Karen Palacio played principal clarinet at the National Philharmonic Orchestra for three months before being offered a contract, subject to a formal audition.

Soon after, she was told the offer had been withdrawn, ‘because I signed against the regime’.

She took to Twitter to complain.

 

Karen was promptly arrested. She has been held in jail for almost a month by the Maduro regime.

Please share as widely as you can.

Save Karen.

 

From the Lebrecht Album of the Week:

 

…  the Czech conductor Jakob Hrusa has restored something of the original sonority, allowing the brass to go slightly sour without going out of tune and the strings to sound a little more laidback…..

Read on here.

And here.

 

 

 

The Russian-American conductor Mikhail Agrest, a staffer at the Mariinsky since 2001, has been appointed music director of Stuttgart Ballet.

He succeeds Jeffrey Tuggle, who has held the post for 35 years.

 

The conductor Alain Antinoglu has made the bold decision to include in the Bastille Day concert at the Eiffel Tower a section from Halévy’s opera La Juive, the first grand opera with a Jewish martyr at its heart.

The Bastille Day concert is a national feelgood event with fireworks, televised live. It will feature the leading French tenor Roberto Alagna singing ‘ Rachel, quand du Seigneur’ from La Juive.

Also taking part in the concert are Alagna’s soprano wife Aleksandra Kurzak, the mezzo Gaëlle Arquez, the German bass René Pape, the Polish countertenor Jakub Józef Orliński, the Chinese guitarist Xuefei Yang, the French cellist Gauthier Capuçon and the Franco-Georgian pianist Khatia Buniastishvili. The concert ends with the Berlioz orchestration of La Marsellaise. It is a celebration of Frenchness.

Altinoglu, who has included a Khachturan dance as a tribute to his own Armenian heritage, has not explained the insertion of La Juive into a generally frivolous programme, but its presence serves as a vivid reminder that the oldest hatred has not yet been extinguished.

 

Meet Chloe Flower, tomorrow’s classic.

Juilliard trained, she is now 33 and doing her own thing.

 

Sarah Thwaites, Label Head UK, Sony Music Masterworks said: “Chloe Flower is one of the most exciting artists on the planet and I’m unbelievably stoked to share her talent with the world. Whether it’s original compositions, classical masterpieces, unexpected collaborations or virtuosic covers of today’s hottest hits, Chloe’s incredible talent, passion and style shine through.”

 

From a recent interview:

Flower makes sure to include elements of classical music in every work she composes.

“Part of the reason why kids and adults don’t understand or care about classical music is because they don’t recognize it,” she said. “I think that people think that without lyrics, you can’t really understand the music or connect.”

But “you can do it in a way that captures them and then add the element of accessibility, which for me was the drums, and it makes it almost like you can work out to it,” she said.

The violin pedagogue Edward Wulfson has given a combative interview to the Russian journalist Marina Arshinova.

In it, he asserts that there are only two present-day violinists of the highest quality – Janine Jansen and Julia Fischer – and two more coming up: Daniel Lozakovich (pictured) and Marc Bouchkov, both of them his students. The rest, he asserts, are uninteresting.

Wulfson maintains that Bouchkov should have won the Tchaikovsky competition, but for an error on the conductor’s part.

Read here.