The Rector of the Moscow Conservatory, Alexander Sokolov, says next summer’s Tchaikovsky Competition might not take place, due to planning delays.
No date has yet been announced for the contest, application deadlines have not been set and no juries have been assembled.
What’s more, the plan to include a competition for wind instruments is held to be non-viable.
Read here.
She’s 11 years old.
Eva Kleinitz, director of the Opéra du Rhin, told Le Figaro:
‘At the interval, we asked the audience not to leave the premises. There were 800 in the auditorium and 120 in the orchestra and the choir… People were beautifully calm. We did not consider stopping the performance. Our main aim was to keep the public safe… The musicians remained perfectly focused.’
After the performance of Offenbach’s opéra bouffe Barkouf, the audience were dispersed in small groups.
The perils of breakfast TV.
The young cellist got to play all of 10 seconds before they cut to an interview with Emily Blunt.
Watch here.
And beware.
David Edward Lewis, a chorus member of Opera Australia, was admitted grooming a teenaged girl in the children’s chorus. The court was told that after he was reported by a crew member, the company took no action against him, but hired a chaperone for the kids.
Lewis, 58, received three years for two counts of sexual intercourse with a person aged between 10 and 16.
Report here.
The manager of the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie Saarbrücken Kaiserslautern is to be the next chief exec of the Hong Kong Philharmonic.
Benedikt Fohr, who has put in 12 years in his present job, will succeed Michael Macleod next April.
Fohr is 55.
He will have Jaap van Zweden as his music director and more good restaurants at his door than he can ever visit. He will also find good tailors.
The tenor’s 24th annual gala raised 3.3 million Euros.
The show took place in Munich ans was joined by violinist David Garrett, tenor Jonas Kaufmann and pianist Sophie Pacini.
Bless them all.
Carreras himself survived leukemia in 1987.
Igor Toronyi-Lalic in the Guardian:
Many orchestras are now brands. Experimentation couldn’t be further from their minds. Fitting in, commissioning works that resemble previous ones by this or that respectable composer: these are the standards by which success is measured. And the more pedestrian the artistry, the more grand the claims often are about a work’s transformative powers. Music is no stranger to snake-oil.
Like banks, most orchestras are too big to fail: self-preservation trumps exploration….
Read on here.
Santtu-Matias Rouvali will start 2019 with a recording of Sibelius Symphony No.1 and En Saga with the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, the first of a projected Sibelius cycle for Alpha Classics.
They will be playing the Berlin Philharmonie in February.
Rouvali is 32. There’s a new generation coming on.
