Norway’s radio orchestra has appointed Petr Popelka chief conductor from 20/21.
Popelka, 33, is ranked with Tomas Netopil and Jakub Hrusa as leaders of the new Czech generation.
From the BSO’s Tanglewood announcement:
Tanglewood honors the 100th anniversary of Isaac Stern’s birth with a weekend-long celebration, July 24-26
Tanglewood’s 2020 season honors the 100th anniversary of legendary American violinist Isaac Stern’s birth (July 21, 1920) with a weekend-long celebration, July 24-26, featuring six of the world’s most acclaimed violinists performing works closely associated with Mr. Stern’s 65-year career as one of the most preeminent artists of the 20th century. Stern’s relationship with the BSO began in January 1948,
when he made debut with the orchestra performing Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 1 with Serge Koussevitzky conducting. He made his Tanglewood debut that summer and continued to perform regularly at Symphony Hall and Tanglewood for nearly 50 years. The BSO’s weekend of performances is the culmination of a season-long celebration of the centennial of Mr. Stern’s birth.
On Friday, July 24, Andris Nelsons and the BSO open the Stern weekend with the Tanglewood Gala,
featuring violinist Augustin Hadelich in Beethoven’s Romance No. 1 in G, for violin and orchestra (which
Stern performed with the BSO in 1965) and Dutilleux’s L’Arbre des songes, for violin and orchestra, a
work written for and dedicated to Stern. Maestro Nelsons and the BSO close the gala program with
Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique.
On Saturday, July 25, Midori joins the BSO and conductor Constantinos Carydis for a program featuring
Bernstein’s Serenade (after Plato’s “Symposium”). Stern gave the world premiere of Serenade with
Bernstein and the Israel Philharmonic in 1954, and the following year gave the U.S. premiere
performances at with the BSO and Charles Munch. Mr. Carydis also leads the BSO in Beethoven’s
Symphony No. 7.
The celebration of Isaac Stern’s 100th birthday wraps up with a star-studded BSO performance
featuring violinists Joshua Bell, Pamela Frank, Vadim Gluzman, and Nancy Zhou, cellists Jian
Wang and Steven Isserlis, and pianist Jeremy Denk, under the direction of Isaac Stern’s
sons—conductors David and Michael Stern. The concert opens with J.S. Bach’s Concerto in D minor for
two violins featuring Pamela Frank and Nancy Zhou (Ms. Zhou was the 2018 winner of the Shanghai
Isaac Stern International Violin Competition). Cellist Jian Wang—who, as a young prodigy, was featured
in the documentary From Mao to Mozart: Isaac Stern in China—performs Tchaikovsky’s Andante
cantabile. The afternoon closes with one of Stern’s signature works—Beethoven’s Triple
Concerto—performed by Jeremy Denk, Joshua Bell, and Steven Isserlis. Further program details for the
July 25 and 26 performances will be announced at a later date
As part of the celebration, the Tanglewood Learning Institute will host a special Stern @ 100 Weekend,
presented in conjunction with the weekend’s Shed programming. The TLI Weekend will explore cultural
diplomacy here and abroad, leadership in the arts, and musical collaboration. Sessions include a
leadership in the arts panel discussion with Mark Volpe, Eunice and Julian Cohen BSO President and
CEO, and others, an open rehearsal of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and a TLI-TMC OpenStudio
piano trios master class led by Emanuel Ax and Yo-Yo Ma, in honor of the incredible legacy of the
Istomin-Stern-Rose Trio. For further information about Stern @ 100 Weekend programs and activities,
visit www.tli.org.
The Bayreuth director Yuval Sharon has been asked to plan the 2021 season for Long Beach Opera, a serious grown-up job.
‘Any other opera company in America would be completely blindsided by the projects that I’m proposing,’ Sharon tells the LA Times. ‘Every other opera company would turn ghost white at the thought of this kind of season. I think it’ll be great.’
We have received the following message from musicAeterna and Teodor Currentzis, nullifying the Lucerne Festival’s plan to sell tickets for their rehearsals for $100 each. Here’s what they write:
As tickets are being sold for the open rehearsal of musicAeterna (conducted by Teodor Currentzis), which is planned for April 3 as part of the Lucerne festival, we would like to inform you that a mistake has occurred on the festival administration’s part and will be corrected as soon as possible. All musicAeterna’s open rehearsals are free for the audience to attend; the same goes for master classes, lectures and other educational projects curated by Teodor Currentzis in Russia and Europe. This is maestro’s position of principle.
The educational programme is a vital part of musicAeterna’s activity and ideology: in modern art, the audience is just as much a notable part of the creative process as the authors and performers are. A number of projects by Teodor Currentzis are accompanied by the ‘contemporary listener’ laboratory – educational events such as open rehearsals, meetups with artists, and master classes; this way, the audience can study the performed piece in great detail and witness the process of its creation.
We expect the Lucerne festival officials to refund any payments received for the tickets and to organize free attendance for the open rehearsal.
The Lucerne Symphony Orchestra has chosen Michael Sanderling to succeed James Gaffigan in 2021.
Sanderling, 52, has been a regular with the lakeside orch for a decade.
photo: Nikolaj Lund
Anita Rachvelishvili had to be substituted in the third act last night, feeling unwell.
Last month, Roberto Alagna was subbed during the second act.
The Bastille must be spooked.
A lovely little post from the Norwegian soprano:
I was in New York for the first time in 2009 visiting my best friend. Of course we wanted to see the opera, but we didn’t have enough money to go inside. As a good tourist, my friend took this photo of me pretending to sing in front of the opera.
I’m serious when I say that at that time, I had never in a million years thought I would sing inside. And now, 10 years later, I have my debut in under two weeks.. I find it all very exciting and very scary. Hard work led me here and I cross my fingers that hard work will help me for the opening and this debut too!
Lise makes her Met debut in The Queen of Spades on November 29.
So it would appear from a rather complicated change in Bundesfinanzhof regulations.
Get your accountant to read this.
Despite two recent box-office successes in Porgy and Bess and Akhnaten, the Met’s finances are looking grim again, reports Michael Cooper in the NY Times.
The Met recorded a $1.9 million deficit in 2018, and the company said it expected it to report a $1.1 million deficit on a budget of $312 million in the 2019 fiscal year, which ended July 31.
Both shortfalls are smaller than in recent years but the company’s credit rating is being revised downward.
Read all the red ink here.
From the new Naxos releases:
Daniel HERSKEDAL (b. 1982)
Behind the Wall
Elin Torp Meland, Oboe and Cor anglais • Kjell Magne Robak, Cello
Gro Merete Hjertvik, Piano
The music on this recording exudes a warmth and humanity that lifts the spirit at a moment when the threads that bind the communities of our planet are becoming increasingly fragile. Daniel Herskedal has travelled through Syria, Lebanon and Palestine to study and absorb the heritage of a region fractured by conflict, and has created a suite of music that celebrates the depth of ancient traditions, and
the sheer resilience and dignity of a people threatened by forces beyond their control. Through the prism of Ramallah, Behind the Wall evokes these traditions in exquisitely crafted music that is steeped in Daniel’s insight into a culture that is far too often misunderstood by many in the West. But this is far away from being a simple political statement – rather, its strength derives from landscapes visited
and friendships made, reflected by the music’s lyricism and exuberance.
Mahan Esfahani was addressing an audience in Budapest last night on the personal history of Henry Cowell, a US composer jailed for homosexuality, when a young man leapt up and hurled abuse at the artist.
Mahan was explaining Cowell’s Set of Four and how the ‘chorale’ might be read as protest against old-school US religious chorales. The heckler began shouting that he ‘was being insulting to people of faith’.
Others in the audience told him to shut up. The heckler, apparently an American, yelled ‘f*ck you’ and walked out.
The incidents are becoming sadly less uncommon.
A rare photograph of the composer, aged 40, in 1904.
