Police in Leipzig have announced that 25 stained-glass windows were destroyed in a New Year’s Eve act of vandalism in St Thomas’s Church and neighboring Thomashaus.

Pastor Britta Taddiken said stones were thrown at the windows from outside the church, where Johann Sebastian Bach presented some of his greatest works, and where his remains are buried.

There have been no arrests. Suspicion has fallen on a mentally ill person who recently spoke to the pastor.

Him, again (the one on the left).

It will be the sixth time Riccardo Muti has conducted New Year’s Day in Vienna.

They say: ‘Riccardo Muti holds an exceptional position in the history of the Vienna Philharmonic and has been an Honorary Member of the orchestra since 2011. As an expression of this close artistic relationship, we have asked him to conduct the New Year’s Concert on January 1, 2021, for the sixth time’.

Happy for Riccardo, but haven’t they just run out of ideas?

Our Scherzo colleague Antonio Moral takes over today as head of the Festival Internacional de Música y Danza de Granada.

He succeeds the conductor Pablo Heras-Cassado.

Joyce seems pleased.

 

 

We have received reports from hs students and friends of the death yesterday of Jaap Schröder.

The Dutch violinist and conductor was part of as a member of Concerto Amsterdam alongside Gustav Leonhardt, Anner Bylsma and Frans Brüggen. He was later director and concertmaster of the Academy of Ancient Music, and of the Smithsonian Chamber Players.

Well, here’s a first.

A conductor who can blow it with the best of them.

My Twitter feed is full of it.

 

My impressions of distinctive regional variations in Beethoven appreciation appear to be endorsed by a new study from Harvard:

...The latest study, conducted by an international team led by data scientist Samuel Mehr of Harvard University, is notable for both the breadth of its cultural coverage and the depth of the analysis that looked for shared properties. Using two databases—audio recordings of songs from 315 societies, and ethnographic texts from 60 that document the uses of songs in that culture—the researchers were able to mine rich cross-cultural resources to compare both the musical characteristics and the social contexts and functions of music. They found that the variations are greater within than between societies—for example, hip hop might be more different from western sacred music than the latter is from Tibetan sacred music. The study found that most music has a “tonal centre”—in western terms, a key, or a sense of a “home note” that the melody will return to—on which naïve listeners can generally agree. And the acoustic features of music—the pitches and tempos, say—are rather systematically linked to the emotional goals and responses of the performers and audiences across cultures: “sad” music, say, tends always to be softer and slower.

Read on here.

My conclusion on Beethoven reception:

In a straw poll I conducted among 20 musicians whose taste I trust, I found variations of choice that were dictated by generation and geography. Americans swear by George Szell in the symphonies, releases that are practically unknown in Europe. Germans vaunt Kempff, Kulenkampff and Schneiderhan in the chamber music. The French revere Cortot and Thibaud. Italians argue over Muti and Chailly as they might over Inter and AC Milan. Very few artists achieve universal approval in Beethoven.

Read on here.

 

The composer Ludomir Różycki buried a violin concerto in a Warsaw garden before fleeing the city.

Builders discovered it as they worked on the house.

This week, the composer’s great-granddaughter Ewa Wyszogrodzka attended its premiere.

Kate Connolly has the story in the Guardian, with a clip of the music.

Here’s what we know of the composer (1883-1953).