The violinist, tonight in Stockholm, on receiving the Polar Prize:

‘I am simply overwhelmed by the honour and acknowledgment which you, who are responsible for the Polar Music Prize, are bestowing upon me. This distinction fills me with pride and joy, as you are permitting me to join the ranks of the wonderful musicians who have previously received the prize. I admire many of them profoundly, for example Witold Lutosławski, Sofia Gubaidulina, Ennio Morricone, Dizzy Gillespie and Mstislav Rostropovich, to name just a few.

‘My special thanks on this day, however, are due to the incomparable Astrid Lindgren. Her Pippi Longstocking has been a role model for me since my childhood. Like no other literary figure, this red-haired girl showed me that females can be active and self-determined, finding their own path with creativity and wit. Living her own dreams, and daring to be different: at the time when I first read the Pippi Longstocking stories, that was not taken for granted when it came to girls and women. And, from a global perspective, it is still not to be taken for granted.’

separated at birth?

The Australian pianist who was fired from Lang Lang’s China competition has snubbed his nose at the piano star by winning the Junior Van Cliburn.

Shuan Hern Lee, 16, went home to Australia with $15,000 and a happier frame of mind.

 

Second, with $10,000, was Eva Gevorgyan from Russia/Armenia, 15

Third was JiWon Yang, South Korea, 17.

What a lovely couple! exclaims the lifestyle magazine.

In this week’s HELLO! magazine Lang Lang, the world’s most celebrated pianist, speaks for the first time about his spectacular wedding in Paris to fellow classical pianist Gina Alice Redlinger. The couple, who also share exclusive pictures captured before their wedding on the streets of the French capital, wed in an emotional ceremony at the Shangri-La Hotel before holding a reception at the magnificent Palace of Versailles. “It was one of the happiest days of my life so far,” Lang Lang, 36, tells HELLO! in the exclusive interview. “It was a truly unique experience.” Among the guests at the wedding were American musician John Legend and his wife Chrissie Teigen, Prince and Princess Michael of Kent and Sir Howard Stringer, the former chairman and president of Sony Corporation.

The sudden death of Mark Richter, founder of Alamo City Opera in San Antonio, has prompted the board to shut down his creation.

“We had several options, and this was the one that was viable and really retains his legacy because he had that incredible imagination and powerful talent that a lot of people don’t have,” said Carol Karotkin, chairwoman of the board.

Er, what???

The composer Ib Norholm, who died yesterday, stood on a continuum that stretched back through his teacher, Vagn Holmboe, to the national symphonist, Carl Nielsen.

Norholm wrote 13 symphonies, the last in 2013. He also lefr concertos for cello and violin.

The orchestra of La Scala gave its annual open air concert in Piazza Duomo this week.

More than 25,000 stood and listened in comlete silence to Dvorak’s New World symphony and music by Nino Rota.

 

The English pianist Imogen Cooper will chair the Leeds International Piano Competition in September 2021.

Royal Liverpool Phil will continue as orchestral partner.

 

The sudden death has been announced of Alexander Willscher, co-founder of AW Reeds, makers of modern reeds and mouthpieces.

He played much of his life in the Nürnberger Symphoniker.


Alexander WILLSCHER 40B B Clarinet Mouthpiece

Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Orchestre Métropolitain de Montréal have begun recording the symphonies of Jean Sibelius.

You don’t often see him in a winter jacket.

Two musical knights were created at the weekend.

David Pountney, 71, was head of productions at English National Opera during its 1980s powerhouse era, and from 2003 to 2014 head of the Bregenz Festival which he raised to world attention with, among other breakthroughs, the premiere of Weinberg’s The Passenger, and for which he received one of Austria’s highest honours.

 

He went on to serve eight years in the saltmines of Welsh National Opera and it is not until he came to the end of that sentence that he was finally recognised by the UK honours committee.

Ian Stoutzker co-founded Live Music Now with Yehudi Menuhin in 1977 and kept the Philharmonia Orchestra alive, financially and creatively, for the next 20 years. He, too, has finally been recognised – and far too late – along with Stephen Cleobury, who is about to retire as director of music at Kings College, Cambridge.

The musical section of the honours committee is peopled by shadowy influencers like the Barbican chief Nicholas Kenyon and suchlike suits.

Its decisions are parochial, partisan and occasionally self-serving. It is, in other words, inefficient and borderline insane.

Ridiculous to demand reform. We need to scrap the honours system in the arts. Its gifts are either past their sell-by or wholly undeserved.

 

 

 

Opera America has provided grants of up to $50,000 each to six women composers for previously commissioned works.

The recipients are:
. The Industry (Los Angeles, CA) for Sweet Land by Du Yun

· Lyric Opera of Chicago (Chicago, IL) for an untitled opera by Caroline Shaw

· Mill City Summer Opera (Minneapolis, MN) for Stone Arch: A Walking Opera by Mary Ellen Childs

· Opera Philadelphia (Philadelphia, PA) for Ten Days in a Madhouse by Rene Orth

· Opera Steamboat (Steamboat Springs, CO) for Cookie by Leanna Kirchoff

· Spoleto Festival USA (Charleston, SC) for an opera on the life of Omar Ibn Said (title TBD) by Rhiannon Giddens

Press release: The six grantees will receive up to 50 percent of the composer’s fee for a full production of a commissioned work, with awards of up to $50,000. Since its inception in 2014, the Opera Grants for Female Composers program has presented almost $1.1 million to opera companies and composers.

 

The violinist Yuri Sheykhet who played in the tension-riddled Moscow Philharmonic world premiere of Dmitri Shostakovich’s Babi Yar symphony has died in San Antonio, Texas, aged 85.

Sheykhet left Russia after playing for 40 years in the Moscow Philharmonic.