Denis Matsuev, Putin’s favourite pianist, has withdrawn ‘due to health reasons’.
He was due to perform two Prokofiev concertos. The first will go to Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, making his Verbier debut. The second will be played by Daniil Trifonov, who is already in residence on the slippery slope.
Also out is the violinist Pamela Frank, a Verbier fixture. She has given up all concerts and masterclasses this summer ‘due to health reasons’. Her chamber music appearances will be taken over by Hanna Weinmeister, concertmaster of Phiharmonia Zürich, and Mihaela Martin, leader of the Michelangelo String Quartet.
The next director of Spain’s Palau de Les Arts de Valencia is to be Jesús Iglesias Noriega, head of the artists department of Dutch National Opera and Ballet. We wish him luck.
The Palau is a hive of political meddling that cannot keep its head forn very long. The last to walk out, in December, was the capable Italian Davide Livermore.
If Jesus cannot save it, the Palau is surely doomed.
Florida Grand Opera has shared the resignations of Diana Soviero and Bernard Uzan, co-artistic directors of its Studio Artist Program:
From Diana Soviero and Bernard Uzan ‘It is with great sadness that we submit our resignations as volunteer, non-contracted, Co-Artistic Directors of the FGO, Studio Artist Program. It has been our great pleasure to work with such a fine group of Studio Artists during the past year. We wish this year’s Studio Members the very best in their coming year and in the future.’
Uzan was named by four women in last week’s Washington Post feature on sexual assault in classical backstages. Soviero is his wife.
Asmik Grigorian, who took Salzburg by storm this weekend as the new Salome, is a Lithuanian soprano who has sung at the Theater an der Wien, the Berlin Komische Oper and Covent Garden. Last summer, she was a highly creditable Marie in Salzburg’s Wozzeck.
As of this morning, she’s a world star.
Asmik, 37, is the daughter of the late Armenian tenor Gegam Grigorjan, one of the earliest pillars of Gergiev’s Mariinsky ensemble, a performer who neither sought the limelight nor ever gave less than his all. Gegam died in 2016 and is sorely missed.
Asmik’s mother is the Lithuanian soprano Irena Milkevičiūtė.
photo: Salzburg Festspiele
The makeshift Verbier Festival has persuaded Sir Simon Rattle to step in for one of Ivan Fischer’s concerts next week, after the Hungarian cancelled for health reasons.
Fischer’s other two concerts will be taken over by Gábor Takács-Nagy, music director of the Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra, and – enterprisingly – the François López-Ferrer of the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de Chile. François is the son of the much lamented Jesús López-Cobos, who died in March this year. Like Rattle, he will be making his Verbier debut.
While all other summer festivals are proceeding more or less as planned, Verbier has suffered a string of late pullouts.
The latest is Ivan Fischer, citing health reasons.
He will be replaced next week by three jump-ins, so no great harm done.
But questions are being asked why Verbier is easier to cancel than, say, Salzburg, Lucerne or the Proms.
The Polish trumpeter, composer and free jazz pioneer Tomasz Stańko died today in Warsaw.
Working across many genres from Kryzstof Penderecki to Indian mysticism, his releases on ECM Records were always fresh and surprising, underpinned by tremendous melodic invention.
Paul Hogle, president of the Cleveland Institute of Music, has circulated an internal message announcing the departure of William Preucil, following #MeToo allegations in the Washington Post. Hogle writes:
Bill Preucil informed me today that he is tendering his resignation from the faculty of CIM, effective immediately…. Dean Bundra and I realise that this creates a period of uncertainty for Bill’s students and the Dean’s office is already working with each student to discuss the options available to them (sic).
The CIM website continues to feature Preucil from its faculty page.
A poll of 1,000 UK children has found that just one per cent name the oboe, French horn, cor anglais, bassoon or contrabassoon as instruments they would like to play.
The Royal Albert Hall, which commissioned the study, blames the declines on Youtube-watching passivity, earning itself a Telegraph headline.
Are we bothered?
Why did Piotr Beczala ever agree to wear these wretched overalls at Bayreuth?
Lohengrin is meant to be a hero, not a construction site worker.
We think she is the first British prime minister to attend the Salzburg Festival since Margaret Thatcher, albeit strictly in the line of Brexit duty.
May’s arch-enemies George Osborne and Michael Gove, devout Wagnerians both, were at Bayreuth.
Reports from Bayreuth say that Katharina Wagner’s Friday-night revival of Tristan und Isolde was greeted with the heaviest booing she has yet received.
There was loud applause for the protagonists,Stephen Gould and Petra Lang, and for the conductor Christian Thielemann.
