The Solti Foundation has just rolled out its 2019 Career Assistance Awards. Most already have at least one foot on the ladder.
Two are women:
– Conner Gray Covington, Associate Conductor, Utah Symphony;
– Aram Demirjian, Music Director of Knoxville Symphony Orchestra;
– Joshua Hong, Music Director of the Campanile Orchestra;
– Stilian Kirov, Music Director of the Bakersfield Symphony (CA), Illinois Philharmonic and New Jersey’s Symphony in C;
– Benjamin Manis, Resident Conductor of the Houston Grand Opera;
– Lee Mills, Resident Conductor of the Brazilian Symphony Orchestra, and Associate Conductor of the Seattle Symphony;
– Gemma New, Music Director of the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra, Resident Conductor of St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, and Principal Guest Conductor of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra;
– Stefano Sarzani, former Associate Conductor of the Des Moines Metro Opera;
– Stephanie Rhodes Russell, Associate Conductor of the Grand Teton Music Festival;
and Kensho Watanabe, Assistant Conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra.
As proof that the Devil has the best tunes, it is an established fact that atheists write the best religious music. Verdi, Elgar, Saint-Saens, Janacek, Ravel, Vaughan Williams, Britten… the list of unbelievers who wrote great sacred works extends to the limits of the known universe. And while we know little of Rossini’s state of faith, it is safe to assume that a man of his dedicated hedonism was not one of the godlier composers.
Comme pour montrer que le diable fait ce qu’il y a de mieux, les musiciens athées composent sans contredit la meilleure musique religieuse. Verdi, Elgar, Saint-Saëns, Janáček, Ravel, Vaughan Williams, Britten… la liste des incroyants qui ont écrit de grandes œuvres sacrées s’étend jusqu’aux limites de nos connaissances. Et bien que nous ne sachions pas grand-chose des croyances de Rossini, il n’est pas fou de supposer qu’un homme aussi hédoniste n’était pas le plus dévot des compositeurs….
The organist of Notre Dame has given his first interview, to Hannah Abena Schmidt, for VAN magazine:
VAN : WHERE WERE YOU WHEN YOU HEARD ABOUT THE FIRE IN NOTRE-DAME?
Olivier Latry : In Vienna with my wife. I just arrived at the hotel, a friend’s text message came: ‘Notre-Dame is burning’.
AND HE HEARD IT ON THE NEWS?
No, he lives in Paris and can see Notre-Dame from his apartment. He sent a photo with a small fire on it, and five to ten minutes later, more where the fire was much bigger. I thought the whole cathedral was on fire, and of course the organ – so terrible. That was apocalyptic.
YOU ARE CURRENTLY ON TOUR IN AUSTRIA. WHEN WILL YOU SEE THE ORGAN?
Actually, we’re meant to stay in Vienna until the end of next week, but my wife and I decided to fly to Paris for a few hours on Sunday. We just have to see the church, even if we are not allowed to go in, which is still forbidden at the moment. It feels like a nightmare we have not yet woken up from. Slowly, hour by hour, I understand the reality more and more. This is very hard.
AS A TITULAR ORGANIST, IN AND OUT OF CHURCH FOR 34 YEARS, YOU MUST HAVE A KEY?
Yes I have. Although I don’t go to Paris very often, I spend about 280 nights a year in hotels, but when I’m in Paris, I spend most of my time in Notre-Dame and practice. I try to practice every day that I’m in Paris, and then the cathedral must be free – so I rehearse in the evening and at night.
This beautiful portrait was taken yesterday by the mezzo-soprano Siobhain Gibson during the climate protests in London. Do we know who he is? What he’s playing?
Why is it always a cellist?
The Polin museum of Warsaw is holding a concert on the eve of the Uprising anniversary to commemorate artists of the Jewish Symphonic Orchestra and their soloist Josima Feldschuh. Eight members of Josima’s family have flown in for the concert from Israel and the US.
The background:
On 15 March 1941, in the Warsaw Ghetto, the Jewish Symphony Orchestra played a concert featuring the pieces by Mozart and Schubert. with 11-year old pianist Josima Feldschuh as a soloist. The concert proved to be a great success. A review in the ghetto newspaper read:
11-year-old girl appeared on stage, sat down at the piano and played Mozart’s concert. The first part was performed beautifully by the little pianist, however the second and third parts left the entire audience filled with awe. This girl demonstrated great musical talent from the early age. At one point, for example, she ignored the baton of a conductor who had made a mistake and continued to play with perfect precision. Even if one should never predict the future of a child prodigy, in this case we may safely assume that should she continue to progress at this pace, her talent will develop and reach the highest level.
In 1942, mass deportations from the ghetto began. The members of the Jewish Symphony Orchestra were sent to Treblinka extermination camp – among thousands of other Jews from the ghetto. Josima and her parents managed to hide during the Nazi round-ups of Jews and avoid deportation. In early February 1943, they escaped from the ghetto and found shelter in a village on the outskirts of Warsaw.
Josima had already been sick. During her stay in the ghetto she contracted pneumonia which developed into tuberculosis. Rachel Auerbach notes in her article: I belonged to those Jewish ‘Aryans’ who could move freely around the city. I decided that it might still be possible to put Josima in a sanatorium for people suffering from tuberculosis. On Saturday, April 17, on the eve of Pesach and Easter, 2 days before the outbreak of the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto, I went to the doctor who examined Josima. Her diagnosis was short and clear: There is nothing we do to save the girl! Josima’s lungs have holes like a sieve. Her days are numbered. Maybe she will stay alive for another week or maybe even not that long …
On my way back from the doctor’s, I walked the city streets, filled with terrible pain. Overwhelmed with the weight of my suffering, I stopped in front of store windows on this festive evening. On each side, alongside the wretched goods of the wartime, there were woven baskets, and in them small chickens made of fluff. Josima liked all these decorations so much. Our dearest and most beautiful Josima!
Josima died on Wednesday, April 21, on the second day of Passover, the third day of the uprising. In a city enveloped in the smoke from the burning ghetto, torn by explosions, trembling from the shots, the sad news reached me. Josima passed away in the tiny village of Pustelnik – for me, her death was the death of a dear and admirable human being, whose life was in some sense interrupted there, behind the walls engulfed in the bloody fog.
To commemorate the Jewish Symphony Orchestra, Josima Feldschuh and the civil resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto, POLIN Museum is organizing a concert. Sinfonia Varsovia Orchestra led by Gabriel Chmura will perform Schubert’s “Unfinished Symphony” and Mozart’s 9th piano concerto.
The soloist will be 16-year-old Lauren Zhang, the BBC Young Musician of the Year 2018. In the intervals between the pieces, Polish actors Joanna Szczepkowska and Robert Więckiewicz will read excerpts from Josima’s father’s, Reuven Ben-Shem, diary and Rachel Auerbach’s article entitled “Josima” which was published in 1951.
The concert conclude with Chamber Symphony No. 4 by Mieczysław Wajnberg—the last piece he managed to complete before his passing in 1994. The symphony is a unique testament in which one can hear the echoes of Jewish music, the atrocities of war, the life in Stalinist Russia and the hope for the future. On 19 April 1943, the Warsaw ghetto become the site of the largest army combat initiated by Jews during the Second World War, and at the same time the first urban uprising in occupied Europe. However, that was not the only mode of resistance against the occupying force. Polish Jews imprisoned in the ghetto fought for their dignity every single day.
Music was one of the symbolic forms of their fight.
The Jewish Symphony Orchestra performed in the ghetto in the years 1941-1942. It consisted of Jewish musicians who before the war had been employed by the Warsaw Philharmonic, the Warsaw Opera or the Polish Radio Orchestra. At its peak, the Jewish Orchestra boasted ca 80 musicians. The concert is organized within the Wajnberg@100 series, realized by POLIN Museum together with the Association of the Jewish Historical Institute of Poland. To celebrate the composer’s centenary, his music is being presented throughout the year at POLIN Museum.
Who knew he could make us laugh?
The Dutch composer John Borstlap, a regular contributor to Slipped Disc, has been pondering an age-old question in a new essay.
The subject of this article is the relationship between classical music and Christianity – a tricky subject, since many people in the cultural field believe that it is difficult to find a cultural product that is more ‘outdated’ and ‘narrow-minded’ and ‘supremacist’ than Christianity as an organized religion. Also, there is a consensus that the farther away religion is from the concert hall, the better, in spite of the rituals in both concert halls and churches which are so alike. With church music – Bach cantatas, passions, Mozart masses and the like – the connection is clear and does not warrant any exploration, but secular music should be pure and unencumbered by associations with the context from which art music liberated itself long ago. So, I will tread carefully in this minefield of conflicting opinions, and will say right away that the Christian religion is much more than a religious nomination, organization, or a world view defined by circumscribed axioma’s and orthodoxies; it has played a prominent role in shaping Western civilization, and was to a great extent the cradle of modern society and its values, and its art.
It is not so that religions create religious people, but the other way around: from time immemorial people have been religious by nature, and therefore they create religions, in an attempt to find the most appropriate expression of their religious ideas. Christianity, like all the great world religions, is an expression in terms of symbols, narratives and metaphors of the normal human religious instinct, an expression born from universal experience of the human condition…. Here is the link with music, which is not material, but consists of more or less referential patterns of vibrations in the air, which produce meaning and the experience of presence in the listening process. As there are different musical cultures in the world, but all based upon a natural, material property of sound waves and their proportional relationships as demonstrated in the harmonic series, there are different religious world views which are all based, under the surface of appearances, upon the natural intimations of the human being. The differences in the forms of religion are accents, which lift some particular value from the whole of life experiences and throw a specific light upon them, colouring them with a particular value and interpretation. This is related to how people experience life, on a deep level, in different timesand different places and cultures….
This crafted video of a Schumann Lied from Roxanna Walitzki captures many of our current confusions at this sacred season.
You see it here first.
Roxanna says: ‘Redd Walitzki and I filmed this video for Schumann’s “In der Fremde” while exploring an abandoned building in Pula, Croatia. Styled entirely from materials found on site, this is part of a larger eco-conscious project, in which we re-imagine discarded materials and locations for fashion shoots and unconventional performances, hoping to give them a new life and making them more than “trash.”’
