Pieter Vance Wyckoff, bass trombone with the Hong Kong Philharmonic, was diagnosed with a brain tumour last year. His friends have set up a foundation to promote early diagnosis. Bones from many world orchestras have come together in support.
Watch.
In its second full year of operation, Hamburg’s concert hall drew 1.25 million visits to concerts and events.
It is unquestionably popular with the public.
Some musicians have other views.
There is no talk yet of an acoustic refit.
The amiable Reto Parolari, a well-regarded specialist in light music and entertainment, has died in Winterthur.
Among other posts, he was music director at Circus Krone in Munich and, since 1997, chief conductor at the International Circus Festival in Monte Carlo.
Perhaps to counterbalance the trivialities in his occupation he composed hundreds of electronic scores and founded an international festival of popular music in his home town.
The Opéra de Paris has shut down the rest of its Il Pirata run due to national strike action.
Will it have to pay the likes of Sondra Radvanovsky and Michael Spyres who turned up and were sent home?
Will it even compensate their flight and accommodation costs?
It would be worth knowing as the pension-related strikes drag on.
ANSWER: We’ve heard from cast members that they are being paid. The Paris Opera contracts have a clause that guarantee artists full fee in the event of cancelled performances due to strike.
A viola player in the Hannover State Opera has sued the organisation for damages over ‘personal pain and suffering’ after seeing a photograph of himself in the programme booklet.
The musician claimed that he should have been given the right to approve the picture before it was published (below).
The labour court upheld his claim, ordering the theatre to seek permission from its employees before it published their image.
It refused, however, the claim for compensation.
The violist remains unhappy.
In its roll of maestros from Otto Nicolai to Gustav Mahler, Richard Strauss to Herbert von Karajan, Pierre Boulez to Riccardo Muti, this must be the first time the self-regarding Vienna Philharmonic has invited a film composer to occupy its podium.
Here’s the carefully understated press release:
December 19, 2019 – Anne-Sophie Mutter, one of the world’s most respected artists, begins 2020 with two concerts led by her friend and colleague John Williams. The concerts entitled “A Tribute to John Williams” will feature Williams and Mutter at the Musikverein with the Vienna Philharmonic in a program to include selections from their album Across the Stars which was released in August 2019.
The Vienna Symphony Orchestra has announced that it will travel in future by train – seven hours – to its summer residency at the Bregenz Festival, rather than take a plane.
The orchestra is looking to make all of its travel activities carbon neutral, saying ‘A tipping point has been reached, the matter will now be dealt with in a more concentrated and structured manner. CO2 compensation is a first, small and easily achievable step: we are currently evaluating all our activities in order to further reduce our footprint.’
The orchestra has eight tour planned in 2020 and is trying to travel as much as possible by train.
Other orchestras have responded more warily to our appeal to stop flying.
So far, only the London Philharmonic Orchestra has also written carbon neutrality into its mission statement.