The diva has sent a message to the depths of Chilean torment.
Creative director Madani Younis, brought in less than a year ago to make the arts centre less dormant is leaving to ‘pursue other creative interests’, it was announced today. He will leave before the year is out.
Southbank Centre chief executive Elaine Bedell said: “We have enjoyed working with Madani and he has made a significant and positive contribution to discussions about our future creative direction. We wish him well for the future.”
Sounds like a total communications breakdown. We’re trying to find out more.
UPDATE: This resignation plunges the South Bank into instant conflict with its main funder ArtsCouncil England. Madani Younis was brought in to increase programming diversity. The South Bank has showed it cannot handle change. The ACE will be demanding answers.
In a week overflowing with mortality, news arrives of the death of Hans Zender, a German modernist whose best-known work was his inventive orchestration of Schubert’s Winterreise cycle.
Zender was 82.
He wrote three operas, one of them after Joyce. His students include Isabel Mundry and Hanspeter Kyburz. A capable conductor, he was general music director in Hamburg and Bonn.
But his hynotic treatment of Winterreise overshadowed all else.
Reports are coming in of the passing of Rolando Panerai, one of the last singer of the golden age, a frequent partner of Callas and Di Stefano.
He made his debut in Naples in 1947 and in La Scala four years later, dominating such roles as Rigoletto, Giorgio Germont and Amonasro. He mastered more than 150 roles and last appeared, aged 87, as Gianni Schicchi in Genova.
He celebrated his 95th birthday last week.
Twenty years after he co-founded with Edward Said an orchestra of young Arabs and Israelis, Daniel Barenboim has spoken openly about the Diwan as a dream that has, so far, failed.
In a sombre 20th anniversary interview with the German press agency Barenboim said: ‘The orchestra exists (but not as) an orchestra for peace… We can not do that.
‘Today we cannot play in most Arab countries or in Israel…’
He takes credit for the training and experience the orchestra has given to many young musicians but is frustrated by the lack of political progress.’
However: ‘If both sides attack us, we must be doing something right. I would be worried if that did not happen.’
Read on here.
A Musicians Union survey of 724 members found that 48% said they suffered sexual harassment at work.
Of these, 85% did not report it.
More here.
The Idaho Falls Symphony reports that its music director Thomas Heuser was rushed to hospital a few minutes into Saturday’s concert after suffering a seizure that affected his balance.
Orchestra players caught him before he fell and escorted him offstage.
Principal cellist Robert Tueller conducted the rest of the concert.
Heuser was detained in hospital for tests but has since been released.
Heuser, US born, is also music director of the San Juan Symphony where his wife, Lauren Avery, is concertmaster.
Our video analysts have now subjected to frame by frame scrutiny the incident in which conductor Muhai Tang lost his trousers during a brilliant concert with the La Scala orchestra in Milan.
Muhai Tang, 70, has had a hitherto upstanding career with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra on Flanders (1991-95), the Queensland Symphony (1991-2001), Finnish National Opera (2003-06) and Belgrade Philharmonic (2010-15).
The concert, marking the 70th anniversary of the Chinese revolution, was built around the Butterfly Lovers concerto and a seventh symphony by the Chinese composer, Ye Xiaogang.
We are unable to identify which piece of music it was that brought the pants down.
All we can see is that Tang, for some reason, got down from his podium to conduct at floor level when the waistband gave way.
The players, who are delivering a consistent forte, keep their eyes firmly on the score – all apart from the second concertmaster who, after a look of shock and horror, leans forward to turn a page and almost corpses in a fit of giggles.
Do not practice this at home.
UPDATE: Hang on, it looks like he’s a bit accident prone.
The orchestra has announced a $4 million donation from the Edgerton Foundation to build the Judith and Thomas L. Beckmen YOLA Center at Inglewood, the youth orchestra’s first permanent, purpose-built facility.
Louise Edgerton has been a member of the LA Phil’s Board of Directors since 2008.
The hall will open a year from now.
The US music director takes up the stick today as chief conductor of the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra.
How many firsts is that?
Alsop, 63, is the first woman chief in Vienna, the first American, the first to open with contemporary works.
In addition to a commission from Lera Auerbach, she will kick off tomorrow night with Rapture, by her recently-departed friend Christopher Rouse.
Wolf Erichson, founder of the early-music label Seon which he sold to Sony at the height of the CD boom, has died in Nice aged 91.
Starting at Das Alte Werk and Teldec before he struck out on his own, Erichson produced over 800 classical recordings.
His favoured artists included Bruno Weil, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Anner Bylsma, Frans Brüggen, Giuliano Carmignola and Gustav Leonhardt.
photo: Sallie Erichson
Ralph Leavis, son of the university’s dominant literary scholars, has died in hospital after a short illness and a lonely life. He was 85.
A child of ‘Mozartian brilliance’, he fell out with his combative Jewish mother Queenie and would only communicate, albeit sparingly with his dogmatic father, Dr F. R. Leavis. Ralph seems to have spent much of his life hanging around the music faculty, a found of wisdom whom few consulted. He wrote several learned articles and a host of letters containing corrections to musicological journals.
Claire Tomalin, who was at university with him, ‘found communication with him almost impossible as he remained entirely silent outside class.’ He avoided company, albeit without rancour.
Here’s what the Faculty of Music have published:
We are sorry to announce that Mr. Ralph Leavis died in the JR Hospital on Sunday 6 October after a short illness. One of our long-standing librarians, Gregory ‘Tigger’ Burton says a few words:
“Ralph, or ‘Mr. Leavis’ as we always addressed him, attended Dartington Hall School between 1946 and 1950. He matriculated Lincoln College in 1951 and obtained First Class Honours in Music in 1954. Although he had been a regular reader in both the Music Faculty Library and the Bodleian Library for as long as anyone can remember, we knew very little of his personal circumstances as he was very much a ‘private’ person. Having said that, he would always give a firm and direct response to anyone who took the trouble to engage in conversation, but would not wish to engage in small-talk beyond sharing the occasional cartoon or music-related anecdote from the newspapers.
It is rumoured that he was a child prodigy on the piano and there was a period in his life when he engaged in much music making. Mr. Leavis had a photographic memory and, as well as carrying musical scores in his head, he was intimately acquainted with the Library of Congress Numbering System; this gave rise to the occasional note addressed to Library Staff explaining why some of the Chamber Music in the Library was incorrectly numbered. He took an interest in current affairs and from time to time would write to the Oxford Mail with sometimes controversial views.
Ralph leaves a sister and a brother who have expressed a wish for a private cremation. Shortly before he died, Mr. Leavis had expressed a wish to promote a recital of lesser known musical treasures in the Faculty Library – perhaps this is something we could explore in due course. Mr. Leavis will be much missed in the Library.”
