From the Lebrecht Album of the Week:
Whatever became of the Great American Symphony? At one time it was discussed with as much cocktail-hour fervour as the Great American Novel and promoted by the best US orchestras. Leonard Bernstein at the New York Phil would not program a season without a symphony by a living American. But that was half a century ago.
Since the GAS has long gone off the boil, it’s almost a guilty pleasure to listen…
Read on here.
And here.
There’s been a reshuffle at the label after the surprise departure of classical chief Alex Buhr.
Tom Lewis and Laura Monks become co-managing directors, under president Rebecca Allen.
Dominic Fyfe is the new label director of Decca Classics; Helen Lewis is executive producer at Decca Classics; Gavin Bayliss is head of classical marketing & catalogue strategy. All are long-timers.
Police in Prague have released video of a middle-aged man who stole a Honeck cello from a parked car in Vršovická Street.
Watch video here.
The cello’s owner is Tereza Pelikánová and she’s offering a reward for its return.
An advertising agency asked itself: what do children hate most?
You got it.
What bugs us is why an opera company in Stockholm splashes its cash on such nonsense.
Client: Folkoperan
Agency: McCann Stockholm
Agency producer: Markus Ahlm
Director: Peter Hansson
Production company: Balthazar Film
Producer: Carl Linder
Music Supervision: Gino Music Supervision
Composer: Max Linder
Marvin P. Feinsmith, principal bassoon of the Israel Philharmonic who returned to the US to play in the Indianapolis and Denver orchestras, has died after a long illness.
Marvin died in Denver on February 9; the funeral has already taken place.
Marvin’s wife, Deborah, was oboist of The Little Orchestra Society of NYC, and later in the Israel Philharmonic.
Their son, David, is a San Francisco composer.
The latest review in the Slippedisc/CBSO100 season:
CBSO
Symphony Hall *****
Vilde Frang had the cruellest of rewards after delivering Thursday afternoon’s knockout performance of Shostakovich’s fearsomely difficult First Violin Concerto: she missed her flight from Birmingham Airport. Her taxi had been unable to battle through stationary traffic in the underpass, she told me when I bumped into her as she returned to her hotel, and she thought it would be a good idea for me to write a review of the Birmingham traffic situation. So I am.
Her response to the Shostakovich, a work searching technically, physically and emotionally, had gripped us all, right from its eloquently sustained opening, Frang’s grieving lines, muscularly accented, supported by a weight yet flexible CBSO under principal guest conductor Kazuki Yamada. She interacted particularly sensitively with the orchestral strings here.
Following a skittish, skeletal scherzo we had further evidence of Frang’s ability to trace long-spun lines in the powerful Passacaglia, the orchestra eventually silencing as she tackled the famously demanding cadenza, building tension inexorably until the orchestra burst in with the announcement of the finale. After metaphorically wiping her brow, Frang leapt in with a vicious attack, dispersing so much energy and stamina during the music’s unstoppable course,.
After such inward, personal musicality, the aural spectacle of Respighi’s Roman Festivals came as more than a shock. Yes, we were impressed by the sheer size of the assembled forces, with so many extras in terms of percussion, brass. piano, organ and the rest (in the two subsequent tone-poems of this Roman trilogy we would also hear a mandolin and a nightingale serenading a cuckoo), and Symphony Hall was the perfect venue for this sonic extragavanza; but for all the relentless power of the sound under Yamada, we wondered where the musical values actually were. I was kept waiting for the film to begin.
The musical quality of Fountains of Rome and finally Pines of Rome was much higher, Respighi creating genuine atmosphere as his smaller-scale pieces usually do (try the Botticelli Triptych, as an example). Here we could relish impressionistic woodwind solos in dreamy nightscapes, well-driven rhythmic exuberance, and at least appreciate how well Respighi’s extragavanza had been rehearsed, and how judicious was Yamada’s balancing of these intricate textures.
Christopher Morley
The soprano is donating her personal archives to the school where she studied.
The Renée Fleming Archives, which document Fleming’s ongoing career from its beginning, include selected correspondence, press clippings and magazine features, press kits, programs, performance and professional engagement materials, video performances, memorabilia, and iconography. The archives will be part of the Peter Jay Sharp Special Collections at Juilliard, which also include the Jennie Tourel and Soulima Stravinsky Collections as well as many other notable collections. The Special Collections are housed in the school’s Lila Acheson Wallace Library. In appreciation of Fleming’s generous donation, Juilliard will exhibit materials from the collection once every two years.
“I’m gratified that Juilliard, which has nurtured so many artists, will provide a central home for my archive,” Fleming said. “The world of music has undergone radical change, and I’ve observed that evolution first-hand. I have often forged my own way, on a path that hasn’t always conformed to a standard model. My hope is that this archive will be a useful resource for students, scholars, or music lovers who want to know more about my own experience as an artist.”
More here.
In next season’s portfolio of South Bank events, Daniel Barenboim will perform the complete Beethoven Piano Trios together with his violinist son Michael Barenboim and the cellist Kian Soltani.
Pianist Víkingur Ólafsson, violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja and composer Bryce Dessner are named as SB associate artists.
Andris Nelsons and the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig will stage a Bruckner focus.
That’s what people were being charged on the street around last night’s extravaganza, we hear.
Sentended to three years in prison for crimes against women committed while head of the Munich academy of music, Siegfried Mauser skipped over the Austrian border, waving his dual nationality. The Austrians say they cannot deport him to Germany because he is their citizen.
So Mauser stays out of jail, still laughing at the legal system.
His lawyers have now asked the Austrian courts to take over the administration of his sentence.
More here.
At the time of his arrest, he had just been appointed head of the Salzburg Mozarteum.
The Russian state has sold its Melodiya archives in a non-contested auction.
The sale price was 329.6 million rubles, which is a little over $5 million. But the two buildings that house the Melodiya recordings – at Karamyshevskaya embankment, 44, and Tverskaya Boulevard, 24/1 – are valued at 300-350 million.
So the recordings were essentially given away for free with the real estate.
The buyer is a company called ‘Formaks’, which appears to be a deal broker, founded in 2015. The owners are named Mikhail Sukontsev and Dmitry Smirnov.
Tragic to see a century of sound being given away for less than a song, in a deal that has no public scrutiny.
The cellist Ida Riegels won a Danish Radio award this week for her achievements as a cellist and cyclist.
She performed 40 concerts in 30 days across 700 km.
And she likes to bring her bike with her on stage (watch here.)
