The composer Roger Boutry, a versatile musician who was a piano finalist in the first Tchaikovsky Competition and achieved the rank of colonel in the French army for training band conductors, died yesterday.

The veteran conductor , who is 90 years old today, has been prone to cancellations in the past couple of years.

But that, we hear, is behind him.

In the coming season, he will conduct the Orchestre de Paris, Tonhalle Zurich and, after many years absence, the Vienna Philharmonic. Beyond those, he’s booking dates at Hamburg and Boston.

Many happy returns, Christoph!

 

 

In this weekend’s edition of the Wall Street Journal I review Cate Haste’s feminist biography of Alma Mahler.

Opening par:

On the second page of “Passionate Spirit,” the English biographer Cate Haste runs up her flag: “I like Alma Mahler,” she declares. This statement places the author in direct contradiction to three famous husbands, numerous lovers and most of Alma’s acquaintance. A femme fatale who proclaimed herself a muse to genius, Alma Mahler aroused lust in her youth and gossip-seekers into her 80s. But not many people who knew her liked her very much, or for very long. I clearly remember her daughter, Anna Mahler, telling me that at no time in her long life did her mother ever have a devoted female friend.

Read on here.

 

The composer died 70 years ago on 8 September 1949.

That means his works fall out of copyright from the end of 2019.

Hardest hit will be Boosey & Hawkes, which has lived easy on the earnings from Der Rosenkavalier.