First La Scala, now Parma.

UPDATE: And La Fenice. Plus the Communale at Bologna.

Here’s the Parma statement.

The Teatro Regio di Parma informs that in view of the evolution of the epidemic phenomenon linked to the spread of the Coronavirus COVID-19 infection, in compliance with the order of the Emilia-Romagna Region, in order to reduce the possibility of possible contagions, it provides for the suspension of the suspension of activities open to the public, including the ticket office and guided tours, until 1 March 2020

The meeting with Guido Barbieri scheduled on February 29th is suspended and will be rescheduled. Martina Filjak’s concert with the Solisti di Zagreb scheduled on March 1th is suspended pending new communication on a possible recovery on other date to be defined.

In addition, the subscription campaign to the Verdi Festival 2020, with the prelation reserved for subscribers to the Verdi Festival 2019, originally scheduled from February 27, will take place from 2 to 5 March.

It is clear that the usual activities of the Teatro Regio in Parma at the offices will continue without interruption and that all offices and structures will remain open according to the scheduled times.

The Teatro Regio di Parma also invites responsible behavior following the indications issued by the Ministry of Health, the Institute of Health and the Emilia-Romagna Region.

 

Il Teatro Regio di Parma informa che in considerazione dell’evoluzione del fenomeno epidemico legato al diffondersi dell’infezione Coronavirus COVID-19, in osservanza all’ordinanza della Regione Emilia-Romagna, al fine di ridurre le possibilità di eventuali contagi, dispone la sospensione delle attività aperte al pubblico, comprese lo sportello di Biglietteria e le visite guidate, fino al 1 marzo 2020 compreso.

L’incontro con Guido Barbieri in programma il 29 febbraio è sospeso e sarà recuperato in altra data che verrà prossimamente comunicata. Il concerto di Martina Filjak con I Solisti di Zagabria in programma il giorno 1 marzo è sospeso in attesa di nuove comunicazioni su un eventuale recupero in altra data da definirsi.

Inoltre la campagna di abbonamenti al Festival Verdi 2020, con la prelazione riservata agli abbonati al Festival Verdi 2019, originariamente prevista dal 27 febbraio, avrà luogo dal 2 al 5 marzo.

Si precisa che le consuete attività del Teatro Regio di Parma presso gli uffici e i laboratori, proseguiranno senza interruzione e che tutti gli uffici e le strutture rimarranno aperti secondo gli orari programmati.

Il Teatro Regio di Parma invita, inoltre, ad adottare un comportamento responsabile seguendo le indicazioni emanate dal ministero della Salute, dall’Istituto superiore di sanità e dalla Regione Emilia-Romagna.

From Hugh Kerr, of Edinburgh Music Review:

 

Can a cellist conduct with his back to the orchestra? This was the question I asked when I looked at the programme and saw that the French-German cellist Nicolas Altstaedt was planning to conduct the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, playing the cello while conducting the orchestra.

Orchestras are well able to play without conductors, indeed the SCO is used to playing with only a lead from the first violin. I am reminded of an old friend of mine Andrew Woodburn from Ayrshire who went from being a brass player in the Newmilns Brass Band to principal horn with a leading London orchestra.The orchestra were getting fed up with a famous conductor who was giving them a hard time in rehearsal, so when the concert began they taught the conductor a lesson.

The work began with a horn solo. The conductor leapt on to the podium, raised his baton, gave the cue dramatically and nothing happened! He looked across to Andrew who was nonchalantly polishing his horn. The conductor stomped off the stage. Andrew picked up his horn and began to play and the orchestra followed him. The conductor rushed on to the stage and caught up with the orchestra, at the end Andrew said to the conductor, “we thought we would remind you,we make the music round here”!

Back to the SCO concert. It began with Beethoven’s overture Coriolan. Our cellist conductor conducted with vigour and the SCO played with passion. Nicolas Altstaedt then played – and attempted to conduct – the Shostakovich Cello Concerto No1, written not long after Stalin’s death and now a concert favourite. Altstaedt did turn around and wave them off at the beginning but after that he concentrated on his cello, apart from occasional waves. In a recent interview Simon Rattle said “conducting is one of the great fake professions”! Atstaedt is very lively and very much on top of the music, pulling in every player and setting the pace. He probably did all that in rehearsal. It went fine at the beginning with the four notes that are Shostakovich’s musical signature and he seemed to work well with the SCO. I am now listening to his recording of Shostakovich with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and I have to say that the SCO compare very well to the Berlin orchestra.

After the interval we were treated to Ramifications for string orchestra written in 1968 by the modernist Hungarian composer Gyorgy Ligeti. Nicolas Altstaedt told us we shouldn’t be afraid of listening to new work and he had been listening to Ligeti since he was 8 years old. I can see it’s clever splitting the strings into two groups and playing them a quarter tone apart, to create a mesmeric effect of soundscape. I have to say it underwhelms me as it did some of the audience I spoke to. Fortunately we finished with Schubert’s great Symphony No 4 known as the tragic symphony. Altstaedt is a very good conductor and a very good cellist but I’m still not convinced you can do both.

Message from the theatre:

Si comunica che in relazione all’evolversi della diffusione del Coronavirus le rappresentazioni del Teatro alla Scala sono sospese a titolo cautelativo in attesa delle disposizioni delle autorità competenti.
Per informazioni relative alla riprogrammazione degli spettacoli e al rimborso dei biglietti si prega di scrivere all’indirizzo lascalarisponde@fondazionelascala.it o chiamare il servizio infotel +39 02 72 003 744 (servizio attivo tutti i giorni dalle 9 alle 18).
Per altre informazioni si prega di consultare il sito www.teatroallascala.org e i social media del Teatro.

We inform you that in relation to the evolution of the Coronavirus spread, the performances of the Teatro alla Scala are suspended as a precaution waiting for the instructions of the competent authorities.
For information relating to the reprogramming of the shows and the refund of the tickets, please write to the address lascalarisponde@fondazionelascala.it or call the Infotel service +39 02 72 003 744 (everyday from 9am till 6pm).
For further information, please visit the website www.teatroallascala.org

 

The UK Musicians Union has put up a petition to the UK Government, calling for a special passport to be issued to musicians, allowing freedom of movemenet between the UK and EU.

So far, 71,700 have signed.

You can too, here.

This is the Herald this morning.

Opening paragraphs:

MUSIC tuition is in danger of becoming the preserve of the wealthy as soaring fees put it out of reach of thousands of pupils.

Campaigners are now demanding it is classed as a core education subject as new figures show numbers have plummeted where councils have introduced fees, with some areas down by 45%.

Under current rules, the Scottish Government classes instrumental music tuition as a non-core part of the education curriculum…

Read on here.

The attention-seeking pianist came on stage in sunglasses at her Vancouver recital on Friday night and refused to acknowledge the audience.

They grew increasingly resentful.

Here’s a vivid post from the conductor Tania Miller:

Last night I attended a Vancouver Recital Society concert with Yuja Wang performing. I was looking forward to hearing her perform. When she walked out on stage with sunglasses and a direct approach to the piano, quick bow and immediate performance with no acknowledgement of the audience, I thought it was quirky. Some of the audience tittered at the thought that this was some sort of cool new dress code.

But with each subsequent work that she performed, she stood up, bowed quickly without a smile, and when she left the stage she walked with clear body language that shut the audience out. When the audience continued to clap to bring her back out on stage, she refused. The effect was shocking. As each subsequent work was performed and this pattern continued, it became clear that she was shutting the door on her audience.

I heard later that she had trouble with the Canadian border getting into Canada. She was obviously angry. But Yuja Wang, you must not forget that the music is the most important treasure. And that some are bestowed with the ability to share it and it is an honour and a blessing to do so. Your innocent audience, some donning masks to protect themselves from the potential Coronavirus, came to be in your presence for this sold-out concert, and to hear the music and extraordinary talent that you had to share.

Instead they experienced the rejection of an artist withholding the permission to share in the feeling, transcendence and the shared emotion of the beauty, joy, and humanity of music.

UPDATE: Yuja: I was humiliated

UPDATE2 Conductor apologises for dissing Yuja

Welcome to the 37th work in the Slipped Disc/Idagio Beethoven Edition

Beethoven: 5th symphony (part 3)

With the coming of stereo at the end of the 1950s, performance of the Beethoven symphonies split down the middle – traditional, large orchestras to one side, small ensembles and period instruments to the other.

It took a while for the period pack to reach Beethoven. They spent the 60s in Haydn and the 70s in Mozart before anyone dared to address the big B. I think Monica Huggett and her Hanover Band – the LP cover said ‘on original instruments’ might have been first. Recorded at All Saints Church in Tooting, London, in May 1983, it’s an unusually clean performance for its time with few cracks in the valveless horns and good ensemble throughout. Huggett, primarily a violinist, was also concertmaster for Ton Koopman at the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra. The adventurous recording label was Nimbus.

 

Four years later, the much more famous Christopher Hogwood and his Academy of Ancient Music released Beethoven’s fifth on Decca, with less of a bang than a whimper. The tempi are unconvincing and the string quality sandpapery. Neither the original pitch nor Hogwood’s direction sets the imagination afire and some passages in the finale practically dissemble before our ears.

Roger Norrington with the London Classical Players in 1988 is far more subtle, thoughtful and introspective. This might be the quietest Beethoven Fifth ever made and the speeds are slow slow at times that the texture becomes transparent and one glimpses effects never heard before – like land exposed by a receding sea. It lacks the sweep of a Walter or a Szell, but the experience is nonetheless rewarding.

Nothing subtle about Sir John Eliot Gardiner and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique in 1994. This Panzer approach to Beethoven, with all guns blazing, is unquestionably exciting so long as you’re not about to get rolled over by the advancing tanks. Where the rush comes unstuck is in the second movement, which ought to arouse feelings of affection and sounds more like rape. Several on our panel pick Gardiner as their first choice. The playing is first-class.

Frans Brüggen with the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century (1992) offers a measured counterpoint, a pastoral narrative. Nikolaus Harnoncourt (1990), with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, is so unfussy as to be almost prosaic, although the symphony wakes up in due course. For a sugar-free, vegan approach, try Jos van Immerseel and Anima Eterna Brugge (2008).

Meanwhile, mainstream conductors were stealing the early-music movement’s clothes. Simon Rattle with the Vienna Philharmonic and, more consistently David Zinman with the Zurich Tonhalle orchestra were preaching period practice and tempi for performance on modern instruments. Zinman’s cycle is the most impressive of its time and his account of the fifth symphony is darkly memorable.

Among the unreconstructed big-band practitioners, Sir Georg Solti and the Chicago Symphony stand out for sheer vigour and vitality. Chicago, in Solti’s heyday, was the loudest orchestra in America and the conductor’s impetus brooked no resistance. Not for Solti the arguments of period authenticity. ‘Why should I prefer replica 19th century instruments that were made the week before last to the finest valve horns of the 19th century?’ he once demanded. His symbiosis with Chicago was founded on mutual underdog perceptions. Chicago resented its secondary cultural status to New York and Solti was infuriated by record critics who referred to him as ‘second only to Karajan’.

In the fifth symphony, recorded in 1975, these sentiments coalesced into a performance of massive power and beauty, a paradigm of one of the great conductor-orchestra partnerships. Every single one of the principal players is world class.

 

Among later interpreters, Mariss Jansons with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, on Japan tour in 2012 stands out for clarity and cohesion. Jansons spent hours adjusting the placement of seats in the orchestra, a millimetre to the right or left, to achieve the exact blend of sound that he wanted to hear. The playing standard is the highest in Germany outside Berlin, and is raised a notch or two on tour as the orchestra competes in Suntory Hall for yen supremacy – a match-winning performance.

So – final pairings for the Fifth Symphony, in order of opposites:

Erich and Carlos Kleiber, in that order

Nikisch and Richard Strauss

Bruno Walter and Otto Klemperer

Furtwängler and Karajan – both 1954

Huggett and Norrington

Solti and Jansons.

If you’re the type of person who never drives without a safety-belt or leaves the house without pushing the door twice, you may find kindred souls in the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra’s conductor-free performance of October 2012. On the other hand, you might just loosen a couple of buttons on your shirt and decide to live a little.