That’s the implication of this Telegraph shocker:

Dame Esther Rantzen has accused opera houses of “disregarding” over 65s by aiming its discounts at young people.

In recent months a number of major theatres, including the Royal Opera House, the Barbican, English National Opera and the National Theatre have introduced initiatives to encourage younger audiences with reduced, or even free tickets.

It has left older generations feeling they deserve the same treatment, with many struggling to afford tickets….

 

Your thoughts?

 

The death has been made public of Yang Xi, concertmaster of the Raleigh Symphony Orchestra, principal violist of the Carolina Philharmonic, and artistic director of the Carolina International Orchestra. The cause was colon cancer.

Raised in Chengdu, China, Yang Xi came to the US aged 2o to study at IU with Josef Gingold and Rostislav Dubinsky. He enjoyed a varied career as soloist, concertmaster and initiator of musical events.

Our sympathies to his family.

 

The cellist played his anti-Trump Bach suites this wekend.

‘A country is not a hotel,’ he declared, ‘and it’s not full. In culture, we build bridges, not walls.’

 

Reviews are trickling in from last night’s opening of the Salzburg Easter Festival.

There were roars of acclaim for Christiam Thielemann and the Dresden Staatskapelle, which the Salzburg crowd now rate above Berlin.

Huge ovations, too, for Georg Zeppenfeld as Sachs, Klaus Florian Vogt as Stolzing and Adrian Eröd as Beckmesser, slightly more subdued for the American soprano Jacquelyn Wagner as Eva.

Salzburg first-nighters hate new productions. The director Jens-Daniel Herzog was noisily booed.

First review here.

Photo (c) OFS_Monika Rittershaus

From a Guardian article by Boris Giltburg:

Bats like to live in theatres, particularly in old Italian-style ones that provide them with comfortable rafters above the stage, and plenty of flying space in the darkness above. I discovered this fact during a rehearsal in one such theatre, when loud, neurotic squeaks erupted above me as I started playing. “Ah, the bats!” the promoters said with smiles, in reply to my slightly concerned questions. “They’ve lived here since always. Don’t worry – you can’t hear them from the hall. The sound only carries down to the stage.” This was at least somewhat reassuring and, during rehearsals, I grew accustomed to the occasional squeak….

Then came Ravel’s La Valse, darker still. That turned out to be too much. At first there was ominous silence from above but then in the coda, as the demise of the Old World inescapably approached in rising waves, first one and then many black-brown signs of the bats’ displeasure rained down on to the stage.

“Do you mind,” I’m sometimes asked, “if there’s noise from the audience?” I don’t, but I never knew until that evening how very much I did mind when dark stuff fell from above on my hands and the very brightly lit keyboard.

Read on here.

Founder of the Phoenix String Orchestra and other ensembles, Alan Bolt who has died after passing his century led an active musical life in both the south and north of England.

Not to mention a German POW camp.

Family obit here.

 

Amid the flood of euphemistic neologisms – collaborative pianist is the current pc word – the great Austrian person at the voice-recital piano has come out:

The subtitle translates as: My life as a Lied accompanist.

The introduction is by Alfred Brendel.

Does that make him a piano collaborator?

Andrew Amdur, found guilty of fleecing a grieving widow, has been told by a judge that he faces ‘an appreciable prison sentence’.

Amdur’s dormant Twitter account stated that Carlo Bergonzi ‘proclaimed that Andrew has the finest tenor voice in the world.’

 

Plans have been released for this late-summer’s Berliner Festspiele. The core participants appear to be British.

Press release:

Musikfest Berlin 2019:
Hector Berlioz and European Modernism
Musikfest Berlin, hosted by Berliner Festspiele in cooperation with the Foundation Berliner Philharmoniker

On the occasion of the 150th anniversary of Hector Berlioz’ death, the 2019 Musikfest Berlin will celebrate the French composer. Taking his music and visionary ideas as a point of departure, the festival will present a programme that highlights French and European Modernism. The spectrum will range from Jean-Philippe Rameau via Arthur Honegger, Edgard Varèse, Olivier Messiaen, Iannis Xenakis, Gérard Grisey to contemporary composers: Peter Eötvös from Hungary, Olga Neuwirth from Austria and Louis Andriessen from the Netherlands. The festival will dedicate a focus of several concerts to each of these three.

After a concert before the opening, a long piano night featuring a performance of the complete “Catalogue d’Oiseaux” by Olivier Messiaen, the 2019 Musikfest will be launched on 31 August with Hector Berlioz’ opera comique “Benvenuto Cellini”. The Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique and the Monteverdi Choir will present the semi-staged performance on historic instruments and under the musical direction of their founder Sir John Eliot Gardiner. Apart from further large-scale works by Hector Berlioz – the “Symphonie fantastique”, “Roméo et Juliette”, “Harold en Italie” and excerpts from “Les Troyens”, the composer’s concept of gigantic orchestrations will be manifest in several concerts during the festival, with large orchestral formations filling the podiums: the performance of “Frau ohne Schatten” by Richard Strauss by Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, Alfred Schnittke’s first symphony with Münchner Philharmoniker and Valery Gergiev, “Amériques” by Edgard Varèse with Berliner Philharmoniker and Peter Eötvös as well as “Éclairs sur l’Au-delá” by Olivier Messiaen, the first performance by the London Symphony Orchestra in Berlin together with its Music Director Sir Simon Rattle. In addition to orchestra and chamber music concerts as well as operas in semi-staged and concertante performances, the world premiere of the restored seven-hour version of Abel Gance’s silent film “La Roue” will be presented at Konzerthaus Berlin. Furthermore, the famous company of the Umewaka Kennokai Foundation from Tokyo will visit the Philharmonie to perform Nō-Theatre from the 15th and 17th century on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the city partnership between Berlin and Tokyo as well as the 50th anniversary of the Japanese Cultural Institute.

Apart from the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique and the London Symphony Orchestra, Great Britain’s first radio orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra will travel to Berlin from London, together with its Chief Conductor Sakari Oramo. As the second ensemble dedicated to historical performance practice, the Parisian orchestra Les Siècles and François-Xavier Roth will celebrate the orchestra’s Musikfest Berlin-debut and its first performance at the Philharmonie. On their last European farewell-tour together, Zubin Mehta and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra will stop off in Berlin. The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam with Tugan Sokiev will come from the Netherlands, Münchner Philharmoniker with Valery Gergiev from Munich, both Junge Deutsche Philharmonie with Jonathan Nott and Ensemble Modern with Brad Lubman from Frankfurt. Ensemble Musikfabrik will arrive from Cologne with Peter Eötvös, who will also feature as a guest-conductor with Berliner Philharmoniker in a performance of “Alhambra”, a violin concerto Eötvös wrote for Isabelle Faust. Berliner Philharmoniker will be heard once more during the festival, under the musical direction of Daniel Harding, and the Karajan-Akademie will join the festival for the first time, conducted by Susanna Mälkki. Other prominent orchestras from Berlin featured in the programme of the 2019 Musikfest Berlin are Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin with their Chief Conductor Robin Ticciati, Konzerthausorchester Berlin under the musical direction of Juraj Valčuha, Orchester der Deutschen Oper Berlin with General Music Director Donald Runnicles and Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin with Chief Conductor Vladimir Jurowski.

Musikfest Berlin will take place from 30 August to 19 September. During the 21 days of the festival, 26 events featuring more than 65 works by 30 composers will be presented at the Philharmonie and its Chamber Music Hall. Overall, 22 orchestras will contribute to the festival. More than 50 international soloists will come to Berlin, including the singers Susanna Andersson, Alice Coote, Nora Fischer, Juliet Fraser, Susan Graham, Barbara Hannigan, Andrew Staples, Yuko Kakuta, Georg Nigl, Shenyang und Klaus Florian Vogt and the singers featured in the first-rate ensembles of the opera performances. Further soloists: trumpeter Håkan Hardenberger, the flutist Emmanuel Pahud, pianists Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Alexander Melnikov and Olga Pashchenko, violinists Isabelle Faust, Gil Shaham and Valeriy Sokolov as well as violist Tabea Zimmermann. The IPPNW-Charity Concert presented by the WuWei Trio will take place on 22 September at 16h at the Chamber Music Hall.

Broadcasts of as many as 16 concerts of Musikfest Berlin 2019 are planned as well as the “Quartett der Kritiker” of Deutschlandfunk Kultur and rbb Kulturradio. The festival’s other media partners are FAZ, Exberliner and Monopol.