Peter Biggs, an advertising man from Melbourne, has been named CEO of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.
He was formerly a board member of the Melbourne SO, which might not be the best thing to put on one’s CV given that band’s turbulence.
There were more than 100 applications for the job. NZ is one of the first countries to be Covid-free.
Biggs retired from advertising in 2014 to return to his Kiwi roots.
Nothing like it. Ever.
We’re delighted to report that the Canadian cellist Denis Brott, 69, taken into intensive care in a critical condition more than a month ago, has been released from hospital.
He was 45 days in ICU, 38 of them on a ventilator.
Almost the last festival to go.
Press release:
Jackson, WY, May 13, 2020 – Grand Teton Music Festival (GTMF) announced today the cancellation of its summer festival in favor of an immersive filmed experience that will be streamed on August 21, 22, and 23 – what would have been the final days of the 2020 Festival.
… In August 2020, safety permitting, a smaller group of GTMF musicians will come together under the baton of Music Director Donald Runnicles to record and film Music from the Mountains, three concerts of inspiring music in Walk Festival Hall. The repertoire will
provisionally include music by Beethoven, Mozart, Copland, and Ravel, as well as works from some of the important female composers due to be performed at this year’s Festival. The programs will stream online on August 21, 22 and 23, and will appear on TV in the fall.
Music Director Donald Runnicles comments: ‘The world is craving beauty and serenity in this moment of great uncertainty; and for us to make music this August for our audiences, in whatever configuration is safe and feasible, will be a joy for me and our wonderful GTMF
musicians. May Music from the Mountains inspire us through the great repertoire of past and present, reaffirming the profound bond of humanity that prevails even through the hardest of times.’
Interim Executive Director, Simon Woods, comments: ‘Over recent weeks, we’ve been dreaming about what a virtual summer season could look and sound like, and how we could fulfill our mission in ways other than through live concerts. With great music-making exquisitely filmed, interviews and other filmed footage, we hope to bring into people’s homes the unique magic of music, people and nature that makes Grand Teton Music Festival so very special.’
From the future memoirs of Brinton Smith, principal cello of the Houston Symphony Orchestra:
Some people will notice I’m using a different cello for the Houston Symphony living room concert next week.
It’s a long story. Exactly two months ago, on March 5th I played my last concert before everything started shutting down. I was the soloist for Esa Pekka Salonen’s Mania with the wonderful Jerry Hou and the Rice Contemporary Ensemble. I don’t usually play this kind of repertoire, but I thought I should push myself to try something out of my musical comfort zone.
The piece is insanely hard – melodies endlessly at the end of the fingerboard alternating with perpetuo writing with non-repeating patterns at breakneck tempi. Five minutes before I was to go onstage I put my cello down, stepped over it on my way to wash my hands and heard a crack behind me. A large section of the front of my cello had come off. I can only guess that maybe the very corner of my right heel caught the edge? I had injured my left foot that day – possibly a broken bone since it has taken months to heal – and was not quite on balance.
To turn around and see your cello in pieces is one of the worst feelings. To do this five minutes before an already stressful concert is only worse. I considered cancelling, but Jerry and the talented students had put hours of work in the score and the audience was sitting there waiting (including, somewhat randomly, composers John Harbison, William Bolcom, and Hans Jensen). Norman Fischer and my student, Russell Houston both valiantly offered their cellos despite my being 0 for 1 in keeping cellos intact, and I ended up playing the solo on Russell’s cello after taking a minute to get acquainted with it. It was not too terrifying because I figured if I sounded OK, it’s a win, and if I sound bad, I had a good excuse. But it was all I could do to keep my mind on the performance, knowing that when I got offstage I would have to deal with my cello’s gruesome injury. I joked that the challenges of the piece caused my cello to commit suicide…
The repair, though it looked worse than it was, will take months. The best New York luthiers all have major repair projects stacked up and most wouldn’t have been able to start working on my cello for many weeks. Luckily my friend Ken Kuo was able to convince the wonderful Stefan Valcuha to juggle things to fit it into his schedule. Since I was swamped with teaching, my wife took it to New York on March 8 on an overnight trip and Ken personally drove it to Stefan’s house in New Jersey (I can’t say enough for what a good friend Ken has been in my time of crisis, as well as my wife flying into New York for me just as covid exploded. Fortunately she was not infected).
A few days later, the US shut down and the concerts I was racing to have it back for all disappeared. But had Evelyn not gone when she did, the cello might still be stranded in Houston, still broken. Luckily Stefan’s workshop is in his house so he was able to keep working through all this. The top is in one piece again now, and finally back on the cello. It is almost whole again and I hope things will have settled down enough that I can go to retrieve it in early June. My cello (Gaetano Pasta, Brescia, c1715) has had a hard 300 years with more and worse historical cracks on the top than this, so it won’t really change the value and I’m hoping it won’t make much of a difference in the sound. We’ll see…
This cello has been my constant companion for 11 years. It is a dead tree with no leaves – just a thing, but I spent fewer days apart from it than even from my wife and daughter. It connects to you like your own arm. To lose it for months, to damage that I can only blame myself for, and then to watch the world shut down and all of us to lose all the music that meant so much to us … It all sent me to a rather dark place for many weeks, and my hands went fallow.
It is only my promise to the Houston Symphony to play this concert that has dragged me back into being a cellist. My first two days back were spent going through all of Book 2 of Gruetzmacher- painful without a thumb callus! I have not lost perspective- I am grateful my friends and family are well, and distraught for those we have lost, but this has been a strange personal journey to go through. Hopefully one month from today, everyone’s lives will be better and my cello and I will be back together again.
Meantime, next week you will hear my ‘old’ cello, which I played in the New York Philharmonic and my first years in Houston. Both the maker and the age are unknown, but I guess around 200 years old. Like a jilted lover thrust back into your life, we are slowly and awkwardly becoming reacquainted and learning how to dance again… So that is the story. The moral, of course, is never try anything new!! 
The Hessische Staatstheater in Wiesbaden aims to be the first theatre in Germany the resume concerts after the lockdown, starting Monday.
It claims to have full support of the local health authority, operating under the following conditions:
– Every ticket holder must leave a name, address and telephone number.
– Seats are sold in rows. Places are allocated in the evening. There must be a distance of three seats between neighbors who do not belong to the same household. A row of seats will be blocked between two rows of seats.
– A mouth and nose cover must be worn inside the theater building.
– Hygiene rules, such as sneeze and cough etiquette and a distance of 1.5 m from other visitors and theater staff, must be observed.
– There is a new routing system to ensure minimum distance.
– Admission starts at 7 p.m. The box office opens at 6.30.
– Disinfection dispensers are available in the entrance area and in the toilets.
– The cloakrooms remain closed.
– Sanitary facilities may only be used by one person at a time.
– The restaurant will not be open in the foyer, but in the colonnades. Pre-orders are not possible. The foyer remains closed.
The new normal?
The family of Gabriel Bacquier has announced his passing:
C’est avec une infinie tristesse que nous nous associons à Sylvie Oussenko-Bacquier pour vous annoncer le décès de Gabriel Bacquier, légende de l’opéra, ce matin, mercredi 13 [ ] 2020, dans sa quatre-vingt-seizième année à son domicile à Lestre, Manche. Il restera à jamais dans nos cœurs et cela fut une chance immense que d’avoir pu le côtoyer ces dernières années…
He would have turned 96 at the weekend.
Bacquier was a star in Brussels and Paris long before he was brought to America as the High Priest in Samson et Dalila- Chicago in 1962 and the Met two years later. He was reinvited to the Met for 18 successive seasons, unprecedented for a Frenchman.
He made numerous recordings.
The death has been reported of the American bass John Macurdy, one of the unsung heroes of the Metropolitan Opera.
After making a comprimario debut in Ballo in Maschera in 1962, he gave more than 1,000 performances in such roles as Ramfis in Aïda, the Commendatore in Don Giovanni, Prince Gremin in Eugene Onegin, Count des Grieux in Manon and much else.
He sang opposite Jon Vickers in Die Walküre and was called back in his 70s to sing Hagen in Götterdämmerung, under James Levine.
Absolute stalwart.
Many of the world’s leading cellists will play a tribute to the late Lynn Harrell on May 21 at 2:00pm NY time on the Carnegie Hall feed.
Those taking part include Yo-Yo Ma, Mischa Maisky, Gautier Capucon, Daniel Müller-Schott, Alisa Weilerstein, Alban Gerhardt, Christian Poltera, Sheku Kanneh-Mason, Zlatomir Fung, Johannes Moser, and Jan Vogler, who is pulling it all together
The plan is to perform Klengel’s Hymnus for 12 cellos, a movement of Villa-Lobos’ Bachianas Brasilieras No. 1, and the Popper Requiem.
The episode will be streamed on the hall’s website, Facebook and YouTube.
Lovely gesture.
The Broadway League confirmed last night that theatres will remain shut until after Labor Day. That’s the official line.
Privately, they told journalists that there will be no more shows this year and no reopening planned until some way into 2021.
A revival of Neil Simon’s Plaza Suite, with Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker, has been rescheduled for March 19-July 18, 2021.
Where does that leave the Met? In the same boat.
Nothing before springtime.
