The Swiss oboist and composer passed a milestone today.

Message from the Opéra:

Jonas Kaufmann has not yet been given the clearance from his medical team to resume his professional activities. Unfortunately he must therefore withdraw from the performances of Tosca on May 25 and May 29 but hopes to return to the stage for the performances in June.
The role of Mario Cavaradossi will be performed by Marcelo Puente.

Tosca from 16 May to 23 June 2019 at the Opera Bastille.

 

Press release:

Last night, in a sold-out Hall Two at Kings Place, seven singers performed for a jury made up of the UK’s biggest opera companies in the final of the inaugural By Voice Alone competition.

Launched in August 2018 and attracting performers from as far afield as Iceland and Canada, 424 singers took part in the opening round of blind auditions which climaxed yesterday in a series of seven stunning performances from sopranos Siân Dicker, Jeannette Louise van Schaik, Luci Briginshaw, Chloë Morgan and Jennifer Witton, mezzo soprano Kate Howden, and baritone Themba Mvula.

Taking First Place as the overall winner of the event was soprano Jennifer Witton. Her performance of Glück das mir verblieb – better known as Marietta’s Lied – from Korngold’s Die Tote Stadt and Enfin, je suis ici from Massenet’s Cendrillon wowed the jury. Recently on tour with Glyndebourne Touring Opera as Cendrillon, Jennifer is currently back with the main company covering the role for the forthcoming season.

Second Place and the Audience Prize went to Luci Briginshaw who thrilled with her coloratura gymnastics in O rendetemi la speme from Bellini’s I puritani and the Queen of the Night’s second aria Der Holle Rache from Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte. Luci is currently on tour with the English Touring Opera Spring season, both in their main stage productions and their education project Paradise Planet.

Chloë Morgan took the prize for Emerging Artist. One of the performers who didn’t come to opera through a traditional route, Chloë is a former jazz specialist, performing at Ronnie Scott’s and other key venues on the jazz scene. She is now at Glyndebourne Opera covering the role of Noémie in Massenet’s Cendrillon.

 

Elise Harris, an official of the actors’ union Equity, has said she knows one West End artist who wound up sleeping rough because he could not find affordable accommodation in London.

Any musician had a similar experience?

 

The BBC’s D-G Tony Hall announced this morning that the Radio 3 chief will ‘to take the lead for the BBC on social mobility’.

Presumably, it’s a sign he needs to get out more and has time on his hands, plus a free bus pass coming up next year.

 

The outcome of the first China International Music Competition has provoked more than the usual ripples of observer dissent, and for none of the usual reasons.

The judges swore that they had never taught any of the contestants. That was a sign of progress.

Two of the three finalists were students at Juilliard, whose piano department chief Yoheved Kaplinsky co-chaired the jury.

Then there’s the small matter of the US$150,000 winner.

Tony Sigi Yun, 18, a Canadian pianist enrolled in the pre-college division of the Juilliard School, made his debut in 2014 with the China Philharmonic Orchestra in Beijing and Shanghai. He went on to play with the same orchestra in the televised 2019 CCTV New Year’s Concert.

In other words, he is a local favourite.

Our observers, both online and on the spot, say he did not play the Tchaikovsky too well in the final but had done enough up to that point to secure a winning margin. The Russian Malofeev might be saving himself for the Tchaikovsky, but the American Mackenzie Melemed has a right to feel hard done by.

Your views?

 

Those with very long memories may faintly recall the early days of CD when Richard Branson launched Virgin Classics.

It was fun while it lasted.

Now the high-flier is coming back to classical roots to perform an Environmental Symphony in Australia. All aboard, last chance to save the universe.

 

press release:

ABC Classic presents The Environmental Symphony, an ambitious and epic work that spans five billion years, from the formation of the planet through to the devastation of our current age.

Released on United Nations World Environment Day, Wednesday June 5, The Environmental Symphony sounds a warning of what will happen if we don’t act boldly and decisively to address our climate crisis, but ends with an optimistic vision of a greener, cleaner future.
With music by the genre-bending Dr. Allan Zavod, words by Australia’s chief scientist Dr. Alan Finkel, narrated by Sir Richard Branson, and performed by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and conductor Benjamin Northey, this recording is a major international release that lends some musical muscle to the ongoing political and environmental fight against climate change. 

Press release:

Garsington Opera is working in partnership with The Lord Mayor’s Appeal on an opera project with 250 young people aged from 11 to 18 from six London schools. Led by a professional creative team from Garsington Opera and inspired by Mozart’s Don Giovanni, the students will devise their own words, compose songs, sing repertoire from the opera and design the set and costumes. This culminates in a performance fusing the genres of rap, YouTube and opera with the young people at the heart of the piece and will take place to an invited audience on the afternoon of Tuesday 16 July 2019 at the Old Library in the Guildhall, City of London.

This project is part of an extensive programme of educational and charitable activities taking place during the office of Alderman Peter Estlin as Lord Mayor of the City of London. It will precede a fundraising dinner A Night at the Opera, an abridged performance of Don Giovanni given by the Alvarez Young Artists of Garsington Opera, raising funds for The Lord Mayor’s Appeal that evening. Booking is now open to attend this memorable event at the Guildhall and to support the charities supported by The Lord Mayor’s Appeal.

Many of the students involved in the outreach project have little experience of music and drama, while others are studying them at school.  Some art and design students will be involved backstage, in design, exhibition and stage management. The professional roles will be performed by Robert Gildon (baritone), Samantha Crawford (soprano), and MC Angel, (rapper & poet).

 

The director Philipp Kochheim, head of the Danish national opera in Aarhus since 2017, has been told not to expect further engagements in Austria following complaints by four women about ‘inappropriate’ remarks.

Nora Schmid, director of Graz Opera, has banned him from her house. Others have taken note.

Read here.

Kochheim, 47 and German born, is also under investigation over incidents at his previous job in Braunschweig.

The LA Phil is putting on a cycle of Beethoven piano concertos.

All five were booked with Lang Lang, but he’s now only playing #2.

Excuses? None.

The substitutes: Conrad Tao, Beatrice Rana, Yulianna Avdeeva and Javier Perianes.

Money back? No comment.

 

The Joseph Joachim scholar Robert Eschbach has discovered a grovelling letter dated March 1858 from Richard Wagner to the great violinist and friend of Brahms, requesting him to fix him up with an income from the King of Hanover.

This letter is written in the decade that Wagner published his notorious antisemitic tract, Jewishness and Music.

Extracts:

Dear Friend,

News of you has reached me through Clara Schumann and through Kirchner that has reassured me somewhat concerning your dismaying remoteness from me. More than this reassurance, my belief in the noble earnestness of your character enables me to entrust to you a matter that requires the delicate and discreet consideration of a friend, in the full sense of the word, if I am to approach you for counsel and help. I ask you then not to take my confidence in an unkindly way if I convey my request to you with the following….

I am again, as I have been for a considerable time, in the position of being most uncomfortable for want of an adequate and secure subsidy, since my alternative income from theaters is of such haphazard and unpredictable nature that I cannot rely on it in the slightest, and its often unexpected failure to appear causes me the most disagreeable embarrassment. Only the patronage of a prince can protect me against this, which, if it does not spare me from all need of earning money from my labors, would at least allow me the reassuring support of a secure livelihood. So it may well be forgiven me that I have had my eye on the King of Hanover for some time. His great and earnest love of art, his eagerness to secure excellent artists for himself by means of unrestrained liberality, and further, his outspoken affinity for my music, as I have been led to believe, are surely good excuses for me.

So it occurred to me then, that it would perhaps be necessary only to make him aware of me, my situation and my wish, in order to prompt him, completely on his own, to take vigorous action to help me.

I have chosen you, dear Joachim, as it made such good sense, to accord me this great act of friendship;…

Read the full letter here.

 

Wagner at his worst.