The next conductor to fill the gaps in the Concertgebouw season after the #MeToo sacking of the music director is the outgoing Dresden Philharmonic chief Michael Sanderling.
He will take over four concerts from 19 to 23 September, making his debut with the Dutch orchestra.
Boston Lyric Opera has announced the November world premiere of Tod Machover’s lates work, titled ‘Schoenberg in Hollywood’.
press release (to be taken with a pillar of salt):
Surprising, comical and powerful, Schoenberg in Hollywood is inspired by the life of Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg after fleeing Hitler’s Europe in the 1930s. Upon settling in Los Angeles by way of Boston, Schoenberg found himself at a personal crossroads of culture and belonging. While seeking ways to connect with a wider public through his music, he was introduced to the world of filmmaking through Harpo Marx, and considered an offer to compose a score for the film, The Good Earth. Afterrejecting the film commission – and the lure of greater fame – Schoenberg rediscovered his musical identity and heritage by maintaining his artistic integrity.
Machover – who is widely recognized as one of today’s most visionary and influential composers – says Schoenberg’s search to reconcile art with entertainment, reflection with action, and tradition with revolution is “one of the most inspiring stories of our time.” The opera explores the humor, heroism and pathos of Schoenberg’s struggle, he says, offering “a glimpse of what may have happened if Schoenberg had reconciled those opposites,” he said. Armitage says she is “honored to work on such a powerful new opera. Tod turned an ebullient and penetrating libretto into masterful music. Schoenberg riffs on popular and esoteric culture, and
examines deeply the complexity of being human, in both the personal and political realms.”
The happy couple here are the Dutch violinists Maria Milstein and Mathieu Van Bellen, joint artistic directors of the Scaldis Kamermuziek Festival.
We wish them many happy years together.
Our Zurich colleague Christian Berzins attended a heroic feat from the Menuhin Festival at Gstaad.
Despite breaking a toe last Wednesday, Jonas Kaufmann kept is engagement at Gstaad, singing Siegmund in a concert performance of the first act of Die Walküre with tremendous poise.
Jaap van Zweden conducted the Festival Orchestra.
photo: Raphaël Faux/Gstaad
The Malmö Symphony Orchestra has named Robert Trevino as its next music director, starting next year.
He succeeds Marc Soustrot.
Trevino, 34, is presently head of the Basque National Orchestra.
The flute star has been made a Commandeur de l’ordre des arts et des lettres by the French Minister of Culture.
Our warm congrats.
We hear that the peripatetic US violinist will perform the Butterfly Lovers Violin Concerto, a rose-tinted Maoist work of the 1950s by two Chinese composers, He Zhanhao and Chen Gang.
The recording will take place in Singapore on August 31 for release by Sony Classical in 2019.
The Eurovision Young Musicians 2018 contest, which is being held at the Edinburgh International Festival, has turned mostly east for its finalists. Maxim Calver, BBC Young Musician of 2018, failed to make the cut.
The finalists have just been announced:
Nikola Pajanovič, Slovenia, violin
Maté Bencze, Hungary, saxophone
Ivan Bessonov, Russia, piano
Mira Marie Foron, Germany, violin
Indi Stivin, Czech Rep, double bass
Birgitta Elisa Oftestad, Norway, cello.
The Bad Boy of the Baton has been sounding off in Salzburg about his Beethoven cycle:
‘It is never my intention to provoke. Yet some people find what I do extreme. – I think that is a question of psychology. My goal is not for people to attend a concert, to find it pretty and then be unable to remember it the very next day…. I am deeply convinced that the role of the musician is to pose ever-new questions to the audience.’
This year’s BBC Proms brochure contains the first advertisement I have seen for a psychotherapist who offers ’emergency backstage’ consultations, as well as Skype and more formal treatment.
It’s tough out there.
The Estonian press agency reports the death of Teo Maiste, a leading exponent of the Musorgsky role in the late 20th century.
He was also an outstanding Leporello and Baron Ochs, sung in Estonian.
(video courtesy of Paavo Järvi)
Extraordinary scenes on the stage of the Teatro Colon as Anna Netrebko and Yusif Eyvazov prepare to leave Buenos Aires.
Wouldn’t be allowed in Salzburg
