Anthea Kreston grabs an exclusive interview with the director of Ancient Academy of Music, and Artistic Partner to the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra.

The Mozart quote comes around 10:30.

Watch.

 

Big band singer Dottie Reid, who sang with Jimmy Dorsey and did a world tour with Benny Goodman, has passed away in Arkansas.

How did they ever get voices to sound like this?

Did they go to smoking classes?

 

Zoë Madonna has a terrific story in the Boston Globe about an elderly concertgoer who suffered cardiac arrest in mid-performance, was seen slumped by the musicians and was saved by four doctors in the house.

We laid her on the floor and asked for 911 to be called, and [a defibrillator], and began CPR,” Stack said. The four physicians, all women, surrounded Christiansen. Stack monitored her for a heartbeat while another doctor started chest compressions, the third performed rescue breaths, and the fourth, the last to arrive, monitored another pulse point.

After two minutes of CPR, Stack felt a strong pulse. Shortly afterward,  Christiansen started gasping and moving, and she opened her eyes….

Read on here.

 

The 2019 Musikfest Berlin will feature the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, conducted by Sir John Eliot Gardiner, the London Symphony Orchestra with music director Sir Simon Rattle and the BBC Symphony Orchestra with chief conductor Sakari Orama.

31 August 2019, 19:00h
Philharmonie Berlin

Hector Berlioz “Benvenuto Cellini”
Opéra Comique, semi-staged performance
in French with German surtitles

Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique & Monteverdi Choir
Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Conductor
and Soloists

5 September 2019, 20:00h
Philharmonie Berlin

Modest Mussorgsky “Night on Bald Mountain”
Louis Andriessen “The Only One” for Voice and Orchestra, World Premiere
Olga Neuwirth “…miramondo multiplo…” for Solo Trumpet and Orchestra
Jean Sibelius Symphony Nr. 5 in E-flat Major, op. 82

Nora Fischer, Singing
Håkan Hardenberger, Trumpet
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Sakari Oramo, Conductor

 

11 September 2019, 20:00h
Philharmonie Berlin

Hans Abrahamsen “let me tell you”
Lied cycle for Soprano and Orchestra, based on texts by Paul Griffith
Olivier Messiaen “Èclairs sur l’Au-delà” for large Orchestra
Barbara Hannigan, Soprano
London Symphony Orchestra
Sir Simon Rattle, Conductor

 

In a tribute act to Joshua Bell’s ancient shtick on the Washington Metro, the US cellist entertained Xmas shoppers this weekend at the Place des Arts in Yannicktown.

He does fine in Bach but gets into a bit of trouble accompanying Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah.

Watch.

The complete show was streamed on Facebook.

More inf  here on Ludwig Van.

 

Robert Dumé was a star of the Paris Opéra in the 1970s and 1980s, notably as Nathanaël in Patrice Chéreau’s production of Les Contes d’Hoffmann.

He went on to enjoy an international career, detailed on forumopera, which reports his death.


Peter Boudgoust, the SWR executive who forced the merger of Radio Symphony Orchestra Stuttgart and the SWR Symphony Orchestra Baden-Baden/Freiburg, is taking early retirement from SWR.

Boudgoust, 63, remains chairman of the Franco-German television channel Arte until 2020.

In 2013 he rejected an appeal from local resident Pierre Boulez, signed by 160 conductors, to allow the two orchestras to maintain their separate identities.

More on his unexpected retirement here.

 

 

The international mezzo-soprano has joined the campaign to reject Brexit. Here’s her personal manifesto for musicians, exclusive to Slipped Disc:

24th June 2016 , the day the UK Brexit referendum result was announced, many eyes and ears were trained upon me. I am used to that, but this was different…

Everything had changed.

I was standing in the centre of an orchestra in Amsterdam at a recording session of songs by Gustav Mahler. The mood was one of shock and solemnity.  (Anger came later.) Typical of any modern European orchestra the musicians surrounding me came from a diverse range of countries and cultures, including some from my own in the UK.

I looked back at the orchestra, a thing of ideological beauty and truth, a musical instrument made up of 100 or more human beings each willingly giving up their own identity and ego for a greater endeavour, to allow someone else’s creativity breath and life through sound. Such a group of musicians typify humanity’s finest values and aspirations : trust, respect and common purpose irrespective of birthplace or nationality, a concentrated act of unity against mistrust and division. It is communication that actively ignores borders on land or barriers in language.  As we began to make music together, I felt both profoundly sad, and ashamed.

I should have felt pride.  A British musician chosen by a European recording company and orchestra, to sing the music and words of a German poet and an Austrian composer. I was there because since since beginning my full time international career in 1994 I have been able to study, travel and work freely as a citizen of the European Union.

The EU is not just a 28 state political and economic club, it is a vast cultural exchange.  The UK is at the forefront of this exchange.  It seems that living on an island has has made us reach out more determinedly, especially through music, to bring us closer to others .  Perhaps as a result we are are welcomed and respected on multiple levels. It’s a vast part of our contribution overseas as a nation, its also a huge revenue asset, but crucially it is the true measure of who we are and will hopefully always strive to be.

Very soon all that may change.  Many in the arts have already spoken and written in eloquent detail about the practical implications of losing the current right to travel, study and participate professionally without any restriction in the union. Any changes in the the right to be treated equally with fellow European musicians will be catastrophic for all our present and future music making for generations to come.

See Dame Sarah Connolly’s blog about the need for entry into music making with our neighbours to be unrestricted at all stages of a musicians life without its wanderlust being regulated by citizenship, visa requirements, salary or time constraints.
She is organising a rally in Parliament Square, Westminster London tomorrow December 10th from 12.00 for anyone present to sing Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” as loud as possible. In German.

I am writing this on a plane, travelling on a mission point to point -like music does between hearts- from Chicago to London . I hope to sing some Beethoven myself tomorrow, but before that I have an appointment at the US embassy there to renew a lost work visa. They made an exception and let me into America visa-free 2 weeks ago to sing in an opera because I have been classed a person of “extraordinary ability” ( some readers may debate that ) and possibly because they ran out of printer paper in the immigration office when making my professional file “You come here too often Ma’am.. ” was uttered with a grin.  My first US visa with such status was granted in 2001 precisely because in the 7 years prior I had freely roamed as a member of Europe, expanding my horizons and skills and becoming culturally rich.Music is the ultimate communication. It is the place humans truly share what it is to be alive, taking no heed of currency or consulate.  It MUST remain a free exchange.  At it’s core, and any musician will tell you, music itself isn’t made or shared for money. It’s where ideas and feelings are exchanged irrespective of which order your native tongue places consonants or vowels.  This is true freedom.  What did previous generations living through war and genocide in Europe risk all and die for, if not for that concept.

Music is the ultimate communication. It is the place humans truly share what it is to be alive, taking no heed of currency or consulate.  It MUST remain a free exchange.  At it’s core, and any musician will tell you, music itself isn’t made or shared for money. It’s where ideas and feelings are exchanged irrespective of which order your native tongue places consonants or vowels.  This is true freedom.  What did previous generations living through war and genocide in Europe risk all and die for, if not for that concept.

If British musicians can not be truly free to contribute outside their own shores we are shooting our collective soul in the foot.

BREXIT or NO BREXIT there is NO DEAL to strike ON MUSIC .
Instead, wherever you happen to be, let’s keep making noise, together.

Join Sarah Connolly and others outside Parliament today

From Dame Sarah:

I urge everyone to get down to Parliament, opposite the Lionheart statue / SODEM / House of Lords today, from noon.

It’s our last chance to tip the scales.