Edinburgh’s Queen’s Hall is teaming up with the Hebrides Ensemble and composer Ben Lunn to make concerts less daunting for people on the neurodiversity spectrum.

Not quite clear how, but it’s a move in the right direction.

More here.

The New York Post has obtained a transcript of the Met boss’s unsympathetic remarks last week at the National Institute of Social Sciences about the people who keep his house in visitors. Here’s what:

 ‘ I’ve come to realize that there are only three stages of health for singers: catching a cold, recovering from a cold or suffering from a cold,’ said Gelb at the private club in Manhattan. ‘Not long ago, one famous and talented tenor that I tried coaxing from his dressing room back on to the stage — and who had no fever and not even a case of the sniffles — told me that he didn’t think he could go on because he felt cold inside.’

Now was this necessary? Or even true?

Just another reason to love Mr Gelb.

Chief Conductor of the Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra, Kahchun Wong, 33, has been conferred the Order of Merit by the Federal President of Germany.

It’s for ‘his dedicated service and outstanding achievements in Singaporean-German cultural relations and the advancement of German music culture abroad.’

We reported earlier that the Israel Phil had inserted a conductor and pianist for the absent Murray Perahia.

That was just for the Jerusalem concert.

For the previous 3 concerts in Haifa and Tel Aviv the conductor will be Yi-An Xu.

Yi-An, 40, lives in Israel. He is married to the Israeli conductor Talia Ilan.

The graffito below is obviously well intentioned.

But to my eyes it evokes more of the hangman than the social harmony. It calls to mind all the cruelties that prevail wherever music is performed – the bullying, the victimisation, the elitism, the exclusionism.

Your thoughts?

Booking for the 2020 summer festival opens today and they are still listing poor Mariss as conductor for Boris Godunov.

Everyone’s expecting Gergiev to jump in, but maybe he’s not answering his phone.

Anthony Hunt has quit, citing homesickness for Adelaide.

Sydney and Melbourne need a chorus master.

They should call one of the three who left Glyndebourne in as many years.

He was supposed to have directed the Israel Phil from the keyboard in January.

Instead, they’ve had to call in a conductor Frederic Chaslin, with pianist Denis Kozukhin.