… who loved Mahler, most of all Das Lied von der Erde.

ORF reports from the Tirol that the controversial conductor Gustav Kuhn is being penalised for hiring cheap labour and not covering the state’s social insurance charges:

Gustav Kuhn has to pay a fine of 177,100 euros. According to the penal decision of the Kufstein district administration, more than 80 foreigners were employed for the 2017/2018 Winter Festival in Erl, even though they did not have a permit under labor market law.

Read on here. 

Marietta Orlov, who came to Canada as a Romanian refugee in 1972 and became one of its foremost piano teachers, has died at 88.

From Ilya Poletaev’s obit:

With her husband, the world-renowned cellist Vladimir Orloff (1928-2019), she toured extensively across Eastern Europe. In 1964 they defected to Vienna, and have been tried and condemned as traitors in Romania in absentia. They were subsequently able to resume their careers in the West and toured across Western Europe as a cello-piano duo team. Ms Orlov taught at the Vienna Conservatory and, since coming to Canada, in 1972, at the Royal Conservatory and the Faculty of Music at the University of Toronto. In Canada, she performed alongside Canada’s most distinguished musicians, including violinist Lorand Fenyves, pianist Patricia Parr, and her former husband, Vladimir Orloff, before ending her performing career due to an injury.

Despite her distinguished performing pedigree, it is primarily as a teacher that Prof. Orlov has left her mark on Canadian music. Her contribution stands at the very top in North American musical pedagogy over the past forty years and has left an indelible imprint on the development and growth of Canadian musical culture. During her years at the University of Toronto, she has been responsible for the emergence of several generations of exceptionally gifted and successful pianists, who have since made tremendous contributions to the Canadian musical life.

Read on here.

Sotheby’s are selling the Park Avenue duplex for $29.5 million.

Unsold for 30 years. One careful owner.

Might listen to offers.

The German violinist is starting a series of concerts to raise funds for freelance musicians in Germany who have lost their livelihood.

Here’s her message:

‘Life is short, art is long.’

I will be playing next Sunday, November 15, with musician friends in the Thomaskirche Leipzig for church services at 9:30 am and 6:00 pm.

This is the start of a series of musical worship performances I will do in the coming weeks with Mohamed Hiber, Vladimir Babeshko and Daniel Müller-Schott. We want to draw attention to the catastrophic economic situation of many musicians and request donations for them.

Das Leben ist kurz, die Kunst ist lang.“
Damit unser kurzes Leben mit Schönem und gemeinsam Erlebten erfüllt ist, spielen Musikerfreunde und ich am kommenden Sonntag, 15. November, in der Thomaskirche Leipzig für die Besucher der Gottesdienste um 9:30 Uhr und um 18:00 Uhr.

Dies ist der Auftakt einer Reihe musikalischer Gottesdienst-Gestaltungen, die ich in den kommenden Wochen mit Mohamed Hiber, Vladimir Babeshko und Daniel Müller-Schott Official Site unternehmen werde. Wir wollen damit auch auf die katastrophale wirtschaftliche Lage vieler MusikerInnen aufmerksam machen und um Spenden für sie bitten.

Perhaps because there’s not enough work to go around for conductors, Robin Ticciati is sharing his next Berlin DSO concert with his senior colleague Sir Simon Rattle.

Here’s the programme:

Ralph Vaughan Williams
Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis

Henry Purcell
March from “Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary”

Harrison Birtwistle
“Cortege”

Gustav Mahler
“Das Lied von der Erde” for mezzo-soprano, tenor and chamber orchestra (version by Glen Cortese)

And Rattle gets to do the Mahler.

The UK-based Classical Music magazine, launched in 1976, has gone digital-only from today, with a new website, and an editorial advisory board comprised of the serving heads of British music intitutions, which is hardly a guarantee of good journalism.

The magazine, when it started out, contained bold and challenging reporting. I remember being commissioned, around 1980, to write an account of the unhealthy links between British orchestras and festivals and the thriving tobacco industry. I did my best to smoke them out.

Those days are long gone and now so is the magazine.

Sic transit.

The death is reported of Joseph Reynaerts, a singer who represented Belgium in the 1988 Eurovision final.

He worked until his death as director of Centre Culturel de Soumagne in Soumagne.

The funeral of Alexander (Sasha) Buzlov will be held on Wednesday November 11, at 11 am, at the Khovansky cemetery in Moscow.

Sasha died yesterday of a stroke at the age of 37.

If you can bear to wade through this casting disaster to the bitter end, you will see the singer slip backwards off his box.

The incident doesn’t look scripted and he takes it in typical good humour, but this load of cobblers should never have been shot.

Kaufmann is from Bavaria where it is usually white on Christmas. He doesn’t need fake flakes and vocal swoops.

It’s written for baritone, anyway.