We’ve been locked down for seven weeks now and I’ve been saving something special for the 50th entry in our daily series.
When the viola starts playing in Bohuslav Martinu’s Rhapsody-Concerto, the world stops in its tracks.
This all-Czech performance is as good as it gets.
There is no greater underrated composer than Martinu.
From the blurb:
The Geneva pianist Dominique Weber, a professor at HEM, has died suddenly after a prolonged and painful illness. He was 63.
Leon Fleisher’s assistant at Peabody, he made a dazzling New York debut where he was likened to Lipatti. But a hand injury put paid to his performing career and he turned his attention to teaching. He took over Eduardo Vercelli’s classes at HEM and at the Conservatoire Tibor Varga in Sion in the early 1990s.
The hapless Kennedy Center has cancelled a 14-week run of the mega-hit musical.
The Kennedy Center and the producers of Hamilton have made the difficult decision to postpone the entire upcoming 14-week engagement, which was to play the Opera House June 16–September 20, 2020. The production cannot currently be presented in accordance with the health and safety guidelines set forth by government officials and the CDC.
Lithuania resumed live concerts this weekend under strict distancing regulations.
The audience, in their cars, were told to swish their windscreen wipers as a token of applause.
This is not going to work in classical music.
A list of 263 French musicians, led by pianist David Fray and the Modigliani, Belcea, Ebène (pictured) and Diotima string quartets, has written to President Macron calling for financial aid for freelance artists.
Extract:
We are not used to expressing ourselves in words. Our language is that of notes, phrasing, articulations, bowsings… We must, however, describe and name a situation which leaves us speechless. Because we are disarmed. Like everyone, faced with this pandemic, its mourning, this mysterious and dreaded second wave.
And of course, destitute, in the first sense, that is to say, without the material resources which until now sustained our daily lives….
Read on here.
Here is the complete list of signatories:
Accordéonistes Fanny Vicens, Félicien Brut ; Altistes Lise Berthaud, Adrien Boisseau, Nicolas Carles, Gérard Caussé, Miguel Da silva, Pierre Franck, Mayeul Girard, Léa Hennino, Mathieu Herzog, Adrien La Marca, Isabelle Lequien, Michel Michalakakos, Beatrice Muthelet, Jean Sautereau, Diederik Suys, Antoine Tamestit ; Bassonistes Pascal Gallois, Evolène Kiener, Amiel Prouvost ; Clarinettistes Paul Meyer, Raphaël Sévère ; Contrebassistes Laurène Durantelle, Edouard Macarez ; Corniste David Guerrier ; Flûtiste Patrick Gallois ; Guitaristes Thibaut Garcia, Christian Rivet ; Harpiste Isabelle Moretti ; Ondes Martenot Thomas Bloch ; Percussionniste Daniel Ciampolini ; Pianistes Pascal Amoyel, Arthur Ancelle, Nicholas Angelich, Fanny Azzuro, Ludmila Berlinskaya, David Bismuth, Florent Boffard, Stefan Cassar, Bertand Chamayou, Emmanuel Christien, Jean Philippe Collard, Jean Marie Cottet, Geoffroy Couteau, Michel Dalberto, Celimene Daudet, Claire Désert, Tanguy De Williencourt, Gaspard Dehaene, Shani Diluka, Jérôme Ducros, François Dumont, Nina de Felice, David Fray, Jean-Paul Gasparian, Julien Gernay, Nathanael Gouin, François-Frederic Guy, Jean-François Heisser, Emmanuelle Jaspart, David Kadouch, Nicolas Kruger, Adam Laloum, Claire-Marie Le Guay, Eric Le Sage, Jean-Marc Luisada, Vahan Mardirossian, Ismaël Margain, Selim Mazari, Dominique Merlet, Nathalia Milstein, Paul Montag, Jérémie Moreau, Jean-Frederic Neuburger, Josquin Otal, Denis Pascal, Jean-Claude Pennetier, Alain Planès, Anne Queffélec, Pierre Reach, Jacques Rouvier, Lise de la Salle, Emmanuel Strosser, Alexandre Tharaud, Audrey Vigoureux ; Quatuors Quatuor Agate (Adrien Jurkovic, Thomas Descamps, Raphaël Pagnon, Simon Iachemet), Quatuor Akos (Alexis Gomez, Aya Murakami, Théo Delianne, Cyrielle Golin), Quatuor Akilone (Emeline Concé, Elise De-Bendelac, Tess Joly, Lucie Mercat), Quatuor Ardeo (Carole Petitdemange, Mi-sa Yang, Yuko Hara, Joëlle Martinez), Quatuor Arod (Jordan Victoria Alexandre Vu Tanguy Parisot Samy Rachid), Quautor Belcea (Corina Belcea, Axel Schacher, Krzysztof Chorzelski, Antoine Lederlin), Quatuor Bergen (Mathilde Klein, Sakkan Sarasap, Mirabelle le Thomas et Magdalena Probe), Quatuor Chiaroscuro (Alina Ibragimova Pablo Hernan Beneti, Emilie Hörnlund, Claire Thirion), Quatuor Confluence (Daniel Vlashi ,Vincent Forestier, Pierre-Antoine Codron , Tom Almerge-Zerillo), Quatuor Danel (Marc Danel, Gilles Millet, Vlad Bogdanas ,Yovan Markovitch), Quatuor Diotima (Yun Peng Zhao, Constance Ronzatti, Franck Chevalier,Pierre Morlet), Quatuor Elmire (Cyprien Brod, Nam Nguyen Issey Nadaud Rémi Carlon), Quatuor Ebène ( Pierre Colombet, Gabriel Lemagadure, Marie Chilemme, Raphaël Merlin), Quatuor Girard (Hugues Girard, Agathe Girard, Odon Girard, Lucie Girard), Quatuor Hanson (Anton Hanson, Jules Dussap Gabrielle Lafait Simon Dechambre), Quatuor Hermès (Omer Bouchez, Elise Liu, Yung-Hsin, Lou Chang, Yan Levionnois), Quatuor Ludwig (Sébastien Surel, Manuel Doutrelant, Padrig Fauré, Anne Copéry), Quatuor Métamorphoses (Mathilde Potier, Rachel Sintzel, Jean-Baptiste Souchon, Alice Picaud), Quatuor Modigliani (Amaury Coeytaux, Loïc Rio, Laurent Marfaing, François Kieffer), Quatuor Mona (Verena Chen, Roxana Rastegar Arianna Smith Elia Cohen Weissert), Quatuor Psophos (Eric Lacrouts, Bleuenn Le Maitre, Cécile Grassi, Guillaume Martigné ), Quatuor Tana (Antoine Maisonhaute, Ivan Lebrun, Maxime Desert, Jeanne Maisonhaute), Quatuor Van Kuijk (Nicolas Van Kuijk , Sylvain Favre-Bulle, Emmanuel François, François Robin), Quatuor Wassily (Quentin Reymond, Marine Faup-Pelot, Dominik Baranowski, Raphaël Ginzburg), Quatuor Zahir (Guillaume Berceau, Sandro Compagnon, Florent Louman, Joakim Ciesla) ; Trios Trio Chausson (Matthieu Handtschoewercker, Antoine Landowski, Boris de Larochelambert), Trio Hélios (Camille Fonteneau, Raphaël Jouan, Alexis Gournel), Trio Karenine (Fanny Robilliard, Louis Rodde, Paloma Kouider), Trio Metral (Victor, Joseph ,Justine Metral ), Trio Sora (Pauline Chenais, Angèle Legasa, Clémence de Forceville), Trio Zadig (Boris Borgolotto, Marc Girard, Garcia Ian Barber) ; Violonistes Luc-Marie Aguera, Flore-Anne Brosseau, Renaud Capuçon, Julien Chauvin, Oliver Charlier, Marina Chiche, Guillaume Chilemme, Nicolas Dautricourt, Stephanie-Marie Degand, Augustin Dumay, Amanda Favier, Ami Flammer, Pierre Fouchenneret, Sylvie Gazeau, Raphaëlle Moreau, David Moreau, Liya Petrova, Guillaume Sutre, Diana Tishchenko ; Trompettistes David Guerrier, Lucienne Renaudin Vary ; Violoncellistes Adrien Bellom, Emmanuelle Bertrand, Gautier Capuçon, Yvan Chiffoleau, Marc Coppey, Henri Demarquette, Anne Gastinel, Gary Hofmann, Christian-Pierre La Marca, Victor-Julien Laferrière, Alain Meunier, Edgar Moreau, Christophe Morin, Philippe Muller, Aurélien Pascal, Jérôme Pernoo, Astrid Siranossian, Camille Thomas ; Réalisateur Bruno Monsaingeon
As we warned before the weekend, a combination of political, health and cultural calculations have forced the deferral of the world’s foremost piano competition to October 2021, at the earliest. There was great concern in Warsaw that jurors and contestants would simply not turn up.
Here’s the aoouncement:
The 18th International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition postponed till 2021
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 18th Chopin Competition has been moved to 2021. The Competition will take place at the Warsaw Philharmonic from 2 to 23 October 2021.
Poland’s Minister of Culture and National Heritage, Piotr Gliński, together with Artur Szklener, Director of the Fryderyk Chopin Institute in Warsaw, decided to move the Competition from October 2020 to October 2021 after additional consultations with Poland’s Ministry of Health.
In the words of Artur Szklener: “We are sparing no effort to make sure that the 18th Chopin Competition will be as good as we all expected and that it will continue the great tradition forged over the decades. The Fryderyk Chopin Institute is working intensely to make the move from 2020 to 2021 run as smoothly as possible”.
The list of pianists accepted for the eliminations will remain the same. All the tickets purchased for the sold-out event remain valid.
All the details regarding the new schedule of the Competition will be made public on 14 May 2020.
This is Gergely Madaras’s home routine, up the road from me in Belsize Park.
Gergely Madaras is Music Director of the Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège and Chief Conductor of the Savaria Symphony Orchestra in Hungary.
The hugely popular Aldir Blanc, composer of ‘O Bêbado eo Equilibrista’ and many other hit songs, died this morning in Rio de Janeiro after two weeks in ICU. He was 73.
The president of Brazil is still out there at political meetings, pressing the flesh.
It’s just a short clip but he’s clearly been taught by an old-school German Kapellmeister how to handle a baton.
The players seems to be having a good time.
The fifth in a short series.
This weekend’s attempts by the Berlin Philharmonic and the Düsseldorf Symphony orchestras to put on video concerts from their main stage in reduced groups and without an audience have exposed the bankruptcy of that idea.
Yes, it was important to get out again and demonstrate the will to perform.
But the performances themselves were flaccid, dispiriting and ultimately unnecessary. I doubt we shall see any successes in that genre.
When each piece ended, the conductor dropped his arms and – nothing happened. No applause. No relief. No catharsis.
The players looked a bit stunned, disappointed, unsure of themselves.
Most unsure were the conductors.
For concerts of this small scale, they were not needed. Their presence was purely gestural.
All evidence from western governments suggests we will not see large orchestral performances again for a year or two.
So what are we to do about conductors?
Put them on furlough?
Tony Pappano has been conducting members of the Santa Cecilia orchestra from home in a video that is supposed to evoke La dolce vita but succeeds only in rubbing in the inequalities of the present situation.
A truly insensitive idea.
