Message from Peter Phillips and the Tallis Scholars:
‘It is with great sadness that we share the news that soprano Deborah Roberts has died. Deborah performed over 1200 concerts with us between 1977 and 2012. She sang the high soprano part of Allegri’s , on at least 285 occasions, including famously on a recording from Santa Maria Maggiore in 1994 and on our live Sistine Chapel recording of the same year. In 2005, The Tallis Scholars recorded the Allegri for Gimell Records, and it is that recording and Deborah’s soprano voice that you can hear in this excerpt. Deborah also had great success with her own ensemble Musica Secreta and co-founded the Brighton Early Music Festival, combining all of this with her academic research and choral conducting. She will be very missed by so many people in the music world and beyond.’
Peter Phillips writes: ‘Deborah had a voice which perfectly suited The Tallis Scholars’ sound, not least in the demands of Allegri’s . She was a supreme artist.’
Brighton EMF says: ‘It was an enormous privilege to work alongside Deborah over many years, and her exceptional creativity and professionalism have shaped the Festival into what it is today.’
Also: Cappella Artemisia mourns the passing of Deborah Roberts, co-founder of Musica Secreta, a wonderful musician and a true champion of music of cloistered women. She will be greatly missed.
Deborah retired from the Tallis Scholars in 2012 and from the Brighton EMF a month ago, due to ill-health.
Just in from the BBC Proms:
Very sadly, Sir András Schiff has broken his leg and has had to withdraw from this Prom. Rather than cancelling this concert we wanted to offer an alternative. We are immensely grateful to Seong-Jin Cho for stepping in at very short notice to perform.
Seong-Jin Cho won the Chopin International Competition in 2015 and has rapidly ascended to establish himself as one of the leading pianists of his generation. He made his Proms debut in 2018 and performed Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 9 at the festival earlier this season.
He will be performing the following revised programme:
Maurice Ravel Miroirs – Oiseaux exotiques; Un barque sur l’oceán; Alborada del gracioso (18’)
Franz Liszt Années de pèlerinage, Deuxième année: Italie (45’)
We understand that Daniel Malampalli, Associate Director of Programming at the LA Phil, has quit to join Chad Smith as head of programming at the Boston Symphony. He’ll need to invest in a winter suit.
The doors are swinging merrily at Walt Disney Hall as Kim Noltemy’s new regime beds in.
Medical update from the sickly tenor:
While in Verona, I unfortunately started experiencing cold like symptoms which turned into a rather awful flu. This forced me to reschedule my performance in Bratislava and cancel my performance in Hollywood.
As you can imagine, this is a great disappointment, and I always feel badly letting down my fans.
By resting this week, I look forward to a full recovery and to my concert at the Musikverein in Vienna on the 21st of September .
See you soon!
The BBC Symphony Orchestra has renewed the contract of chief conductor Sakari Oramo by five more years. He has been in charge since 2013. He will conduct the Last Night of the Proms again this Saturday on live TV.
Sakari says: ‘here’s an aspiration, shared by all parties at the BBC, to take the orchestra forward to its centenary in 2030. Big things are planned for the hundredth anniversary and around the orchestra’s move to what will be its purpose-built home at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. We will work hard to establish our presence in that part of London and attract a local audience to the new BBC Music Studios. It’s a great opportunity to take what the BBC Symphony Orchestra is about to a diverse community, especially as we enter prepare to our second century. I am genuinely excited by the potential and the possibilities’.
We have obtained confirmation that principal flute Sebastian Jacot will leave the orchestra in November, after failing to ‘pass the probation period.’ An audition for his successor will be held in March.
The section also has a vacancy for second flute (with piccolo).
Jacot, 36, was on his way to become principal flute at the San Francisco Symphony when a call from Berlin derouted him two years ago. The Swiss virtuoso was acclaimed as a rock star in his previous post at Leipzig. But Berlin is Berlin and Darwin’s law applies.
Following yesterday’s shock departure of concertmaster Vineta Sareika, its first woman leader, the orchestra may need to reflect on its recent comings and goings. The Berlin Phil is unquestionably the most challenging gig in the orchestral world but, like Manchester United under Alex Ferguson, it is a winning team, not a happy one.
City Opera has parted company with Michael Capasso, its general director. Contrary to the usual bromides, we hear the board voted him out. Either way, Capasso says he’s going to live in Italy.
The next Executive Director and Music Director is to be Constantine Orbelian (pic).
The 2024 Praemium Imperiale in classical music has been awarded to the Portuguese pianist Maria João Pires, It is worth 15 million yen, or $105,000.
This year’s other category winners are film-maker Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain), architect Shigeru Ban, conceptual artist Sophie Calle and sculptor Doris Salcedo.
The prize has been an annual event for 35 years.
The Hollywood Bowl has posted its regrets about the latest lapse in Jonas Kaufmann’s stuttering schedule:
‘Due to illness, Jonas Kaufmann is unable to perform during the September 12 concert at the Hollywood Bowl. Additional arias performed by Diana Damrau have been included in the updated programming.’
That, frankly, is poor value. Ticket holders have not paid to hear a solo evening of Ms Damrau, excellent as she may be.
The cancelled show is also a blow for Sony, which aimed to use it as a springboard for JK’s Puccini album of duets and scenes with leading sopranos, including Anna Netrebko and Asmik Grigorian (but not Ms Damrau).
Bad form all round.
Message received:
After two and a half years of construction, the renovation and modernization of the Theater an der Wien has been completed and we are looking forward to celebrating the grand opening on October 12, 2024. In order to guarantee a smooth interaction between the complex stage technology and all technical areas, a large number of training courses, inductions, test runs, stress tests and safety checks are necessary. This intensive process will take several more weeks and will unfortunately affect operations in the first few months. This leads to the following changes in the schedule:
The stage productions W. A. Mozart’s Idomeneo, Robert Schumann’s Paradise and the Peri and Pierangelo Valtinoni’s family opera The Little Prince cannot take place as planned this season.
Of course, you will receive a refund for the amount of your purchased tickets.
The Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra have inserted an unusual programme a month from now.
In the first half of the concert, outgoing music director Daniel Harding conducts works by two women composers, Lili Boulanger and Valborg Aulin.
In the second half, marked ‘bonus!’, Sir Simon Rattle conducts Sibelius’s fifth symphony.
Harding sounds excited: ‘For the best part of the last twenty years I have been telling Simon what a jewel of an orchestra we have at the Swedish Radio.
‘No orchestra has meant more to me than SRSO, and no conductor more than Simon. That, in my last season as Music Director, I get to enjoy a musical encounter between them will be a moment of pure joy.’
