We reported last week that Menahem Pressler, 95, and Paul Badura-Skoda, 91,were due to give a joint recital in Vienna next month.

With a combined age of 186 that would surely have been the most senior duo in music history.

Sadly, we have just been informed that Menahem has to pull out. Paul will play a solo recital instead.

Here’s the public version:

(Philadelphia, April 16, 2019)—Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Assistant Conductor Kensho Watanabe have graciously agreed to lead The Philadelphia Orchestra’s April 25-27 concerts. Nézet-Séguin will conduct the April 25 and 27 performances while Watanabe will conduct the April 26 performance. They replace Myung-Whun Chung, who was unable to obtain his visa due to rehearsal and concert schedule conflicts in Europe.

The program will include Weber’s Overture to Der Freischütz, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 (“Eroica”), and Schumann’s Piano Concerto, featuring pianist Jonathan Biss, as previously scheduled.

Dear all,

In these tragic moments for the Cathedral, you have been extremely numerous to send kind words of support, all more moving than the others, either by e-mail, SMS, FaceBook, Instagram or on the phone.

I will never thank you enough for that. I would have liked to respond personally to each of you, but given the urgency of the situation, it is unfortunately not possible for me, at least for the moment. I hope you’ll understand.

Notre-Dame, who had resisted revolutions and wars, burned in a few moments. 855 years destroyed in four hours … Like you, I feel terribly sad, with contained rage, total sorrow. The images that we have seen are horrible. How not to think that we are in a bad dream? Reality comes back to us, unfortunately.

Despite all the damage in the Cathedral, the organ miraculously escaped the flames, as well as the water supposed to extinguish them. It is very dusty, but will continue to enjoy us as soon as the building will be restored. When? No one knows yet. « Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up. » (John, 2). It will surely take more time in Notre-Dame, but I still live with great confidence and hope.

With warmest regards.

Olivier Latry

Olivier Latry, organist of Notre Dame de Paris, is performing tomorrow night in Dresden under the auspices of the Dresden Philharmonie.

All proceeds will go towards the restoration of the fire-ravaged Notre Dame, in which the organ has mercifully survived.

Peter Conrad, Chairman of the Orchestral Board of the Dresden Philharmonic, said: ‘We musicians of the Dresden Philharmonic are deeply shaken by the destruction of large parts of the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. Hardly any other building in Europe so represents our western cultural tradition. Olivier Latry, who inaugurated our new concert hall organ in 2017, is known to us and to our audience as an exceptional, excellent performer. It is therefore important for us to donate the proceeds of tomorrow’s concert for the reconstruction of the cathedral, thus sending a sign of compassion and solidarity.’

Concert details here.

Emmanuel Gregoire, deputy mayor of Paris, said this morning that the historic organ of Notre Dame has survived the conflagration. The fire, he added, has now been completely extinguished.

He was referring to the 8,000-pipe organ built in the 1730s by Francois Thierry. The number of pipes was doubled in the 1860s by Aristide Cavaille-Coll, after whom the organ is named to this day.

Had he not gone for a swim on this day in 1973, István Kertész would have been due to turn ninety this year.

After a brilliant spell with the London Symphony Orchestra, Kertesz was the favourite to succeed George Szell at Cleveland when he went for a swim on an April day in Herzliya, Israel, and got carried off by a rip-tide.

Pointless to speculate what might have been had he stayed on shore.

His Decca recordings of the Dvorak symphonies remain the benchmark performances.