I saw Casals preside over a choral performance of this magnificent ode to nature and freedom in, I think, 1970. The Toronto principal Joseph Johnson performs it beautifully.

The Nashville Symphony has cancelled the whole of next season and sent staff and 79 musicians on furlough.

Nashville says it cannot meet its $1.2 million monthly payroll.

This bodes ill for the rest of the landscape.

Here’s what they have told subscribers and supporters:

This is one of the most difficult messages we’ve ever had to write, but we wanted to let you know first,before we released this information to the public.

Today, our Board of Directors voted to suspend all concert and event activity through July 31, 2021, and to furlough a total of 79 musicians and 49 full-time staff members, effective July 1.

Like many other businesses and organizations, the Nashville Symphony has been profoundly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic: To date, we have been forced to cancel or reschedule more than 65 concerts and events, with losses thus far caused by the pandemic projected to total $8 million, or nearly 30% of our annual income.

Since March, the Nashville Symphony’s management has been exploring every available option to ensure the long-term sustainability of the institution. In light of our current challenges, we firmly believe that today’s decision is the best course of action to ensure that the Symphony can continue serving our community in the long run.

We realize this news must be terribly disappointing to you. And we want you to know that we are working hard to support our musicians and staff through this difficult transition.

Without the ability to perform for the public, we are unable to generate essential operating revenue. And without that revenue, the Nashville Symphony faces a threat to its very existence. Until we have certainty that our economy can remain open, and that audiences are ready and able to return to large public gatherings, attempting to restart concert activity poses significant risks to our institution.

Welcome to the 84th work in the Slipped Disc/Idagio Beethoven Edition

Piano sonata no 26, ‘Les Adieux’, opus 81a (1809)

The last of Beethoven’s truly popular sonatas, it has three movements titled: farewell, absence, return. In other words, a piece of music intended to appeal to anyone who has parted from a loved one, endured a long emptiness and embraced a reunion. Simple, really.

Except nothing about Beethoven’s descriptions is unequivocal. He wrote the sonata as Vienna was under siege by the French. It was a horrible time for the composer, living in his brother’s underground cellar and barely able to create. He reported to his publisher: ‘I tell you that since May 4th, I have brought into the world little that is connected; only here and there a fragment. The whole course of events has affected me body and soul…. What a disturbing, wild life around me; nothing but drums, cannons, men, misery of all sorts.’

Yet his publisher gave the sonata a French title and Beethoven went along with it. The subtitles are in both French and German. Above the three first chords Beethoven wrote the syllables ‘Le-be-wohl’, German for farewell. He’s either ambivalent about the Austrian withdrawal, or he’s upset about having French culture and language in Vienna. Not until Gustav Mahler in Das Lied von der Erde will we see a composer caught in such agonised indeterminacy over an unspecified parting. What, exactly, was Beethoven suffering? The first chord is tentative, the second weak and the third deeply sombre. The official Austrian narrative has it that the sonata laments the forced departure of the Archduke Rudolf, Beethoven’s friend and patron. He might have been sad about it, but not that sad. Whatever the sonata is about, it is neither autobiography or self-analysis. Beethoven is telling, for the first and only time in a sonata, a story.

There are almost 100 recordings to choose from and the philosophical differences are not deep enough to warrant prolonged discussion. Mostly, it’s a matter of taste. Arthur Schnabel is a masterful, no-fuss storyteller who grips the attention with slight shifts of emphasis and a perpetual twinkle in his fingers. Claudio Arrau winds up the tension, Emil Gilels the pathos. Among the older pianists I find myself returning inexorably to Arthur Rubinstein although my reasons may be more sentimental than music-critical. Rubi was such a My Way pianist. Nobody has a touch like his.

Given the relative lack of profundity, any of the prolific mid-century pianists will satisfy – among them, Barenboim, Ashkenazy, Brendel, Kempff, Pollini and Schiff.

Two living pianists stand out. The American veteran Richard Goode has a sober authority that dispels extraneous thoughts about Beethoven under siege and allows us to focus on music as music. The young Frenchman David Kadouche (2019) seems to breathe more easily in this sonata than many of his contemporaries: his interpretation has an organic feel about it, relieved of historical considerations.

Variations in D major on an Original Theme for Piano op. 76

Also known as the Turkish March, this set consists of variations Beethoven wrote on a theme of his own devising, nothing to do with the Turks. He used it elsewhere as incidental music to the play ‘The Ruins of Athens’ and it achieved lasting popularity.

Ronald Brautigam plays them with great restraint on a fortepiano. Alfred Brendel clatters them against the ramparts. Between these extremes, the French pianist Brigitte Engerer has a deft and delicate touch that perfectly suits these trivial morsels. And Sviatoslav Richter just does his own thing.

Placido Domingo’s Operalia competition for young singers, due to have been held in Israel this October, has been called off owing to the Covid pandemic.

Israel is virtually Covid-free, but there are likely to be constraints on contestants arriving from other countries.

The Operalia organisation posted:

Due to the ongoing health concerns and global uncertainty generated by the COVID-19 Pandemic, we have taken the difficult decision to postpone this year’s Operalia Edition until 2021.

We are deeply saddened by this resolution but the safety and well-being of everyone involved in the planning, traveling and overall development of any given Operalia Edition, especially that of our competitors, jurors and staff are our first and foremost priorities.

To our dear audience, our friends and followers, we wish you good health and safety above all, and we hope that you will also return next year.

Lima Symphony Orchestra in Ohio has picked Andrew Crust as its chief conductor. He’s a former Salzburg Young Conductors semifinalist.

Bozeman Symphony in Montana has chosen Norman Huynh to fill the vacancy left when his predecessor departed under a cloud.

The English poet and Anglican clergyman John Newton (1725–1807) was press-ganged into the Navy as a lad and wound up on the wrong side of the Atlantic, where he began trading in slaves.

He carried on at this pursuit until well into his 30s, when he had a spiritual revelation and became ordained as a priest.

His legacy includes two great hymns – “Amazing Grace” and “Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken”. Newton became a passionate campaigner for the abolition of slavery and this first of his hymns was embraced by many African-American denominations.

But he started out as a slaver, right?

So, by present logic, his statue ought to be torn down.
Along with that of George Washington, who bought and sold slaves all his life.