Go on, then. Give us a better caption.
Sunny, from Vienna, studies at the Universität Mozarteum.
The Metropolitan Opera and Philadephia Orchestra conductor has been visiting his favourite Swiss gnomes with husband Pierre Tourville.
Apparently, they now make his-and-his watches. (Not availablle in Swatch). Nezet was ‘welcomed into the Rolex family’ three months ago.
Note to street-gangs: he never wears it.
The former Bath Festival Orchestra has renamed itself Chromatica and taken up residency at the Battersea Arts Centre in south London.
The driving force is concertmaster Maren Bosma.
She says Chromatica is ‘a tight knit ‘family’ of musicians sharing music onstage with a dynamism that draws the audience into a shared musical experience. Performances do not follow a one-way street from stage to audience. They are a shared journey through the universe of the music performed. This way, the orchestra endeavours to bring a wide repertoire to new audiences and inspire a younger generation to engage with classical music.’
You read it here first.
Maybe it’s just the long ones.
Sara Davis Buechner has an entertaining new video on the classical piano credentials of young women entering beauty pageants such as Miss America.
Enjoy.
Summer’s over and the transfer market is open.
IMG Artists, very quiet for a while, has recruited agent Callan Coughlan from Spanish boutique Promethean Artists. He brings, by way of dowry, the Nicaraguan-US soprano Gabriella Reyes and his compatriot Irish soprano Sarah Brady.
Next…
The renowned synagogue cantor Naftali Herstik died yesterday at the age of 77. The funeral took place today in Ra’anana, Israel.
Born into a Hungarian dynasty of traditional prayer leaders, Herstik served for 30 years as chief hazzan of the Great Synagogue in Jerusalem. He set up an academy where most of today’s leading practitioners trained, and where his sons continue to teach.
Herstik was regarded as the supreme authority on central European Ashkenazy melodic liturgy.
The Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires, a byword for instability, has thrown out General Director Jorge Telerman on orders from the City mayor.
The new joint CEOs are American Ballet Theater’s Argentine star Julio Bocca and the Uruguayan Gerardo Grieco.
The violinist messages:
After one of the hottest and most humid concert adventures at the Tonhalle Düsseldorf I was looking forward spending my day at home chilling. Sadly my flight got cancelled – I have been traveling since 7 am to finally arrive in the afternoon in Hamburg! The glamorous life of an artist. Imagine that happens on a concert day … it has and will. Anyhow, I love the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg and am hugely looking forward to the concert!
Yesterday was the first of September. A terrible dark day in German history, a very dark day for the world (1939). To commemorate this, we played the Theme from “Schindler’s List” … and to remember the countless souls lost in all brutal armed conflicts around the globe.
Previously on the Mutter tripadvisor: bad hotel rooms.
The Musicians Union has published some research showing that 59 per cent of their members no longer find touring Europe to be financially worthwhile. Three-quarters of those who worked in the EU before Brexit said their bookings had declined.
The baritone Simon Wallfisch said: ‘I took it for granted as a young musician that I could work as easily in Munich as I could in Manchester. It is devastating to see how young British musicians today will never experience the world-is-your-oyster mentality I felt as a young musician, finding my feet in the mid-2000s.’
More here.
The UK-Australian pianist Jayson Gillham provoked a crisis at the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra by making a contentious political statement about the Middle East. Gillhamas was removed from his next scheduled appearance and the ensuing furore resulted in the sacking of the MSO’s contentious MD, Sophie Galaise.
The orchestra then tried to make good any harm it may have done to the headstrong pianist.
Gillham presented a list of demands.
He wants: a public apology from the MSO; an affirmation of artists’ rights to speak freely; compensation for alleged reputational damage caused by his cancellation; future performance opportunities to repair his professional standing; a commission of a piano concerto by a Palestinian composer; and a donation to the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music in Palestine.
The MSO have told him to go whistle.
No further talks are scheduled.
Pride and Prejudice – Jermyn Street Theatre
It’s been quite a week for women in bonnets. First, all three Brontes, then, inevitably, Jane Austin. At Jermyn Street there’s an entertaining adaptation of Miz Jane’s most famous novel with only three actors, in from the Guildford Shakespeare Company.
Adapted and directed by Abigail Pickard Price, who has done a smashing job, it stars April Hughes as a winsome and versatile Lizzie Bennet (and many others), Sarah Gobran, a producer and co-founder of the Guildford Shakespeare Company with many voices and accents as Mrs Bennet (and many others), and a truly exciting discovery of Luke Barton as Mr Bennet and all the male characters and at least two of the other Bennet daughters including a hilarious turn as Kitty, the flighty one who runs off with a soldier. It seems the Victorians had a lot of daughters.
The director and her actors have had to work out how to manage lightening-quick changes from character to character with only three bodies on Jermyn Street’s postage-stamp size playing area and, once you get used to the constant exchanging of coats, hats and props, the choreography itself becomes an endearing part of the play’s appeal.
Everybody knows the story of Pride and Prejudice so part of the fun is waiting to find out how the actors are gong to handle those favourite moments from the book. Ingeniously, as it turns out.
Jane Austin’s own serious intentions are not ignored here although they’re nearly subsumed by having to don the right hat at the right juncture without interrupting the action. Her recurring preoccupation, that the only option for a woman of her time was to make a good marriage, still resonates strongly.