A dozen years ago, the deceptively young-looking Santu-Matias Rouvali took part in a TV reality show in which he formed a rock band, Taltta.

He’s the one in the red tie.

And here’s how he sounded on guitar.

Oddly enough, none of this has appeared in his PR-cleansed CV.

The veteran ballet director of the Opera de Lyon, Yorgos Loukos, has been fined 1,500 euros for terminating the contract of a ballet dancer on her return from maternity leave. He was also ordered to pay 5,000 Euros to the dancer and 1,000 to her union.

Yorgos has done this before. Will he never learn?

Bavarian Radio has scheduled a performance of Mahler’s second symphony in Munich for January 15, conducted by Zubin Mehta, with whom Jansons had a long friendship.

The soloists are Golda Schultz and Gerhild Romberger.

The day before would have been Mariss’s 77th birthday.

 

The four-day national pension strike that raged across France last week has dented an already gloomy Paris Opéra.

The institution runs on €228.7 million a year.

The strike cost €2.6 million in lost box-office revenues.

Enough to cause real headaches on the admin floor.

 

Ever since 1946, the Vienna Philharmonic has been playing a version of the Radetzky March made on their behalf by a composer called Leopold Weninger, a hardcore Nazi and good pal of the orchestra.

Weninger joined the Nazi party in 1932 and worked for various music publishers.

Not until now did anyone object to playing a Nazi arrangement. But someone this year, possibly the conductor Andris Nelsons, raised an eyebrow. As a result, says Vienna Phil chairman Daniel Froschauer, a clean score was ‘created as a joint effort of the Vienna Philharmonic and, above all, unencumbered by a brown past’.

Thanks, Andris.

UPDATE: A much better Radetzky March.


Not brown.

Christopher Morley’s review of a CBSO100 election-night revelation, exclusive to Slippedisc.com:

CBSO at Symphony Hall

****

In one sense this was a sad occasion, David Gregory’s final concert after 42 years, having joined the CBSO as a first violinist in 1977. “Our last pre-Rattleite” was how Chief Executive Stephen Maddock described this popular player.

But he chose a remarkable farewell concert, one which introduced a conductor I’d never heard before (Christoph Koenig, pictured, standing in for an unwell Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla), an absolutely compelling baritone, Thomas E. Bauer, and the UK premiere of a CBSO Centenary commission, Jörg Widmann’s Das heisse Herz.

This is a rescoring for huge orchestra  — including some extraordinary percussion — of a song-cycle in the Germanic tradition originally for baritone and piano. A vestige of that original remains, Bauer weaving his way through the orchestra to join a lavishly decorative solo piano accompaniment in Klabund’s Liebeslied, one of the many texts from across two centuries which reinforce the familiar themes of the effect of love on this “ardent heart”.

Widmann uses his large forces unextragavantly, often homing in on a select few in sparse textures in the manner of Mahler, and the whole effect is one of post-Mahlerian, Second Viennese School angst and sardonicism, sometimes coarsely comedic, at other times open-heartedly vulnerable, and we often hear half-remembered quotes from Widmann’s great predecessors (I picked up Mahler, Schoenberg and Berg, but those may have been subliminal side-effects of this amazing score).

Bauer brought huge vocal versatility to Widmann’s often theatrical writing and Koenig and the CBSO collaborated with both colour and sensitivity. Widmann (born only four years before David Gregory joined the orchestra) was present here to receive a thunderous, extended and well-deserved ovation, which he modestly shared with the performers.

We had begun with two Elgar part-songs, The Snow and  Fly, Singing Bird. The CBSO Youth Chorus delivered them with an innocent purity of sound, but perhaps a more mature depth of tone would have enhanced this performance. Koenig, who only encountered these works for the first time this week, drew a shapely, expressive performance.

And there was an Elgar connection with the concluding item, Brahms’ Third Symphony, so much an influence on Elgar’s two accredited symphonies, and one to which he devoted one of his University of Birmingham professorial lectures.

Balances between the lithe strings and portentous wind were initially not well-judged, but the woodwind in particular distinguished themselves by casting a sunny glow, dispelled at times by starkly spectral sounds.

Christopher Morley

The Met has replaced Vittorio Grigolo in January’s La traviata.

Step us Piero Pretti.

Yeah, we too.

He’s a Sardinian from La Scala.

The restless violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja, has been dying to swap her normal instrument for a medieval rebec.

The first thing she’ll play on it is a Palestinian Song – a work ascribed to the medieval troubadour Walther von der Vogelweide (1170-1230), a camp follower of the Crusaders.

Pat writes: Our “Maria Mater Meretrix”-Program includes the “Palestinian Song” of the medieval troubadour Walther von der Vogelweide (1170-1230), the first chance for my rebec to get on stage. The rebec is derived from similar middle-eastern instruments like the rabab, the Arabs brought it to Spain wherefrom it became the precursor of the violin.

 

Bob Lord of Parma Recordings has brought back Serbia’s oldest orchestra, the Subotica Philharmonic, for a recorded concert last night.

The orchestra, founded in 1908, had not played since 2016.

‘Sons, fathers and grandfathers playing together in the same orchestra bridging generations and time – it’s something really special, something that has to be guarded with the utmost care,’ writes Lord.

 

The clarinettist Sarah Watts has discovered that the British airline FlyBe has changed its rules on carrying instruments on board.

She tells us:

The 100x30x30 measurements for instruments allowed in the cabin has disappeared from their website. Now it’s standard cabin baggage allowance only.

I tweeted them to check this as I fly a lot with them with my bass clarinet that fits in this allowance and they have confirmed they no longer welcome musical instruments with the larger instrument allowance.

Avoid FlyBe for the moment until they sort themselves out.

UPDATE: They won’t. Here’s their sneaky new policy.

Dear Sarah
Our Ref: 191213 – 000558
Thank you for your email to my colleague Rebecca, regarding the carrying of musical instruments onboard our flights.  Please accept my apologies on behalf of Flybe for the issues that you have encountered.
We are currently investigating this matter internally and we will contact you again in due course once we have concluded our investigations.

Thank you for your patience and please be assured that either myself or one of my colleagues will contact you with a full response in due course.

Kind regards

Malcolm Davidson
Customer Support Executive