The season has just been rolled out.

Headlines:
Six women to take the podium: Marin Alsop, Karina Canellakis, Jane Glover, Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, Susanna Mälkki and Nathalie Stutzmann

Compositions by 12 women to be performed: Lera Auerbach, Lili Boulanger, Anna Clyne, Zosha Di Castri, Louise Farrenc, Elena Firsova, Gabriela Lena Frank, Vivian Fung, Jessica Hunt, Betsy Jolas, Raminta Šerkšnytė. Plus a world premiere by Valerie Coleman to open the subscription season.

Gabriela Lena Frank serves as composer-in-residence

To mark Beethoven’s 250th birthday, Nézet-Séguin to conduct all nine symphonies in one month alongside new works by Gabriela Lena Frank and composers from her Creative Academy of Music

Yefim Bronfman, Daniil Trifonov, and Emanuel Ax to perform all five piano concertos in three binge-worthy weeks; Gil Shaham to perform Beethoven’s Violin Concerto

 

A well known British conductor who works extensively in Austria, Germany and Spain has approached us with some practical questions that no-one, it seems, can answer.

Here’s what he would like to know:

Under EU rules, you give a resident country and in Austria and Germany you get taxed as an Auslander. Paying no local social security.
From April what will we need?
Work visas? Pay local rates of tax and social security??
If we have to pay extra social security in Europe, will the UK Government reduce our Class IV contributions?
Can anyone help?

The New Zealand diva was born Claire Mary Teresa Rawstron on March 6, 1944.

Adopted by a Maori couple, Thomas and Nell Te Kanawa, she took their surname. After singing in Auckland pop clubs, she came to London to study with Vera Rozsa and caught the ear of  Georg Solti and Colin Davis. In 1970, she received a three-year contract at Covent Garden.

She rose to superfame at the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer on July 29, 1981, catching the eye on television in a bright-yellow canary outfit as much as she caught the ear in Handel’s Let the Bright Seraphim.

She has since received every available royal honour, sold piles of records, presided at the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World and appeared in Downton Abbey.

 

 

John Borstlap has informed us of the death of Hans Kox, whom John described as ‘the most important 20th century composer in the Netherlands, with a typically modern voice but who still kept some important traditional values like tonality (in the widest sense) and expression’.

His publisher writes: ‘From 1984, Kox devoted himself entirely to composing. To that end, he secluded himself, for “Composing is simply the loneliest profession on earth. I knew that when I got started, and actually, I wouldn’t have it any other way.” In more than 50 years, Kox completed about 150 compositions. His music has no specific intentions or meaning. Kox describes his music as “just music, sound. Music is itself, however one wants to interpret this.”’

He had certain things in common with Shostakovich, including a love of cats.

Fascinating article in the Houston Chronicle on André’s first music directorship. He never revisited the orchestra.

By May, the society notified Previn that it was done with him. The main reasons included conflicts with his duties as principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra and the attendance drop. Previn figured it had to do with creative control and the selection of musicians and guest conductors.

“I had plans for this orchestra that were far from parochial,” Previn told Holmes days after his dismissal. “But the management has control of it now, and I suppose that was what it was all about.

“It wasn’t even human. Everyone knows musicians plan one to two years in advance.”

Read on here.

 

Stuart Murphy, ENO’s chief executive, says that from next season one performance in each production will be shown without supertitles above the stage.

That, he argues, will underline ENO’s commitment to singing in English.

There are serious flaws to this argument.

1 Many of ENO’s singers are foreign imports whose diction is questionable.

2 Some of the English singers pay little attention to articulation in their native tongue.

3 On the deep Coliseum stage, words get lost unless they are pronounced right at the front.

4 The audience is increasingly accustomed to watching television with surtitles.

5 The majority of the audience, in their mature, years, expect surtitles as standard.

6 This looks like another bit of virtue signalling from ENO’s boss to divert attention from the company’s spiralling problems.

 

 

La Scala’s Sovrintendente Alexander Pereira says he has found a supporter who will bring in 15 million Euros over the next five years.

Sounds good?

The hitch is that the new donor is the Saudi Arabia culture minister, Badr bin Abdullah bin Mohammed bin Farhan Al Saud, and the price of his support is a seat on La Scala’s governing board.

Pereira says the appointment has the approval of the mayor of Milan.

The first media response was shock. The second, now building, is fury.