From the Lebrecht Album of the Week:

As the year nears its end a pile of albums stares at me pleading for attention. So I dig in and find some that I cannot allow to pass unnoticed…

If you wanted to hear Bach on the piano,would you, for instance, go to Iceland to hear it played by the winner of the Iceland Optimism Prize?….

Read on here.

And here.

 

 

The Opéra National de Bordeaux has renewed Marc Minkowski until 2022.

The general director of the Opéra  has been under pressure after replacing the musicians in a recent production with a training orchestra.

The Chinese composer Tan Dun has been named Dean of the Bard College Conservatory of Music.

‘We are delighted that Tan Dun, a conductor, composer, and artist whose work bridges cultures and genres and embraces a wide definition of music, will lead Bard’s Conservatory of Music,’ said Bard College President Leon Botstein.

Everybody is trying to recruit the cream of Chinese students.

 

Steven Isserlis reports the death of  Johannes Goritzki, a cellist and condcutor who worked closely with Ligeti, Penderecki, Sandor Veress and Isang Yun.

He recorded more than 40 CDs, mostly on the German label CPO.

From 1980 to 2003 Goritzki was the chief conductor of the Deutsche Kammerakademie.

Moray Welsh writes: He was an extraordinary cellist, conductor, musician and friend, who influenced a huge number of cellists, including a lot of British cellists, amongst his many students. He was also an incredibly modest yet courageous man who overcame incredible health problems in the last few years, to go on teaching his students, for whom he was a beacon.

Who’s this?

UPDATE: Yup…. it’s Willy.

The Rostock Academy of Music and Theater has appointed Natalie Clein professor of cello from next summer.

A former BBC Young Musician of the Year, Natalie is also artist in residence and director of performance at Oxford University.

Apart from the obvious – Lang Lang, Yundi Li, Yuja Wang – the Chinese audience has a very particular taste.

Impresario Jiatong Wu spills the beans in a conversation with Van magazine.

For starters,  Anne-Sophie Mutter, Rudolf Buchbinder, Mischa Maisky…  would you have predicted that?

Read on here.