Get your day ticking with the clock.
Berklee College of Music in Boston has named Erica Muhl as its first female president.
She follows the 17-year term of Roger Brown.
Muhl, 59, is the daughter of a movie mogul and an opera singer. Herwork has been performed by several US orchestras.
Some readers expressed doubts about the prodigious Lola Astanova.
Here’s her latest.
The Italian soprano Rosanna Carteri, who sang Desdemona in Wilhelm Furtwängler’s 1952 Salzburg Otello, has died in Monaco aged 89.
She was only 21 at the time and, although Furtwängler appears to have handed the baton to Mario Rossi, she went on to enjoy a busy international career over the next decade until, in her early 30s, she retired to raise a family.
The Italian prime minister Giuseppe Conte has announced the closure of all places of entertainment from tomorrow until November 24 at the earliest.
The heroic efforts made by La Scala and other houses to restore a sembalnce of normality have been defeated by rising Covid numbers.
Artists are being cancelled, orchestras sent home.
We have gone back to the dark ages.
The Brussels region, where Covid is ‘galloping’ once more according to the authorities, has ordered the cessation of all cultural events from October 26 to November 19 and a ban on gatherings of more than 4 people.
The prohibition includes all cultural centres, theatres, cinemas, museums and galleries.
The head of La Monnaie, Peter De Caluwe, has issued a furious response:
Brussels Region announces total closure of cultural events as part of their emergency measures. Where I can understand the measures taken on the federal level (severe reduction of audiences but allowance to continue our work) who at least have done their homework, these new regulations imposed on our sector are made by the Brussels ‘government’, which has during the whole COVID period proven to be totally incompetent in crisis management. With a proven trackrecord of ’non’ decision or at best ‘too late’ decision, they have acted in a cavalier and amateur way over the last months, have never taken the logical and necessary action and have always been running behind the facts. Now they flex their muscles by overreacting. It is scandalous that this decision was made without ANY concertation or knowledge of the severe measures taken already by the sector which was done so well on the level of the Flemish and francophone communities as well as on federal level or by the prevoyant Mayor of Brussels who has been totally communicative and committed. This decision is no less than strangulation, without us being able to make the regional ‘government ‘ accountable as they have no jurisdiction over us. Please do not hesitate to share your feelings about such incompetence, amateurism and lack of leadership.
György Ligeti’s Poème symphonique for 100 metronomes – once seen, never erased from memory.
From the Lebrecht Album of the Week:
…. a hypertense new recording by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and its Lithuanian music director Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla. Unlike many respectful English performances I have heard, this one reflects life at the edge, its continuance uncertain, its faith flickering to extinction. You are unsure from one bar to the next which way the world will go. It is the least English interpretation I have ever encountered, and all the better for that. Mirga stretches rubato to the point of transparency and admits hints of atonality. Does she sense the composer’s mixed feelings?
More here.
In The Critic.
More languages to follow.
A member of staff for John Eliot Gardiner has confirmed to Slipped Disc that the conductor tested positive for Covid-19 after his return from Paris last week and has been told to go into isolation.
The programme of his French radio concert had to be changed at the last minute as a result of Covid in the chorus.
The Monteverdi Orchestra, which has a concert coming up next month, assures us that he has no symptoms other than a heavy cold and appears to be on the mend.
Three Covid cases in the orchestra and nine in the chorus have prompted a series of cancellations at La Scala.
Among the dark nights are tomorrow’s intended orchestral concert with the Spanish conductor Pablo Hersa-Casado, Cenerentolas for children on November 7 and 8, a recital by Sabine Devieilhe on November 19, concerts led by Giovanni Antonini on November 21-24 and
Simon Keenlyside’s recital on December 3.
The traditional December 7 opening of the new season is still going ahead.
A PR-pumped story in today’s Observer urges the UK Government to bail out freelance musicians ‘or risk losing them forever’.
Sir Simon Rattle is quoted as saying, ‘While some of us working in established institutions have been fortunate to be given grants that help us to hang on, the vast majority of freelancers are in a desperate situation,
‘My worry is that so many musicians will be forced to leave the profession that we will not be able to return to anything like the cultural life that we enjoyed previously. And that this exodus is happening right now, and that it will not be noticed until it is too late.’
All true, and necessary, and very worrying indeed.
But the same concerns apply to every other freelance occupation – anaesthesiologists, novelists, photographers, plumbers, journalists, dental nurses, barristers, actors, interior designers and more. Nobody is raising an outcry on their behalf.
