Charles Gounod’s opera La reine de Saba received its US premiere last night in Boston, in the original, unseen five-act version.

Any good?

First review here.

There’s a warning that more Gounod will hit Boston next month.

The pianist and composer Piotr Lachert died on September 18, days after his 80th birthday.

He lived in Abruzzo, Italy, for the past quarter-century and will be buried there.

Lachert composed some 200 works and claimed to have 1,500 students.

After just one season, the National Symphony Orchestra has added a four-year extension to Gianandrea Noseda’s contract as music director.

The NSO also announced it had raised $10 million in special funding to support a number of Noseda initiatives.

The celebrated pianist, ends a prolonged absence from his homeland by playing at the Esterházy Concert Series next weekend, just across the border in Haydn’s Eisenstadt. He’s not actually entering Hungarian territory, but coming closer than he has been for years.

In an interview with a Hungarian newspaper, he admits to missing the chirping of sparrows in Budapest and maintained a certain enigma about the present situation.

Index.hu: If you had to sum up Hungary in a single chord, which one would you choose and why?
András Schiff: The tritonus which was called the devil’s interval in the Middle Ages.

He is comparably acidic on the present state of music:

Today, everything is in business, commercialism, marketing, and it is extremely tasteless and disgusting. The fact that, for example, I managed to achieve something in the midst of all this, is almost a miracle.

Full interview here.

The Dutch violinist gave a ‘matchless’ performance of Szymanowski in London last week.

Then she cancelled this week’s appearance in Hong Kong.

Flight fatigue?

From the Lebrecht Album of the Week:

Amid the excitement over a rediscovered rehearsal tape of the composer playing Symphonic Dances, there arrives a new account of two concertos with Rachmaninov’s favourite orchestra and the living pianist who most resembles him. Deutsche Grammophon has titled the album Destination Rachmaninov. Departure and furnished the cover with a portrait of the soloist, Daniil Trifonov, sitting in the kind of railway compartment that went out with shellac records. Do not be distracted by these marketing tricks….

Read on here.

And here.