But it’s just her, a pianist and a cellist?

No matter. The orchestra’s on strike. Symphony Hall is shut.

Anne-Sophie Mutter, violinist–CANCELLED
Lambert Orkis, pianist
Daniel Müller-Schott, cellist
Mozart: Violin Sonata in E Minor, K. 304
Ravel: Violin Sonata
Currier: Ghost Trio
Beethoven: Piano Trio in D Major, Op. 70, No. 1 (Ghost)
Poulenc: Violin Sonata
3 p.m. Symphony Center

 

Fiona Maddocks today on Birmingham Opera Company’s epochal staging of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk.

(The) action teems with rats, poisoned mushrooms, a dead husband in the chest freezer and plenty of adulterous pneumatic sex, noisily and graphically illustrated by the music. (The composer dedicated the work to his first wife. They had issues.)…

Lady Macbeth, BOC’s 50th production, is perhaps its most brilliant so far, praise in itself given the company’s impressive track record: Wozzeck, Fidelio, Otello; Mussorgsky’s Khovanshchina, Tippett’s The Ice Break, Stockhausen’s Mittwoch aus Licht with its helicopter quartet among them, all subjected to Vick and his team’s daring, encompassing approach. The venue for this latest staging was the disused Tower Ballroom. Its central wooden dancefloor intact, it provided a ghostly backdrop to the staging: chorus wearing competition-style numbers, couples moving stiffly as if in a half-dead last dance.

Read on here. 

BOC press picture

The English international baritone Sir Thomas Allen will close his Covent Garden account with the present Cosi fan tutte, the Royal Opera House has posted.

He has sung 45 years and 50 roles at Covent Garden.

Sir Tom is 74.

Beverly Everett, music director of the Bismarck-Mandan Symphony and the Bemidji Symphony orchestras in North Dakota, has been talking to local media about her successful cancer treatment.

She has also posted this on social media:

We wish Beverly the best of health in future.

 

 

If anyone has doubts of the return of Erich Wolfgang Korngold, the Bavarian State Opera will dispel them by opening its next season with Die tote Stadt.

Jonas Kaufmann stars opposite Marlis Petersen.

Other new productions:

Hans Abrahamsen
THE SNOW QUEEN
Conductor: Cornelius Meister
Production: Andreas Kriegenburg
With Barbara Hannigan and Peter Rose

Béla Bartók
CONCERTO FOR ORCHESTRA / BLUEBEARD’S CASTLE
Conductor: Oksana Lyniv
Production: Katie Mitchell
With Nina Stemme and John Lundgren

Giuseppe Verdi
I MASNADIERI
Conductor: Michele Mariotti
Production: Johannes Erath
With Diana Damrau, Mika Kares, Charles Castronovo and Igor Golovatenko

Marina Abramović
7 DEATHS OF MARIA CALLAS
Director, sets and performance: Marina Abramović
Conductor: Yoel Gamzou
Music: Marko Nikodijević
Script: Marina Abramović, Petter Skavlan
With Marina Abramović, Willem Dafoe, Selene Zanetti, Adela Zaharia and Hera Hyesang Park

Jean-Philippe Rameau
CASTOR ET POLLUX
Conductor: Ivor Bolton
Production: Hans Neuenfels
With Emöke Barath, Caspar Singh and Edwin Crossley-Mercer
Munich Opera Festival

Giuseppe Verdi
FALSTAFF
Conductor: Kirill Petrenko
Production: Mateja Koležnik
With Wolfgang Koch, Boris Pinkhasovich, Bogdan Volkov, Aleksandra Kurzak, Okka von der Damerau
Munich Opera Festival

Ambroise Thomas
MIGNON
Conductor: Pierre Dumoussaud
Production: Christiane Lutz
Opera Studio of the Bayerische Staatsoper

 

The Bavarian State Opera has just announced its 2019-20 season and it’s bookended by Jonas.

The tenor opens the season in Die Tote Stadt.

His wife Christiane Lutz, who is expecting their child, directs the Opera Studio of the Bayerische Staatsoper in Mignon next April.

A family affair.

The violinist Angelo Xiang Yu and the Jack Quartet have been selected for this year’s Avery Fisher grants, together with the pianist Henry Kramer and the piano duo Christina and Michelle Naughton.

Yu, 28, won the Menuhin competition in 2010. He plays a 1729 Stradivarius on loan from an anonymous donor but has yet to make an international breakthrough.

The Jack Quartet, by contrast, have made a big splash across the US.

 

Message from the composer Vanessa Lann:

On March 11th, Vanessa Lann got the Buma Award Classical during the Buma Awards Event in Hilversum. She was the most successful Dutch classical composer in 2018. Especially her ‘Dancing to an Orange Drummer’ had many performances…

The title Dancing to an Orange Drummer comes from the expression “moving to the beat of a different drummer.” The piece was inspired by the challenge of moving to a new country (in this case, the Netherlands), and for the composer, this meant feeling, and enjoying, the very different beat and energy of new people, places and customs. Lann uses two contrasting elements that gradually merge: simple melodies in the brass begin the work, against a repeated rhythmic pattern in the other instruments. The two groups do clash with each other, but eventually, the brass instruments take over aspects of the rhythmic pattern, while the others imitate the brass melody. This climaxes in a new unity in orchestral sound by the end of the piece. The original big band version of this work was written in 1993 for the Dutch ensemble De Ereprijs; the version for symphony orchestra was completed on request of the Boston Pops Orchestra on the occasion of their performance in May 2015 in Symphony Hall (Boston, USA).

The work was frequently performed by the Philharmonie Zuidnederland, as part of their youth project Heartbeat with conductor Peter Biloen.

The BUMA award is given to the composer with the most performances worldwide in the past year.

You can listen to Dancing with an Orange here.

Latest from the CSOA overnight:

CSOA Statement – 03.16.19

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association (CSOA) and the Chicago Federation of Musicians (CFM) continued negotiations today on a new contract for the members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO). A new agreement has not yet been reached, and the parties have not scheduled any further sessions at this time.

Back to the mattresses.