Richard Rodzinski, long-serving head of the Van Cliburn Competition, has been named General Director of the First China International Music Competition at China Conservatory of Music.

Richard has also been a reforming head of Moscow’s Tchaikovsky Competition.

From the experienced Tom Manoff’s review of the decapitated festival:

I’ve been attending and reviewing OBF off and on since 1982. Having lived also in Stuttgart, I’m very familiar with Helmuth Rilling’s artistry. I found Matthew Halls an extraordinary successor to Rilling, and a musician who immediately brought a new life to the festival when many thought it would die without its founding artistic director.

Judging from the seven events I saw this year, OBF 2018 was below the standards of years past. Nothing distinguished it from an ordinary lineup of classical fare. No artistic vision unified the schedule or oversaw the standards of performance. Engaging with how a particular conductor thinks about music was no longer possible for devoted audience members. Following that conductor’s musical talent (first Rilling, then Halls) from year to year and piece to piece has been the most important feature of OBF. With the absence of a world-class musician heading the festival, I felt a profound artistic void.

After the festival, (executive director Janelle) McCoy said that one reason for OBF 2018’s success was the use of “more conductors.”….

Read on here.

Gerald Brown, founder-conductor of the national symphony orchestras of Bolivia and Costa Rica, has died in Arizona at the age of 75.

He founded the Bolivian National Orchestra in the 1960s, fresh out of the US Peace Corps, and  conducted them for 29 years. He was then involved with Costa Rica for the rest of his life.

The Nashville Symphony conductor Giancarlo Guerrero cites Gerald as a formative influence.

The first-night audience made clear its disapproval of the Dutch director Jan Lauwers’ dance-oriented production. Total silence is a good measure of audience mood.

Sonya Yoncheva as Poppea and Kate Lindsey as Nerone were applauded, as was the conductor William Christie, whose Arts Florissants ensemble played on stage as part of the performance.

The sudden death of Rachel Duncan, principal trumpet of the Charlottesville Symphony, has called to the minds of several readers two other recent tragedies that befell students in her Curtis year.

Jamie Dietz was a brilliant percussionist who died at 33.

Even more promising was the pianist Christopher Falzone, a protege of Martha Argerich who jumped to his death from a hospital window in Geneva in 2014, aged 29.

May their good souls find rest.

To mark 30 years with Decca, Cecilia Bartoli has been given a label of her own on which to develop new talent. It’s called Mentored by Bartoli.

Her first debutant is the Mexican tenor Javier Camarena.

This is a smart move on both sides. Bartoli, the biggest selling female singer since Callas, can start organising her legacy and Decca will continue to benefit from her artistic acuity and entrepreneurial flair.

The remarkable return of Samuel Barber’s Vanessa is being shown on a handful of cinema screens around the UK, but not on any television channel.

You can watch it here for free tonight, from a Vienna-based streaming site. Or 2pm NY time.

Ignore the ugly costume. Emma Bell is Vanessa.