The Philharmonie de Paris and the Paris Mozart Orchestra are delighted to announce the names of the 12 women orchestral conductors who have been selected to participate in the inaugural staging of La Maestra International for Women Conductors, which will take place in Paris from the 16th to the 19th of March 2020:
Mélisse BRUNET, 42 (France)
Sara CANEVA, 28 (Italy)
Stephanie CHILDRESS, 20 (Great Britain / France)
Holly CHOE, 28 (South Korea / USA)
Maria FULLER, 29 (Canada)
Lina GONZALEZ-GRANADOS Lina, 33 (Colombia)
Yuwon KIM, 31 (South Korea)
Jiajing LAI, 28 (China)
Delyana LAZAROVA, 34 (Bulgaria)
Ana Maria PATIÑO-OSORIO, 24 (Colombia)
Rebecca TONG, 35 (USA / Indonesia)
Gladysmarli del Valle VADEL MARCANO, 24 (Venezuela)
The orchestra has promoted Chad Smith, its chief operating officer, to replace its CEO Simon Woods, who left suddenly last week.
Smith had been one of two internal candidates who were passed over when Deborah Borda left in 2016.
The board thinks it’s got the right man now.
From the press release:
“The LA Phil has been my creative home for the last 17 years, and I am honored to be stepping into this role,” said Chad Smith. “Supporting the expansive vision of Gustavo and his deeply held commitment to serving the whole of the LA community has never been more important, and I continue to strive to support that work. As we focus on ensuring that our great orchestra thrives, as we continue to grow our YOLA program, and as we imagine new ways our programming can connect to existing audiences while inviting in new listeners, I could not be more excited about beginning my new role.”
Smith began his career in 2000 at the New World Symphony, working closely with conductor Michael Tilson Thomas. He first joined the LA Phil in 2002, when he was responsible for planning the orchestra’s Green Umbrella new music series, as well as the classical programming at the Hollywood Bowl. After briefly serving as the New York Philharmonic’s head artistic planner, in 2006 Smith returned to the LA Phil in the expanded role of Vice President of Artistic Planning, a position he held until being named Chief Operating Officer in 2015.
The death of Martin Bernheimer has robbed the profession of music criticism of one of its bravest, most distinctive voice.
As chief music and dance critic for the LA Times for 30 years, Martin took down inflated reputations with panache and braggadocio, without ever being needlessly cruel. He took music personally and, if someone mistreated the art, Martin hurt. He won a 1982 Pultzer Prize and did his best to run Zubin Mehta out of tinseltown.
Retired by the LA Times in 1996, he reviewed regularly for Opera magazine and the Financial Times until quite recently, always with a glint in his eye. He kept abreast of new trends and was a supportive voice in the Slipped Disc comments section. We should have got him to write more.
Spanish media have reported the death of Helga Schmidt, long-standing artistic advisor at Covent Garden and founder of the contentious Palau de les Arts in Valencia. She was 78 and was embroiled in an interminable legal struggle to clear her name in Spain.
Helga, who knew Wilhelm Furtwängler, Karl Böhm, Dimitri Mitropoulos and Clemens Krauss at her Austrian childhood home, formed close friendships with the conductors Lorin Maazel and Zubin Mehta and especially with the singer Placido Domingo, who spoke out for her when she faced politically motivated charges of corruption in Valencia.
She was the ultimate establishment figure at the heart of the opera business, one who placed the needs of artists above all other priorities and there were concerns in London that her influence contributed to Covent Garden’s stagnation in the 1980s.
But no-one could put together a star cast more effectively than Helga and her standards were never compromised. The orchestra she formed in Spain for Maazel was the best that country has ever heard.
Her last years were dogged by arrests, passport confications and legal expenses as Valencia’s mayor turned against the arts centre. She spent hours on the phone with Slipped Disc, producing documents that she was sure would clear her name. Now death has robber her of that chance.
In 1975, at the age of 30, the American singer moved to London and disappeared from the opera stage for the next five years.
The decision was never fully explained but it was calculated to save her voice and to focus on her greatest strength – singing with and above a full orchestra. For the next half decade, she developed a healthy schedule as a concert soloist and solo recitalist.
A 1983 recording of the Strauss Four Last Songs with Kurt Masur and the Gewandhaus Orchestra sealed her position as perhaps the foremost performer of orchestral Lieder.
She returned to the opera stage in 1980 with an insipid account of Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos in Hamburg and London, a performance that served chiefly to accentuate how uncomfortable she was moving about the stage.
A Met debut followed in 1982 in Berlioz’s Les Troyens, but opera gradually faded out of her agenda. At the end of the decade she returned to live in the US and made the second decision that extended her career – a drop from soprano repertoire to mezzo.
Given that top notes were never her forte, this allowed her the freedom to explore the best facets of her remarkable instrument – warmth, deep colours and a lightness that took listeners often by surprise.
She was a great singer, substantially self-made, and her death this week at 74 is justly mourned around the world.
Due to a Jewish New Year break, Slipped Disc is two days late in reporting Jessye Norman’s passing. Jessye would have understood.
Jessye with Costa Pilavachi, her recording manager at Philips
He says: When I listen to edit files of my recordings, for approval or additional notes, it is very important to me to hear the smallest details. In preparation of my new album-release in October I was once again grateful for having my Grimm LS1be speakers. While they function perfectly as monitor-speakers, at the same time they do not sound too persistent or direct, so you can just lean back, relax and enjoy music on a daily basis – a combination which is extremely rare. The speakers are also aesthetically appealing, so they blend nicely with my other furniture. I am often astounded by their quality which renders even the simplest digital file streams into smooth, warm, almost analog-sounding bits of joy.
Having kicked off last week with the first of my Furtwängler videocasts, DG have issued another by my former BBC colleague Rob Cowan, who talks about the conductor’s Schenkerian approach to music and about the difficulty of appraising his wartime tapes:
‘As a Jew,’ says Rob, ‘how can I reconcile myself to listening to something that would have been impossible for me to hear?’
Highly intelligent, well worth eight minutes of your time.
The next Lebrecht videocast goes up tomorrow.
Emmanuel Tjeknavorian’s debut album “Solo” on Sony Classical received the 2018 OPUS Klassik award for Newcomer of the Year.
Not altogether surprisingly, he has now opted for another label.
Press release below:
Edel Kultur is pleased to announce for 2020 an extended cooperation with the Viennese violinist and conductor Emmanuel Tjeknavorian. In February 2020, as part of a new exclusive contract with the Edel Kultur label Berlin Classics, Tjeknavorian’s second album will be released, featuring the violin concertos of Jean Sibelius and the artist’s father Loris Tjeknavorian. The recording was made with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony under the baton of Pablo Gonzáles.
‘The relationship and the collaboration between an artist and a record label have always been of paramount importance. At the present time, following all the developments of recent years, I am very impressed by the understanding that Berlin Classics brings to the vision and the creativity of its artists, and by their healthy dose of idealism, which the music world needs today more than ever. I look forward to artistically satisfying and meritorious projects,’ says Emmanuel Tjeknavorian of the new agreement.
