The Concertgebouw has named Dima Slobodeniouk and Philippe Herreweghe to replace their former music director Daniele Gatti in October and November, both in Amsterdam and on tour.

The Russian was due to make his C’bouw debut in April 2019. The Belgian has been a regular guest for 24 years.

photo: Borggreve

David DiChiera, founder of Michigan Opera Theatre, has died of pancreatic cancer, the theatre has announced. He retired last year at 82 as the cancer took hold.

You can read the story of his life here.

Guillaume Jehl has been upgraded from 2nd trumpet to principal in the Berlin Philharmonic. He replaces Tamas Velenczei, who moves down to 2nd or 3rd.

The move was announced in April.

Jehl is the former solo trumpet of the Basel Symphony Orchestra (2001-6) and the National Orchestra of France (2006-9).

The figures are out for theatre activity in Germany in 2016/17.

The Deutsche Bühnenverein covers 140 state and regional theatres, 128 orchestras, 210 privately owned theatres and 84 Festivals.

It finds a 2.2 percent drop in opera attendancs, 3.3 percent in dance and 6.4 percent for the operetta and musicals.

There was no obvious cause.

A few days ago, after the Welsh baritone’s debut at Teatro Colón, fans began singing Welsh songs as he was signing autographs. Bryn, never missing a beat, joined in, singing as he signed.

Watch.

Who knew there were so many Welsh in Argentina?

Earlier:

Amanda Spielman, Chief Inspector of Ofsted, has come out with an attack on the Government’s results-oriented policy which has caused a narrowing of the education arteries. She writes:

Some secondary schools were significantly shortening key stage 3 in order to start GCSEs. This approach results in the range of subjects that pupils study narrowing at an early stage and means that they might drop art, history or music, for instance, at age 12 or 13. At the same time, the assessment objectives from GCSE specifications were being tracked back to as early as Year 7, meaning many pupils spend their secondary education learning narrowed and shallow test content rather than broader and more in-depth content across a subject area….

This is strong stuff from a public official. More here.

Deutsche Grammophon and Decca are about to release ‘the biggest ever box set for a single composer’ on October 26.

The complete works of JSB are housed on 222 CDs. The box contains 280 hours of music and weighs 13.5 kilos

J.S. Bach – The New Complete Edition is the result of two years of curation, developed with the co-operation of 32 record labels and a team of scholars at the Leipzig Bach Archive.

Here’s the promo: