From the Lebrecht Album of the Week:
One of the marvels of English music-making in the past couple of years has been the emergence of Roderick Williams….
Read on here.
Michael Jaffee, founder and director of The Waverly Consort, has died in a fall at his New York home.
Mike once told me that his life changed when, on his first trip traveling around England, he heard several Cathedral choirs singing the astonishingly beautiful 16th-century music for which they are famous. The gorgeous straight tones of the voices and the purity of the intervals they sang, making the tensions and resolutions of the polyphony so thrilling, transported him. He gave up his guitar for the lute and vowed to make sure that this music, and all early music, would become as well known as the standard repertoire of orchestras and chamber-music societies.
Tribute here.
The University of Oregon has quietly removed every single individual who was involved in the shameful removal of Matthew Halls as artistic director of its Bach Festival.
Provost Jayanth Banavar and his deputy Doug Blandy have both departed.
Now the OBF Executive Director Janelle McCoy has been told her $170,000 job has been abolished.
Dear Friends,
I wanted to be the first to share with you the news that we’ve made the difficult decision to eliminate the executive director position at Oregon Bach Festival, due to university-wide budget reductions that were announced earlier this year.
As many of you know, university administrators asked the School of Music and Dance to reduce OBF’s budget by $250,000 (which amounts to around 9 percent of the festival’s overall budget for 2019), as part of a campus-wide initiative to trim $12 million in total university costs.
As dean, I was faced with a tough choice. I carefully weighed our options, and ultimately arrived at the conclusion that this was a necessary step in order for us to preserve as many critical OBF staff positions as possible and ensure the festival’s ongoing success.
We are saddened that Janelle McCoy will be leaving…
Read on here.
The New York Times has published on its opinion pages a huge meditation by the film-maker Errol Morris about the indelible Soviet-era pianist.
He tells us Richter was a depressive who relied on a red plastic lobster to cheer him up.
Neither of these facts is new; they have appeared in several books, in Russian and English.
Morris also reproduces an 11 year-old conversation with Bruno Monsaingeon, who adds little to what we have seen in his film on Richter, and a more recent chat with Jeremy Denk, who never knew Richter.
There are plenty of people alive who did.
So what’s the point?
Read it here.
Here’s the last 12:
1. Juri Florian Alexander Vallentin (Germany, oboe)
2. Aron Chiesa (Italy, clarinet)
3. August Lange Finkas Jensen (Denmark, clarinet)
4. Sofiya Viland (Russia, flute)
5. Ivan Kobylskiy (Russia, oboe)
6. Nikita Vaganov(Russia, clarinet)
7. Joidy Scarlet Blanco Lewis (Venezuela, flute)
8. Matvey Demin (Russia, flute)
9. Alessandro Beverari (Italy, clarinet)
10. Michaela Špačková(Czech Republic, bassoon)
11. Raffaele Giannotti (Italy, bassoon)
12. Melanie Jessica Rothman (UK, oboe)
13. Sergio Alberto Sanchez Colmenares (Venezuela, oboe)
14. Szymon Tadeusz Michalik (Poland, bassoon)
15. Lívia Duleba (Hungary, flute)
16. Lola Descours (France, bassoon)
17. Sergei Eletskiy(Russia, clarinet)
The over-exposed pianist has been talking to Christian Berzins at Zurich’s NZZ am Sonntag:
‘I do not want to be a slave to the repertoire. Maybe I’ll have a baby, maybe I’ll quit at 35, because then I won’t enjoy it anymore. Who knows?’
‘I was home in New York for two weeks, and I enjoyed that time extremely! I met friends, did my stuff and also practiced something. It was so nice! It pulled me back. But then there was check-in again and check-out at the airport, transfers, trains, stress, concert in the evening.’
Read on here.
The headline echoes her self-doubt: ‘Bin ich Gott oder Abfall? – Am I God, or garbage?’
UPDATE: In defence of Yuja Wang
We have been informed of the death this weekend of Jack Renner, winner of 11 Grammys for his classical recordings.
Co-founder of the Telarc label, he engineered America first digital recording in 1978, featuring Lorin Maazel and the Cleveland Orchestra. It was also the world’s first digital recording of a symphony orchestra.
…’It was in 1977 that Telarc was founded, and things started going in the direction that we find ourselves today. Back then, as you may recall, Doug Sax was leading the direct-to-disc revolution. Sheffield Labs was going great guns; it was obvious that was what audiophiles wanted. So we decided we’d do them one better and make a direct-to-disc recording with a major orchestra. We approached Lorin Maazel at the Cleveland Orchestra, and he said, “Well, I’m an adventuresome person, let’s do it.” The LP was the rather cleverly titled Direct from Cleveland and it was a three-way collaboration between us and Bruce Maier, the founder of Discwasher, and Glen Glancy, who owned a record company in California at the time….’
Read on here.
A meeting between Baltimore Symphony management and locked-out musicians on Friday ended inconclusively after the musicians discovered their insurance had been cut off.
Here’s how the musicians see it:
BSO management refused to budge at today’s bargaining session. They insisted on their lockout and not providing us with health care. Not only that, we learned that our Long Term Disability (LTD) coverage had been canceled as of June 17. Remember that every week that the musicians are locked out, the BSO is saving about $250,000 by not paying us and not providing us with health insurance.
The BSO is seeking to enforce a 20 percent pay cut and 42-week year.
The management blame the musicians for the stalemate:
“We remain disappointed that there has been no meaningful counterproposal that addresses the urgent financial issues our organization is facing since negotiations began last year,” said BSO President and CEO Peter Kjome. “If the BSO is going to survive, our business model needs to change. We will continue to work with our musicians as we navigate this change and prepare for a future that is strong and vibrant.”
The mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli has withdrawn from three Handel operas she had committed to La Scala. Her decision is connected to the board’s refusal to renew the contract of sovrintendente Alexander Pereira, with whom she worked closely at the Salzburg Festivals.
Emails from her husband, Oliver Widmer, to Pereira have been published in Italian media. One reads:
Dear Alexander, Cecilia is shocked by the decision not to extend your contract. In these circumstances, she does not believe that she can collaborate with La Scala. I am very sorry and I hope that we will be able to meet up together soon in another situation.
photo: Marco Brescia Teatro-alla-Scala, 2018
Bartoli’s name was removed from Giulio Cesare yesterday, hours after premium-priced tickets went on sale.