Yuval Weinberg is the new chief conductor of the Südwestrundfunk Vocal Ensemble.
He has been working mostly in Norway and Bavaria.
The least appreciated of great American composers turns 90 today. A quiet man, averse to publicity, his music makes wide waves.
Bridge Records have almost caught up with capturing all of his works on 19 albums.
This was his biggest hit, an enduring string quartet masterpiece:
The newly retired Today show presenter has dealt a blow to his former BBC team by presenting Classic FM’s breakfast programme next week.
The Today show, which Humphrys presented for 33 years, has just reported its lowest quarterly audience in a decade.
Classic FM was down 1 percent. The BBC’s Radio 3 lost 4.7 percent of its listeners over the quarter, dropping to 1.9 million. They will be most at risk facing the popular Humphrys at their main rival.
The Chicago Symphony has just published annual results in which the blood is buried in the footnotes:
– Ticket sales for the 2018/19 season totaled $18.5 million, a decline of nearly $5 million from the 2017/18 season for CSOA-presented events as a result of the seven weeks without CSOA concert presentations. 49 concerts in Chicago and 1 “run-out” concert for the Orchestra were canceled for a total of 50 canceled, paid events.
– The decline in operating revenue was offset by lower operating expenses of $3.5 million and increased support of $1.3 million, for a net increase in the deficit of $200,000 versus last year.
Over coffee recently in Berlin, Kirill Gerstein and I fell to contemplating the absence of piano concertos in the 21st century.
Recent efforts by John Adams and Esa-Pekka Salonen failed to excite the public imagination. Others by Magnus Lindberg, Kalevi Aho, Harrison Birtwistle, Frederic Rzewski and Luca Francesconi achieved even less impact.
Last night at the Royal Festival Hall, Kirill gave the UK premiere of a piano concerto by Thomas Adès, with the composer conducting.
It had almost everything one could wish for in a piano concerto – an arresting Gershwinian opening rhythm, some crumping Bartok note clusters and a wisp or two of Ligeti – all this in the first five minutes and 17 still to come. The middle movement has real narrative power, a gift for storytelling rare in postmodern orchestral music and the finale comes to a climax with a totally absorbing duet between piano and xylophone, a wonderful tease for the ears.
Gerstein made it all sound ridiculously easy, the composer conducted and the London Philharmonic sounded in reasonable shape.
To start the concert, however, the LPO gave so noisy, ragged and incoherent an account of Sibelius’s Night Ride and Sunrise with Adès in the podium that I was left wondering whether the concerto itself might not have sounded stronger under a different orchestra and conductor.
Either way, I want to hear the Adès concerto again soon, preferably in a festival setting for which it is ideally suited.
It could be the 21st century piano concerto we’re all looking for.
The singer-songwriter Angélique Kidjo has been handpicked by the composer for the solo role in his Bowie-tribute 12th symphony, which has its French premiere tomorrow night.
They go back almost 20 years together to a concert where he accompanied her at the piano.
The Italian tenor was sent home from a Japan tour by the Covent Garden company and has been banned by the Met.
But he has since appeared on home turf at La Scala and he’s now playing Werther at the Vienna State Opera.
#Metoo becomes more fragmented week by week.
photo: Michael Pöhn
The tenor is selling a course in how to sing, right here.
What is singing? asks Jonas. Anyone can do it.
Opera, he adds, is a bit harder.
The Dresden Staatakapelle has appointed Adrian Jones to succeed the veteran Jan Nast as orchestra director.
Jones, 52, is a former cellist who rose to become orchestra director at Deutsche Oper Berlin and the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin.
We hear from Scherzo that Leo Nucci announced his retirement from the stage after a Pavarotti gala in the Italian town of Correggio. He was a genuine Italian baritone, a true Nabucco (I heard him last two years ago in Vienna).
His retirement might be a hint for a less genuine baritone also in his late 70s.
Heinz Friesen, solo oboist of the Brabant orchestra (1961-66) and the Rotterdam Philharmonic (1966-89), has died.
He was oboe professor at The Hague Conservatoire, a composer and a prolific conductor, mostly of wind ensembles.
