Gerd Seifert died last week, aged 88.

Hamburg born, he played in the Düsseldorf city orchestra from 1949, winning the ARD competition in 1956. In 1964, Herbert von Karajan recruited him as first horn into the Berlin Philharmonic, where he played until 1996. Summers, he was a fixture in Bayreuth.

After leaving he Berlin Phil, he played two seasons as first horn at the Liceu in Barcelona, as well as a stint in a Lloyd Webber musical in Berlin. He was formidable.

Peter Hurford died today at the age of 88.

Hurford recorded the complete Bach organ works for Decca, along with much else.

He founded the St Albans International Organ Festival and was an engine for renewal in British organ playing. In recent years, he suffered a stroke, followed by Alzheimer’s disease. He retired in 2009.

From Bruce Duffie’s extended interview:

Making music’s fun.  The moment making music ceases to be fun, give it up!  That does happen, you know.  People do stop having fun with it, and this does happen with professionals, sometimes — quite a lot, in my experience.

Read on here.

From a 2015 interview with New Music Box.

 

Full transcript here.

The chief executive of English National Opera has a braggy tweet:

Soulmate dies. Flu strikes. A bad week.

Violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter has been forced to postpone her Wednesday, March 6,recital with pianist Lambert Orkis at Walt Disney Concert Hall due to the flu. The recital will now take place, Saturday, March 9, at 2pm.
MOZART         Violin Sonata in E minor, K. 304
DEBUSSY       Violin Sonata
RAVEL  Violin Sonata No. 2
MOZART         Violin Sonata in B-flat, K. 454
POULENC       Violin Sonata

The mezzo-soprano has named Gianluca Capuano, 50, principal conductor of Musiciens du Prince,  the touring ensemble she founded in Monaco.

 

This new website reveals all you could ever wish to know about Schubert’s epic cycle.

As an integral element of ongoing research into interpretations of arguably the greatest song-cycle ever written, this site d’hommage to Schubert’s Winterreise presents and will maintain a comprehensive and accurate overview of commercially available recordings with timings and relevant data, films, books, online videos, articles, translations, artworks and links to scholastic sources and other websites.

In addition, an up-to-date listing of upcoming performances of Winterreise around the globe is available: please feel free to comment and/or contribute with tips and dates!

 

Details have been announced of a national museum of music to open in Helsinki this year.

Place of honour among composers goes, of course, to Jean Sibelius.

But the second composer to be featured in the permanent display is slightly unexpected.

It’s…

The Orchestre Métropolitain of Montreal has announced its next season.

There are six guest conductors. Four are women.

From the press release:

Guest conductors are the Australian Nicholas Carter; Quebec’s own Nicolas Ellis (in Rachmaninoff’s seldom-heard Symphony No. 1); Hong Kong-born Elim Chan; Korean former cello prodigy Han-Na Chang; British Mozart authority Jane Glover; and the Mexican-American Alondra de la Parra.