The funny old world of Erik Satie.

 

A replacement season was rolled out today, with a small ensembles performing online without an audience.

‘It’s totally different,’ said Matías Tarnopolsky, president and CEO. ‘Because of COVID, it’s not safe to convene a large orchestra in a large concert hall with audiences present.’

Ensembles of 25 to 30 musicians will perform at an empty Verizon Hall or outdoors at the Mann Center, filmed for online transmission. Yannick Nézet-Séguin will conduct seven concerts. Guest artists will include Emanuel Ax, Angel Blue, Yefim Bronfman, Lang Lang and Branford Marsalis.

They’re calling it ‘reimagined’. Just like every other orchestra.

 

One of the most intriguing lost programs made by Glenn Gould has just been retrieved on Youtube.

Watch now before someone manages to take it down.

Gould says: ‘I think Mozart, especially in his later years, was not a very good composer’.

He goes on to say: A five year-old could have written this…’

The clue to tongue positioning in cheek may be that phrase ‘in his later years’. Mozart never lived to see later years.

The controversial Swiss-based violinist was pointedly ignored at the fat-cat Lucerne Festival when she tried to draw a broader context for the present pandemic. She writes:

In yesterday’s podium discussion in Lucerne about COVID and music I tried to point out that the COVID crisis is the general rehearsal of the climate crisis which will be much much worse.

 

The Italian writer Ornella Volta, a friend of Fellini and Pasolini, died in Paris on August 16 at an advanced age.

In 1981 she founded the Archives of the Erik Satie Foundation, becoming the ecentric composer’s greatest expert and advocate.

 

Scientists from the Charité Berlin have agreed a new Covid protocol for orchestral layout which will be applied in the new season by the Berlin Philharmonic and the Deutsches Sinfonieorchester.

The significant changes are that strings will play one metre apart between seats instead of 1.5m. Wind players will maintain 1.5m distance, reduced from two metres. And the brass section will no longer require plexiglass partitions.

The air conditioning will operate at HEPA (High Efficiency Particulate Air Filter).

 

The death is reported of Maurice Kaplow, long-standing conductor of New York City Ballet.

As a viola player in the Philadelphia Orchestra in the mid-1950s, he was encouraged by Pierre Monteux to take up the baton. Where other maestros of that era put on airs. Monteux forever searched for potential heris to continue the tradition. Neville Marriner, the most prominent of his discoveries, told me several times of Monteux’s personal humility and his devotion to continuity.

Kaplow was another who found fulfilment through the little Frenchman who, in 1913, gave the world premiere of The Rite of Spring.

More here.

 

 

The LA-based composer Michael Robinson remembers a fallen New York institution:

…. Will never forget how one day a frightening, unhinged, and loudly aggressive man entered the store, and we were all taken aback, not sure what to do. Before anyone could phone the police, Joseph came down the staircase to see what the commotion was, and without any visible hesitation metamorphosed from a aristocratic, restrained, and meticulously mannered shop owner into someone like Muhammad Ali, storming towards the much younger intruder with arms waving in a menacing manner while shouting for him to get out, leaving all of us with mouths open in astonishment at his instantaneous transformation. Mr. Patelson had scared the Alfred Garrievich Schnittke out of the fellow who turned and hurried out…

Read on here.

Joseph Patelson

 

The Dunedin Consort’s Jo Buckley shares with Slipped Disc the excitements of their flight from Covid-rising France, along with an exclusive picture of a baroque ensemble on a fishing trawler:
When we headed out to France on Wednesday morning, we knew there was a risk of quarantining upon return — the press had been speculating about it for a week already, but with nothing certain either way we felt bound to honour our engagement with the Festival in Lessay. This would be our first performance since February and our first concert income since before lockdown. Live performances are like gold dust these days and most musicians have not had any paid work in six months — the performing industry is in serious crisis. Many have fallen through the cracks of the government’s self-employment support scheme too, so finding a way to get back to work safely has been our biggest priority. And it was equally important to get our performers home again, safely, without them having to cancel more precious work over the next fortnight.
But performing a concert in Normandy at 9pm French time and getting back to the UK by 4am was not going to be easy. We quickly found that the ferries, trains, flights and Eurotunnel were either fully booked or didn’t allow us enough time to meet the curfew. We had all accepted that we would stay, perform the concert, and arrive back late on Saturday as originally planned, and quarantine as instructed. But then, with a bit of hunting around the internet and a tip-off from a charter boat company in Gosport, I discovered Valkyrie Charters, a company that specialises in fishing trips across the channel. I called their skipper, Glen Cairns, who was happy to help us out. He brought his catamaran over from Hayling Island and collected us at Cherbourg just before midnight. We stowed all our smaller instruments in the sleeping quarters below deck, but the double bass in its robust flight case was able to stay up above for the journey. It was a very calm night which made for a comfortable crossing — most of us spent the 5 hour crossing inside, snatching some sleep while we could. We arrived at Hayling Island at 3.50am, just ten minutes before the quarantine cut-off.  
Of course for us it was an adventure with a happy ending, but there are some that will question the arbitrary nature of the quarantine cut-off and the idea of scrambling to return home quickly to avoid it. For us, it was about ensuring the livelihoods of our musicians, while following the guidelines. We were lucky to have stayed in a small, rural village in an area where the cases are very low, and we took every precaution to ensure the safety of our team and everyone else while we were there and upon return. Would we have gone anyway, had we known that the quarantine would have been imposed during our stay? It’s hard to know, but sooner or later we have to find a practical and responsible way to get back to work – the performing world can’t sit around with zero income for much longer. We are proud to have honoured our commitment both to the festival in Lessay and to our musicians, and to have taken the first steps towards performing again in this new and rather unpredictable era.