The pianist Ivan Bessonov, 16, was the runaway winner, playing the finale of the Tchaikovsky concerto.

In the absence of a BBC broadcast, the contest was watched live by just 700 people on Youtube.

This is Lahav Shani, incoming music director of the Israel Philharmonic, joining the doublebass section of the West East Diwan Orchestra in Lucerne tonight.

Nice.

Governor Charles D. Baker has issued a Proclamation declaring August 25th Leonard Bernstein Day throughout the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Tanglewood will relay a live Candide at 3pm UK time tomorrow.

Surely it will all be over soon.

Hang on, Louisville has just announced a 2-year Lenny fest.

Enough, already.

From our string quartet diarist Anthea Kreston:

My God, sometimes it is so hot while we are playing a concert. These past tours – with the temperature flirting dangerously close to 100 degrees outside – inside the hall (or castle or church or barn), it feels like I am standing on a hot plate while under a glass dome, and someone has generously offered to shine a heat lamp directly on to my head.

It’s different in the States, where musicians and audiences are used to being exactly the same temperature every day,
regardless if there is a blizzard or a forest fire outside the building. Our little climate bubble. Here, the outside and inside are actually related – and retrofitting a 900 year old castle for climate control just isn‘t high on the „to-do“ list.

So I do everything I can. Pare down my outfit, drink lots of water, try to cut the rehearsal short before the concert, put my hair up. But – there are still a gaggle of spotlights (fore, side, back and above) trained on us, and by half-way through the first movement, the sweat is running down the back of my legs, and the fingerboard is glistening. It’s just gross. I basically have to wear my daughter’s snorkel equipment to safety open my backpack when I get back from tour. My feet swell to twice their normal shape, and I start to make bizarre mistakes. I try to pace myself, but that just isn’t realistic. Not with Bartok. It’s now or never out there. All for one, and one for all. This last concert I just stood in a cold shower during intermission.

It feels like my brain is inside a cloud – and I have no choice but to just let go and have my body do what it knows how to do. A study from Loughborough University showed that a 5 percent drop in water levels can cause 25-30 percent loss in energy and even a slight drop of 3 percent can cause ‘fuzzy thinking’ and brain fog. I have no idea how much 5 percent is, but I can imagine that completely soaking through a concert outfit by the end of the first piece must be up there somewhere. But there is never a moment when I can give less than 100 percent. No how no way – I am way too stubborn and proud to admit any weakness. And can you imagine ‘fuzzy thinking’? Haha – not an option.

I am forever asking the stage manager to open the windows, leave the church doors open – anything. But, once the music starts, we are closed back into our little heat cocoon. It’s noisy out there. In Lübeck, I just went out to the audience myself and started to open the massively tall windows, and before I knew it, the overly heated audience was all up helping, sticking umbrellas into the windows to keep them open. It was nice, in the slow movement of Bartok, to hear the bells of all the different churches chiming for the 9:00 hour, commingling with the stagnant chords of Bartok 2. The breeze, and the sounds of music and the marking of time made it all a bit more possible.

So – they have our water and towels ready for us back stage – and the summer season is coming to a close. Come winter, those old castles will have a little symphony of hot water clanking in the pipes, and the hiss of steam from the radiators.

 

Garsington Opera, which has been the best of the UK country set for the past few years, has decied its freelance orchestra is not good enough.

As of 2020, it is hiring two established ensembles, the Philharmonia, and the English Concert. Both have five-year deals.

Members of the Garsington orchestra today received this notification from its conductor, Douglas Boyd, minutes before the press release went out. Boyd explains:

We would like you to know that we very much want the Garsington Opera Orchestra to be with us for the 2019 Season to play for the three productions of Don Giovanni, Fantasio and The Turn of the Screw. The Philharmonia will play for The Bartered Bride. As you probably know, the outside dates for next season are 29 May to 21 July, with rehearsals starting on 10 May and, once appointed, Richard Nelson’s successor will no doubt be in touch with you in good time with the details.

From 2020, however, it has been decided to extend the relationship with the Philharmonia. In addition, we will be developing our future programming with the period instrument ensemble, The English Concert. Regrettably, this means that we will not be fixing players for a Garsington Opera Orchestra after the 2019 Season. This has been the most difficult decision of any kind that I, Nicky and the Board have had to make.

As in, thank you and good night.

The latest blast of positive discrimination:

Opera North is seeking applications from music-makers from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds living in the north of England, for its second programme of Resonance residencies, supported by the PRS Foundation.

Launched in 2017, Resonance offers professional artists in all genres the opportunity to develop new performance ideas. Successful applicants will receive up to a week of free rehearsal space in central Leeds in March and April 2019, a grant of up to £3,000 to cover fees and other costs, support and advice from technicians, producers and other specialists, and an optional ‘work in progress’ performance.

Four artists, Nwando Ebizie, Thandanani Gumede, Moji Kareem and Christella Litras took part in the first Resonance residencies in March this year. You can see a short film on their experiences here.


An Opera North children’s production

 

This is the acoustic audition by Mikhail Pletnev and the Russian National Orchestra.

The hall will be opened by Valery Gergiev on September 8. Riccardo Muti has cancelled the following night’s concert. He will be replaced by Pletnev.

The Korean violinist Jiyoon Lee who won the audition for first concertmaster of Barenboim’s Berlin Staatskapelle three months ago has been meeting the local media.

Just turned 26,Jiyoon tells the Morgenpost that her mother studied piano at Juilliard but she decided that, as a classical violinist, ‘you have to live in Europe to know the traditions.’

At 20, she picked a teacher, Kolja Blacher, from the internet. Abbado’s former concertmaster made her rethink everything: ‘I had to completely learn from him how to play the violin – like a beginner. It was exhausting, but it was worth it.’

Read on here.

 

John Kelly, chef executive of the Irish Chamber Orchestra from 1993 to 2012, has died suddenly in the United States, the orchestra has tweeted.

A violist by training, Kelly is credited with placing the orchestra on a firm financial footing with substantial government funding.

 

The venerable US baritone Thomas Hampson will play the Emperor Hadrian and and Finnish soprano Karita Mattila the ex-empress Plotina in a new opera of classical Rome by the Canadian singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright.

Canadian Opera Company have scheduled seven performances in October. The opera will be sung in English and Latin.

 

Message from the Bayreuth tenor:

With deepest regret I have to inform, that I am forced to cancel my Saturday’s performance at the Angelika Kauffmann Hall in Schwarzenberg due to laryngitis. My place at Helmut Deutsch’s side will be taken by a young baritone Benjamin Appl, whom I wish a successful recital. With best wishes Piotr.

 

The Grand Final of the Eurovision Young Musician of the Year will be broadcast tonight on the following channels:
Albania / RTSH 1
Belgium / RTBF – La Trois
Croatia / HRT – HTV 3
Czech Republic / Czech TV – CT Art
Greece / ERT 2
Hungary / MTVA – M5
Malta / PBS Ltd. – TVM 2
Norway / NRK 2
Poland / TVP Kultura
Russia / Russia Kultura
Slovenia / RTV 1
UK / BBC 2 but only in Scotland (2000 BST)

New talent is clearly of no interest to BBC nationally.

The finalists (reported earlier) are:
Indi Stivín, double bass (Czech Republic)
Mira Foron, violin (Germany)

Máté Bencze, saxophone (Hungary)
Birgitta Elisa Oftestad, cello (Norway)
Ivan Bessonov, pianist (Russia)
Nikola Pajanović, violin (Slovenia)

The judges will be conductors David Watkin and Marin Alsop with composers Anna Meredith and James MacMillan, plus the Edinburgh Festival’s Head of Music, Andrew Moore.