dozen conductors.
An inaugural Karol Szymanowski International Music Competition, with total prize money of over 280,000 Euros, ‘aims to promote Polish music around the world and to raise awareness of Karol Szymanowski and his compositions’.
The contest takes place in September.
Press release: Krzysztof Penderecki and Simon Rattle form the Competition’s Honorary Committee and the Director of the Competition is Joanna Wnuk-Nazarowa.
These are the contestants in the LSO Donatella Flick competition, taking place in November:
Maciej Kotarba, 27, Poland
Chloé van Soeterstède, 29, France
Jordan Gudefin, 29, France
Sándor Károlyi, 28, Austria
Pak Lok Alvin Ho, 25, UK
Anton Holmer, 27, Sweden
Felix Mildenberger, 28, Germany
Valentin Egel, 23, Germany
Hermes Helfricht, 26, Germany
Chloé Dufresne, 26, France
Thomas Goff, 25, UK
Jacob Joyce, 25, Germany
Johanna Malangré, 28, Germany
Katharina Wincor, 23, Austria
Teddy Poll, 29, Germany
Bertie Baigent, 23, UK
Alexander Colding Smith, 29, Denmark
Jack Sheen, 25, UK
William Le Sage, 28, France
Harry Ogg, 27, UK
The Bavarian State Opera has inserted an unrelated aria – Abendempfindung – into the Marriage of Figaro.
Why on earth?
In an interview with Richard Morrison in The Times today the maestro complains that Verdi keeps getting messed around:
‘I won’t tolerate what happened in Salzburg recently. The singer couldn’t sing the aria in the right key, so during the night the poor librarians had to write out all the orchestral parts in a different key just so the singer could put in a high note at the end that the composer hadn’t written anyway. I will not say who the singer was, but it was an immoral act. The public was being fooled.’
Muti says this would never happen with Mozart.
Hmmm…. let’s see…..
A judge in Fort Worth, Texas, has found Sofya Tsygankova not guilty by reason of insanity of the murder of her two children, Nika Kholodenko, aged 5, and Michaela Kholodenko, 20 months.
Tsygankova, 34, has been committed indefinitely to a state mental hospital.
The court was told that Tsygankova had a history of mental illness, dating back to her teenaged years. She was estranged from her husband, 2013 Van Cliburn gold medallist Vadym Kholodenko, and was in the process of getting divorced.
Vadym Kholodenko discovered the bodies when arriving to visit his children.
Three experts testified that Tsygankova was criminally insane when she killed her daughters.
Report here.
The rest is silence.
The New Haven Symphony Orchestra have found a music director to succeed William Boughton.
The new guy, just named, is Alasdair Neale, presently music director of the Sun Valley Summer Symphony (Idaho) and the Marin Symphony (California). A Yale grad, Neale was raised in the UK.
It appears he will keep both of his other jobs.
In the early-summer transfer market, moves were expected for Krzysztof Urbanski, 35, highly-rated music director of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestr whose contract is about to expire.
As recently as last week, we heard the Pole was on the move.
But apparently not. The Indy orchestra have just let it be known that he has renewed for a short period, taking him to mid-2020.
Last month, the Indy suddenly lost its concertmaster.
Jared Lee Davis, #2 clarinet at the Richmond Symphony Orchestra, has been arrested and charged with possession with intent to sell schedule I or II drugs, possession of schedule III drugs, and distribution of schedule I or II drugs.
The orchestra say: ‘We’re aware of the situation and are following the events as they proceed.’
Davis previously played in the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Virginia Opera, North Carolina Symphony and others.
The Masters of the Universe have selected the late conductor as today’s Google Doodle.
It would have been his 91st birthday.
Still sorely missed.
