In the annual payment by PPL, the UK’s music licensing company for recorded music, there is encouraging news for classical musicians.
More than £5 million of the overall £98m distributed by PPL for 2022 went to classical performers and recording right sholders – a rise of more than 50% since 2017. There are three national radio stations which primarily play classical music. Classical repertoire also provides a calm ambience in venues around the country, including waiting rooms, staff rooms, and even branches of McDonalds.
Sarah Ioannides, Music Director of Symphony Tacoma, has switched management to Ekkehard Jung in Berlin.
Among other signings, Raab & Böhm in Vienna has recruited the violist Sarah McElravy (pic) for general management.
Askonas Holt has chosen three more artists for its talent development programme: Norwegian conductor Julie Røssland, Japanese violinist Hina Maeda and Mexican tenor Raúl Gutiérrez.
Police rock star Stewart Copeland has assigned his classical publishing rights to a HarrisonParrott subsidiary.
The Nobel Prize committee has chosen violinist Julia Fischer as soloist at its presentation concert in December.
From my monthly essay in The Critic:
…Klemperer died 50 years ago this July, aged 88, cared for by his daughter Lotte at their Swiss home. Lotte, a captivating character in her own right, died there 20 years ago this month. A Warner Classics box of Klemperer orchestral recordings has been issued on 95 CDs. It is by no means comprehensive. A further box of opera and oratorio discs, including the electrifying Covent Garden Fidelio, will follow in October.
From the mid-1950s to the end of the 1960s, Klemperer was among the most prolific conductors on record. Yet around 1950 everyone thought he was finished. His story, thanks to Lotte, is one of the most remarkable music resurrections….
Read on here.
The President of the International Federation of Music Competitions has written to the US subscription site, objecting to articles it published by a Chinese guest at the Tchaikovsky Competition who served as a mouthpiece for Kremlin Propaganda.
Here’s the rebuke to Musical America, leaked to slippedisc.com:
Dear Ms. Elliott,
… I am somewhat puzzled by the positions that you reveal in your article “Update from the Tchaikovsky Competition” published on June 27, particularly the fact that the exclusion of the competition from the World Federation of International Music Competitions has been called “unfair”. The author goes into great details describing the effort of hosting the competition, praising it more than implicitly between the lines. This appreciative attitude is even taken further by letting two foreign jury members praise the competition to the skies and even abuse the hackneyed image of the peacemaking, reconciling power of music.
At this point it seems rather helpful to reiterate the decision taken by an overwhelming majority of all WFIMC members to exclude the Tchaikovsky Competition and the process that preceded the poll. In two polite, but very firm conversations, it was made clear to the director of the Tchaikovsky Competition that the instrumentalization of the competition for the purpose of propaganda (The competition’s website features a personal welcome message by the warring president) is considered unacceptable, because it provides young talents with a completely distorted idea of the values that music conveys. The director also had the opportunity to explain the position of the Tchaikovsky competition to all WFIMC members and wasted this opportunity by speaking of the infamous “specalnji operatji” and the “denazification of Ukraine”.
Furthermore, the great Valery Gergiev proactively participates in this distortion of obvious values by suggesting that a war-declaring and war-mongering country can still take an apolitical stance in music. The Tchaikovsky Competition is organized by a corporation completely controlled by the Russian Ministry of Culture. “I believe that the Tchaikovsky competition has a historic chance to host apolitically thinking young bright musicians, and they should think only about music, about the profession, about the future, about the composer.” Valery Gergiev says.
Neither the judges nor the contestants who are participating did music as one of the core values of a humanistic society a great favor. Nevertheless, the effects on global musical life will be minimal, since the competition cannot fulfill its original mission of initiating careers.
At the conclusion of the last meeting with the Director of the Tschaikovsky Competition in April 2022 I, as the current President of the WFIMC, informed the director of the Tchaikovsky Competition: “As soon as this war is over, the sovereignty of Ukraine restored and the Tchaikovsky Competition relinquishes its function as a propaganda instrument and instead redeems its former reputation as a high-quality music competition, we will be the first to wish for the Tchaikovsky Competition to be reinstated among the world’s leading music competitions – this is our idea of fairness!
Peter Paul Kainrath
(pictured)
President WFIMC & Director International Piano Competition Ferruccio Busoni
From the Lebrecht Album of the Week:
The opening bars of this live performance assert that the Philadelphia Orchestra owns these works. The orchestra eases into the second symphony like an Olympic swimmer into a public pool, totally in its element, fearless of hazard or challenge. The strings are silken, the woodwinds ethereal. And then it all goes choppy.
The Philadelphia Orchestra was involved with Rachmaninoff from his arrival in America …
Read on here.
And here.
In The Critic here.
The US violinist Cho Liang Lin has resigned as artistic director of the Taipei Music Festival, which he founded.
He has been accused by two women of sexual harrassment, allegations that he strongly denies and will legally contest. However, he felt his presence at the August festival would detract from its core musical purpose and he has asked Leonard Slatkin to replace him.
Slatkin says: ‘I have known Jimmy Lin for more than forty years and a finer and more giving person does not exist. His contributions to music and arts education have made him one of the most outstanding musicians alive. In particular, Jimmy’s passion for the culture in Taiwan has been shown to have made a tremendous impact on the world-wide musical scene. It is my hope that he returns to the Festival as well as his other activities, as soon as possible.’
No one from the festival’s teaching faculty has withdrawn and all of the invited artists have confirmed their participation.
Khatia Buniatishvili has cancelled her festival concerts for the next two months to spend more time with her newborn.
She writes:
Hard to say – I’m sorry I have to cancel my next three performances in July in Orange (France), Düsseldorf & Ingelheim am Rhein (Germany). I was looking forward to discover « Les Chorégies d’Orange festival » and going back to Klavierfestival Ruhr and Rheingau festival, places where I have a deep and long term connection with…
But every city requires a travel on each second day and every concert demands a rehearsal with the orchestra and my chamber music colleagues (would have been easier with solo recitals as it demands less precision for rehearsing schedule) and it is a little too much and too early to ask to my baby girl, from the point of view of a breastfeeding mother. My apologies (and hope to reschedule someday) to my colleagues – Kirill, orchestre de Lyon, Mohamed, Irene, Adrien, Edgar… and a big thank you to wonderful Sodi Braide for filling the piano space in two cities in Germany so smoothly.
We are sending to you all positive and peaceful energy and fix our next rendez-vous in Gstaad, Switzerland on August 27th.
Message from the Royal Opera House:
The Royal Opera House today announces that sadly Jonas Kaufmann has withdrawn from the final two performances of Werther on Saturday 1 July and Tuesday 4 July due to continued illness.
Saturday 1 July
The role of Werther will be performed by Francesco Demuro. Francesco Demuro made his Covent Garden debut in 2011 in Gianni Schicchi and has since performed the role of Alfredo Germont in La traviata, and the Duke of Mantua in Rigoletto. Demuro recently performed the role of Werther for Greek National Opera.
Tuesday 4 July
The role of Werther will be performed by Ioan Hotea. Ioan Hotea is a multi-award-winning lyric-tenor who has performed with many of the world’s leading companies. He has performed the role of Werther at both Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden and at Oper Frankfurt.
From an essay by Elisabeth Braw:
… The Ring spoils the lives of valiant characters such as Siegfried, takes advantage of shady characters like Hagen and causes the heroic Brünnhilde to leap to her death out of love for Siegfried. At the end of Götterdämmerung (‘Twilight of the Gods’), which clocks in at four hours and a quarter without intervals, Brünnhilde’s selfless suicide returns the ring to the Rhine, while the gods’ dwelling goes up in flames.
Now Prigozhin, the man whose company proudly bears Wagner’s name, has staged a botched coup of his own, which resulted in him having to leave his country followed by some of his foot soldiers, whom the world has taken to calling Wagnerites. And there’s something distinctly Ring-like about Prigozhin’s rise and fall. He owed his staggering prominence of recent months to a ring: participation in a brutal war that brought him great power and influence. But the ring was cursed, as he knew from the beginning, and the more the ring enabled his rise, the more it was going to cause his downfall – because games of power and influence always end with the brutal end of one of the parties….
Read on here.
Bavarian State Opera has replaced the controversial Russian bass Ildar Abdrazakov in the role of Boris Godunov next week, following protests that the singer had made statements in support of the Ukraine invasion.
Abdrazakov will be replaced by the Ukrainian Alexander Tsymbalyuk.
The change has appeared on the compoany webiste for July 4 and 6. It has not been officially announced.
The enemy of the arts has struck again:
Arts Council England (ACE) has confirmed that the number of Music Hubs in England will be reduced from 116 to 43 from September 2024.
It follows a final round of consultation with the new set up being published by ACE showing a number of geographical changes.
The Department for Education has stated that its reasoning for the reduction is to secure better strategic collaboration across larger areas that will improve the quality, breadth, and consistency of music education.
It is also hoped that the new set up will see Hubs able to attract high quality leaders and board members as well as identifying new ways of generating income.
It is also hoped that the new structure will offer broader support, collaboration, learning and career development for the music education workforce, more opportunities for research, innovation and exploration and enhance the understanding of the quality and impact of music education on the lives of children and young people.
More here.
From Hugh Kerr, editor of Edinburgh Music Review:
Another night at Covent Garden, another disappointment. This time it’s not a good singer indisposed, as in last night’s ‘Werther’, but possibly the worst ‘Trovatore’ production I’ve seen anywhere in the world.
First the design: was it the left over terraces of Barry Kosky’s Carmen, or did they really build their own? You can see everyone wandering up and down behind the terraces from the Upper Slips. Maybe this is a deliberate Brechtian alienation technique, a bit like Barry Kosky’s ‘Carmen’ when she gets up and dusts herself down after being shot! Then there were funny little creatures with horns that kept leaping around the terraces, what did they symbolise?
Then there was the singing. Apart from the women, it was pretty poor. Gregory Kunde was a decent tenor in his prime, but at 69 he made an unconvincing Manrico. Ludovic Tezier as Di Luna was acceptable. The women came out best. First Jamie Barton as Azucena was superb, although it was a shame she was submitted to hours in makeup to make her look ugly. Rachel Willis Sorensen also sang Leonora very nicely. The orchestra under Sir Antonio Pappano were superb, and what a busy conductor Pappano is – last night ‘Werther’, tonight ‘Trovatore’!
No doubt I have failed to understand the intentions of the trio behind ‘Trovatore’, director Adele Thomas, designer Annemarie Woods and choreographer Emma Woods. I’m sure there is a sophisticated interpretation somewhere but as an opera-goer of more than 50 years, this was a production totally lacking in enjoyment.
Hugh Kerr, editor Edinburgh Music Review
