Kirill Petrenko, incoming chief of the Berlin Philharmonic, is spending the next week with the Bundesjugendorchester, which is going into its 50th season.
Good piece of public service.
Also good to cast his eye over potential recruits for the Berlin Phil.
Gianandrea Noseda, music director of the National Symphony Orchestra, has named Lin Ma as principal clarinet, starting next week, and Malorie Blake Shin as a second violin.
Lin Ma is assistant principal and E-flat clarinet at the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, where players are facing a pay cut.
Noseda has so far replaced 8 players in the NSO.
HarrisonParrott has signed its first conductor of 2019 (or maybe just of the week).
Its new addition is Aziz Shokhakimov, winner of the 2016 Salzburg Festival Nestlé Young Conductors Award.
He’s 31 and was previously with the Vienna agency Dr. Raab & Dr. Böhm.
It’s all about volume and turnover these days.
The countertenor Bejun Mehta has taken up conducting.
He tells a German interviewer: ‘After about fifteen years of a singing career, at some point I received an offer for conducting. I did not actively seek it. But when this request came, I knew it was the right time.’
Read on here.
From the Monaco office of Valentin Proczynski, who staged many events with Rostropovich, Prêtre, Solti, Maazel, Menuhin, Masur and Carlos Kleiber :
Dear Colleagues, Partners and Friends,
It is with the deepest regret and sorrow that we announce the demise of Maestro Valentin Proczynski, who fought until the end against his illness for the sake of Art and Music.
A ceremony will take place at Chapel of the Monaco Cemetery on 4th January 2019 at 14h30.
He was a benefactor of “Médecins du Monde” and the “Ligue contre le Cancer”. Should you want to express your condolences, instead of buying flowers you can make a donation to one of these organisations.
We are sure the Light of his work will continue to shine in the years to come.
All Partners, Artists and Promoters, with ongoing projects will shortly be reached separately to finalise the events.
The team of Old and New Montecarlo
Thanos, Federica, Monica, Giovanna, Gerolamo
We have been notified of the death of Joan Guinjoan at the age of 87.
A Catalan who lived most of his life in Barcelona made an international career as a pianist in the 1960s before responding to a lively demand for his own compositions.
His signature work is an opera on the life of Gaudi.
As we trailed six weeks ago, John Fisher’s job as head of music administration at the Met has ended.
He is returning to Wales.
The Met has hired Thomas Lausmann, Head of Music at the Vienna State Opera, to replace him from September.
Yannick Nézet-Séguin said, ‘John Fisher is a brilliant musician and one of the world’s great vocal coaches. He has been an invaluable artistic asset to the company and we are sad to see him go. I am delighted, however, that Thomas Lausmann has agreed to take on this essential position at the Met. I know that he will ensure continued musical excellence at the company.’
Fisher said, ‘I have hugely enjoyed all my years in management at the Met – it has been a real privilege. I know I will be sad to leave but I also look forward to returning to my musical career, and to returning to the Met from time to time.’
Our list of works we never need to hear again continues to attract readers’ comments, almost five years after posting.
Here’s something different: works that used to be played with some regularity in our major halls but which orchestras are, for one reason or another, not putting on their current programmes.
We need to hear them again.
Here are 10 that I miss.
1 Cesar Franck, Symphony in D minor
2 De Falla, Nights in the Gardens of Spain
3 Mozart, Haffner Symphony
4 Kodaly, Dances of Galanta
5 Copland, clarinet concerto
6 Bohuslav Martinu 6th symphony
7 Vaughan Williams 5th symphony
8 Darius Milhaud, Creation du monde
9 Borodin, In the steppes of central Asia
10 Malcolm Arnold 5th symphony
Now add your own.
UPDATE: OK, so here are 10 more
The Chicago Symphony has announced the death of Norman Schweikert,second horn from 1975 until 1997. Schweikert also served as assistant principal horn from 1971 until 1975. He was 81.
His wife Sally was a member of the orchestra’s chorus.
More here.
The composer Larry Austin who made the most usable completion of Ives’s Universe Symphony has died.
He was a computer music specialist, founder of the periodical Source: Music of the Avant Garde and a much respected composer whose work was commissioned by Leonard Bernstein for the New York Philharmonic.
He taught at the University of North Texas.
