The Boston Symphony has just rolled out its season.

Jonas Kaufmann will sing the third act of Tristan und Isolde opposite Emily Magee. He sang the second act last season with Camilla Nylund. Andris Nelsons is the conductor in both instances. He’ll be ready for the full work pretty much now.

Other Boston highlights:
The Boston Symphony Orchestra/Gewandhausorchester Leipzig alliance, curated by Andris Nelsons, breaks new ground this year with the first-ever joint BSO/GHO concerts, taking place at Symphony Hall during the third “Leipzig Week in Boston.” In this third year of the BSO/GHO Alliance, the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig itself comes to Boston in late October and early November for two programs of its own, as well as two joint concerts with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, all under the direction of Andris Nelsons. These joint concerts bringing together the BSO and GHO feature Olivier Latry in performances of Richard Strauss’ Festive Prelude for organ and orchestra, and BSO wind principals John Ferrillo and Richard Svoboda and GHO string principals Frank-Michael Erben and Christian Giger in Haydn’s Sinfonia concertante in B-flat for oboe, bassoon, violin, and cello; these concerts will also include Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht and Scriabin’s Poem of Ecstasy.

Also: premieres of three BSO/GHO Alliance co-commissions, all to be led by Andris Nelsons. The first, Betsy Jolas’ Letters from Bachville, receives its world premiere performances in the concerts of November 7–12, in a concert also featuring Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G with Mitsuko Uchida as soloist and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 12, The Year 1917, to be recorded live for the BSO’s ongoing Shostakovich cycle (also marking the first BSO subscription performances of this work). The world premiere of Latvian composer Arturs Maskats’ “My River runs to thee…” (Homage to Emily Dickinson), the second of the three BSO/GHO Alliance co-commissions, is part of the subscription program of November 21–26, which also includes Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto with Daniel Lozakovich making his subscription series debut, and Galina Grifojeva’s On Leaving for unaccompanied choir featuring the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, which also participates in Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 2, To October, to be recorded live for the orchestra’s ongoing project for Deutsche Grammophon. The final BSO/GHO Alliance co-commission to be presented in 2019–20 is the American premiere of HK Gruber’s Short Stories from the Vienna Woods, which is part of the subscription program of April 2-4, also featuring Gershwin’s Piano Concerto in F with soloist Jean-Yves Thibaudet, and Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 3. On October 3–5, Mr. Nelsons leads James Lee III’s Sukkot Through Orion’s Nebula, the first work by this American composer to be performed by the BSO. Also on that program are Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with pianist Yuja Wang as soloist, and music from Smetana’s patriotic salute to his Bohemian homeland, Má Vlast.

Christoph Koncz, 31, leader of the 2nd violin section of the Vienna Philharmonic, has been named chief conductor of the Deutsche Kammerakademie Neuss, in the Rhineland. The ensemble specialises in offbeat repertoire.

Koncz will share the artistic planning with the Dutch soloist, Isabelle van Keulen.

 

 

 

The Royal Scottish National Orchestra has appointed Paolo Dutto principal contrabassoon and Robin Wilson to the second violins. That makes four new players so far for music director Thomas Søndergård in his first season.

 

This is seriously positive news.

The last competition had Leonard Slatkin in the chair and he tolerated no dirty backroom deals between professors.

Marin will be no less rigorous.


press release:
FORT WORTH, Texas, March 28, 2019—The Cliburn announces today that Marin Alsop will be the jury chairman for the Sixteenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, taking place May 28–June 12, 2021, at Bass Performance Hall in Fort Worth, Texas USA. Widely considered one of the preeminent international music contests, the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition exists to share excellent classical music with the largest international audience possible and to launch the careers of its winners every four years.

The Icelandic company WOW has gone out of business.

All flights cancelled.

Thousands stranded.

From our diarist Anthea Kreston:

Last week, the Artemis Quartet played it’s final European concert with members Eckart Runge (founding cellist) and violinist Anthea Kreston. In the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, and with the remnants of my “Inside Music” tour along for the bonus concert, I was happy to have my mother there for this important occasion. A USA tour caps off the last of the Artemis concerts in this configuration, before tours with new and old members commence in Europe, first half of the concert in sextet formation before the new group takes the stage in Smetana’s “My Life”. As I sit in the passenger seat of our car, Jason is driving us to the Universität der Künste, Berlin, where we spend the week putting together the Beethoven Piano Trios for our upcoming cycle with Trio Libermé. The new Artemis is also rehearsing – and we will find each other, I am certain, in the student cafe, Joseph’s, where we will greet each other, then spin off into our own, new huddles, to drink cappuccino and eat huge, warm, puffy pretzels with large salt crystals hanging on to the split surface of the crusty dough.

These last tours with the Artemis have felt so large, so strong – like we are superheroes. Because all 4 of us are living two realities – present and future – simultaneously, it feels like we have to prove to ourselves, and to the audience, not only who we are at the present moment, but also what our potential is. So the commitment to the moment is exponentially intense (the pianissimos nearly inaudible, the ensemble work impeccable).

I noticed that my mother had a look, as she was waiting in the CD signing line, taking photos of me – she looked kindof stunned and foggy. Probably, I thought, she had an Artemis Experience like I had 24 years ago in Paul Hall at Juilliard, when I heard the Artemis play Schubert G Major. It seemed like the first time she looked at me like I was an adult, like I was a full-fledged success in my own right. And so, as she was waiting for her airplane back to Chicago, I asked her if she would like to write about the concert. What follows is just about the least impartial concert review a person could ask for. It’s the Mom Review.

Jeannette Kreston:

“Where words leave off, music begins” –Henrich Heine

I think I could fairly describe myself as a hard core classical music lover, since I first started picking out things by ear on my parents’ piano at a very young age. Now I attend probably 3-5 concerts (symphonic, chamber, choral, recitals et al) per week. But of all those concerts heard over many, many years, none has affected me more deeply than the one I heard last night, the Artemis Quartet concert in the “Kleiner Saal” (chamber hall) of Hamburg’s spectacular Elbephilharmonie. This was the quartet’s last European concert before two of its members, founding cellist Eckhart Runge and second violinist Anthea Kreston (my daughter) were to leave the ensemble. I travelled from Chicago because I knew it would be special, but last night was beyond anything I could have expected, affecting me so deeply that at the end I could not speak and had to fight back tears. Even now, on the plane returning home, those same emotions return as I write this.

As the mother of one of the musicians, I was afforded the rare privilege of attending the preconcert rehearsal. There I got a glimpse of the level of detail at which the Artemis works. Far from a mere run-through of the evening’s program, they worked on the tiniest details of interpretation, dynamics, and timing in specific passages. But even that did not prepare me for what was to come in that night’s concert. It was a deep and solemn program, but not without uplifting moments, as befitted the nature of the event. Opening with Barber’s Adagio, played with a sensitivity and profundity that I had never heard before in this oft-performed piece, it moved on through Britten’s Quartet No. 2, and after the intermission, Schubert’s Quartet in D Minor, the Death and the maiden quartet. The precision, the absolute agreement of the players, the depth of emotion, the electrifying climaxes, and the masterful contribution of each player all combined to reach me more deeply than I can recall at any other concert. But it was the first of the two encores, the profound 2nd movement of Shostakovich’s Quartet No. 7 that conveyed a feeling of total devastation to me that could never have been achieved with mere words. I learned later that it was written after the death of the composer’s wife, but that information was unnecessary to an understanding of the emotion expressed. Looking around me at my fellow audience members who sat completely motionless in rapt attention, I can only assume that many were experiencing the same emotions. The concert epitomized communication between performers and audience at the highest level. As the six curtain calls and two encores demonstrated, bravo Artemis. May you continue to bring music to the depths of your listeners’ souls, and pass on that passion to the next generation through your teaching and your example.

Jeannette Kreston

 

The basso Hans Günter Nöcker,who died last week, was a popular soloist for 43 years in the Bavarian Staatsoper.

Discovered by Wieland Wagner in Stuttgart, he sang Gloucester in the world premiere of Aribert Reimann’s Lear and major roles in the operas of Carl Orff.

A new edict has come down from the Ministry of Culture in Moscow.

Theatres are no longer allowed to pay business-class flights for guest conductors and soloists.

Only artistic directors and ‘national artists’ will be allowed to fly up front with the oligarchs.

The rest of us will be confined to Aeroflot’s DVT seats.

 

The Operanostalgia site reports the death on March 22 of Carlo Franci, a conductor who recorded with the Vienna Philharmonic, the LSO and La Scala for Decca, Philips and other labels.

Son of the celebrated baritone Benvenuto Franci, he devoted the second half of his long life to composing.

pictured with daughter Rafaella and soprano Aprile Millo

 

Students at the Curtis Institute of Music are having a midterm meltdown after the Dean ordered the practice rooms to be locked after an outbreak of vandalism.

Here’s the notice that went out from the Dean’s office:

All Students:

[President of Student Council] wrote last week on behalf of Student Council asking that the recent Lenfest Hall practice room vandalism stop. Kudos to him and his council colleagues for taking the lead on this issue.

Unfortunately, three more instances of vandalism occurred overnight—a mirror and thermostat lock box being ripped off the wall/damaged and lipstick found on the acoustic paneling in another room. Any purposeful damage to our facilities is disappointing, but what has transpired over the last two weeks—the number of rooms damaged—is abhorrent. All Lenfest Hall practice rooms are now locked. They will remain locked until the person(s) responsible for the damage come forward or I receive credible information concerning who may have done this. You may contact me, [Associate Dean of Student Affairs] or [Building Manager] if you know something of which we should be aware.

A student tells us: ‘This is the busiest time of the semester for us. We have a composer’s concert coming up, a concert cycle to play the following week, and numerous student chamber groups and outside engagements for a lot of us.’

Can’t they just instal video cameras to catch the vandals? Collective punishment has no place in a modern conservatoire.

 

It’s down to the last three on each instrument.

I can now confess that I picked two of the violin finalists on hearing them at Odense in the first round, where the judges were concealed behind a screen. The result thoroughly vindicates that decision. The violin section of the competition was as clean as it could possibly be.

VIOLIN

Johan Dalene (18, Sweden)
Anna Agafia Egholm (22, Denmark)
Marie-Astrid Hulot (21, France)

FLUTE

Rafael Adobas Bayog (21, Spain)
Joséphine Olech (24, France)
Marianna Julia Żołnacz (19, Poland)

 

CLARINET

Aron Chiesa (22, Italy)
Víctor Díaz Guerra (22, Spain)
Blaz Sparovec (24, Slovenia)

 

There is one glaring anomaly in these results. The clarinet jury was all-male. So are the finalists.

You can watch the final round live on Slipped Disc this weekend.

The composer Heinz Winbeck whose five symphonies were published by Bärenreiter and performed by Dennis Russell Davies among others, has died in a Regensburg hospital.

An influential professor at Würzburg, he was Composer in Residence” at the Cabrillo Festival in California.