Brescia is an epicentre of the Italian pandemic, with 1,278 deaths up to the end of March and fears the final total may be much higher.
The pianist Federico Colli offers heartrending Handel – ‘Lascia ch’io pianga’ – in tribute to his locked-down home town.
Some feel the right hand is a bit heavy.
The Cleveland Orchestra has just announced plans for 20/21.
Some extracts (you read them here first):
Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra have announced the 2020-21 season at Severance Hall, running from September 2020 to May 2021. In Welser-Möst’s 19th season as music director he continues explorations of works by Prokofiev and Schubert and concludes with a spring festival devoted to outsiders in art and society. The festival is centered around the Orchestra’s annual opera presentation in May 2021, in-concert performances of Verdi’s opera Otello.
Says André Gremillet, President & CEO of The Cleveland Orchestra: ‘Announcing in this time of uncertainty is doubly important. Despite the realities that the coronavirus pandemic has created today, we know that concert life around the world will reawaken and continue, and it is vital that we proceed with our plans to welcome audiences to future performances and seasons. Music and the arts offer hope, comfort, and focus for everyone going forward. Franz Welser-Möst and all of us within the Cleveland Orchestra community are dedicated to not just helping to contain and control the virus, but to being ready and able to resume everyday life with the joys and pleasures that include live concert performances. The resilience of the arts community will stand as a reflection of human creativity and compassion — and a clear signal of solidarity among artists and audience alike.’
‘Music is a special language that brings us new understanding of the world around us,” says Franz Welser-Möst. ‘In today’s uncertain times, the arts are as important as they ever have been, to provide grounding and perspective to the tumultuous world around us. Every season features new discoveries and old favorites, and the 2020-21 season is no exception. The season is filled with brand-new works and works that The Cleveland Orchestra has never played before.’
During the 2020-21 season, Franz Welser-Möst leads twelve weekends of concerts at Severance Hall. In September, he conducts programs featuring Stravinsky’s Concerto in D, Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 2 (with Yefim Bronfman as soloist), and Scriabin’s Symphony No. 2. Later in the month, he conducts a program of Morton Feldman’s Rothko Chapel (with Principal Viola Wesley Collins as soloist) along with Mozart’s Requiem and Ave verum corpus, both at home in Severance Hall and at Lincoln Center, where they will open the season’s Great Performers Series. At the start of 2021, Welser-Möst leads programs with Tchaikovsky’s Suite No.3 and Symphony No. 2, followed by the world premiere of Bernd Richard Deutsch’s Intensity, along with Sibelius’s Symphony No. 7, and Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A minor (with Leif Ove Andsnes), while in March he leads a program of two works performed for the first time by The Cleveland Orchestra, Corigliano’s Conjurer Concerto (for percussion and string orchestra, with soloist Martin Grubinger), and Korngold’s Symphony in F-sharp. In May, Welser-Möst conducts The Cleveland Orchestra in Ligeti’s Violin Concerto (with Leila Josefowicz), alongside three tone poems of Richard Strauss: Don Juan and Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks as well as the first Cleveland Orchestra performance of Macbeth.
Welser-Möst also continues his exploration of works by Sergei Prokofiev and Franz Schubert. Begun in the 2018-19 season, this examination of both well-known and lesser-known works includes programs of Prokofiev’s Sinfonia concertante (for cello and orchestra, with Principal Cello Mark Kosower) alongside Tchaikovsky’s Suite No. 3 and Magnard’s Hyme A Venus, as well as Schubert’s Symphony No. 6 appearing alongside Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 1 (with soloist Yuja Wang) and Dvořák’s A Hero’s Song.
‘Schubert and Prokofiev are very well known — and rightfully so — but for a very small portion of their overall catalogs,’ says Franz Welser-Möst. ‘We are taking the opportunity to explore those catalogs in more depth, and I think audiences will enjoy some fascinating discoveries with us. Both of these composers wrote music that is intensely personal, and filled with meaning. The Cleveland Orchestra and I have been offering some of their works, paired together, for two seasons now. And the new season continues this exploration — of their similarities and differences, and simply of how inventive they each were as composers. Both were masters of melody, harmony, and of bringing emotional weight into their music.’
From Eric Roter:
As some of you know I am a cellist and also an emergency physician in Cleveland. We are preparing for war right now and awaiting a surge, which we expect will happen within the next couple of weeks. A few weeks ago I was looking forward to recording some repertoire with my pianist and posting, but that’s not going to happen any time soon. Here is a Piatti caprice I recorded a few years ago. Hope it gives you a few moments of reprieve.
Dr Roter studied cello at Juilliard and Manhattan School of Music.
Stuck in New Zealand in a house with five others, unable to return home to the UK, the soprano emeritus is doing her bit for the planet.
Be kind, she says.
The singer, 73, has been hospitalised in London with Coronavirus, the Observer reports.
Albert K. Webster, managing director of the New York Philharmonic from 1975 to 1990, has died.
No cause has been given.
Having stepped down from the Philharmonic after Zubin Mehta’s long music directorship, Nick Webster consulted for orchestras in trouble, notably the Toronto Symphony.
In his time at the NY Phil, musicians’ pay rose from $19,760 basic to $59,280. The endowment shot up from $9.8 million to $69m and subscribers increased from 27,349 to 37,144.
