The faculty senate at Cleveland Institute of Music is holding an extraordinary meeting today after the CIM’s administration have told senior teachers that their salaries will be cut by as much as two-thirds in order to manage a $1.6 million tuition deficit. Apparently, parents and potential students have noticed that the CIM has been in turmoil over the past couple of years and decided to go elsewhere.
Sources tell slippedisc.com that Sharon Robinson and Jaime Laredo have decided to leave CIM rather than take a pay cut.
Other names are hovering by the exits.
Last month, President Paul Hogle added $180,000 to his own pay packet, which tops $700k.
Apparently at student orientation, Paul Hogle’s wife told the student body ‘feel free to contact me if you wish to pray together’.
The family of Kammersänger Professor Siegfried Lorenz have communicated sad news of his death, six days before his 79th birthday.
Berlin born, Lorenz was permanent lyric baritone at Staatsoper Unter den Linden in East Berlin from 1977 to 1992. He was later professor of singing at the Berlin University of the Arts.
He made numerous recordings in Leipzig with Kurt Masur, who in 1973 named him premier vocalist of the Gewandhaus Orchestra.
He covered the gamut of German repertoire from Bach to Pfitzner.
Schott UK have announced the death early this morning of the influential composer Alexander Goehr.
Sandy was 92.
A Hitler refugee, born in Berlin to the Schoenberg-trained conductor Walter Goehr, he studied in 1950s Manchester alongside Harrison Birtwistle, Peter Maxwell Davies, John Ogdon and Elgar Howarth. Goehr brought a much-needed cosmopolitan dimension to the insular group, having also studied with Olivier Messiaen and Yvonne Loriod in Paris.
While Harry and Max achieved international renown, Sandy’s compositions were more intellectual and introspective. They include four symphonies and several concertos. He was rwice composer in residence at Tanglewood. Meanwhile he taught two generations of composers at the University of Cambridge.
Schott release follows.
It is with great sadness that we announce the death of Alexander Goehr at the age of 92. Distinguished composer and teacher, Goehr’s substantial impact on contemporary music in Britain and abroad is perceptible through his significant compositional output as well as the many noteworthy composers whom he taught.
Goehr was born in Berlin on 10 August 1932, the son of conductor Walter Goehr, and brought to England in 1933. He studied with Richard Hall at the Royal Manchester College of Music and with Olivier Messiaen and Yvonne Loriod in Paris. In Manchester, Goehr was a conduit between the recent music of continental modernism and his fellow students, and together with Harrison Birtwistle, Peter Maxwell Davies and John Ogdon, he formed the New Music Manchester Group. In the early 1960’s he worked for the BBC and formed the Music Theatre Ensemble, the first ensemble devoted to what has become an established musical form. From the late 1960’s onwards he taught at the New England Conservatory Boston, Yale, Leeds and in 1975 was appointed to the chair of the University of Cambridge, where he remained Emeritus Professor until his death. He also taught in China and was twice Composer-in-Residence at Tanglewood.
The year of Goehr’s appointment at Cambridge coincided with a turning point in his output, with the composition of a white-note setting of Psalm IV (1976). The simple, bright modal sonority of this piece marked a departure from post-war serialism and a commitment to a more transparent soundworld. Goehr found a way of controlling harmonic pace by fusing his own modal harmonic idiom with the long abandoned practice of figured bass, achieving a highly idiosyncratic fusion of past and present. The output of the ensuing years testifies to Goehr’s desire to use this new idiom to explore ideas and genres that were already constant features of his work.
Goehr’s orchestral works include four symphonies, concertos for piano, violin, viola and cello, works for chamber, string and wind orchestra, as well as ensemble works. He wrote five operas, a number of ambitious vocal scores, and a rich body of chamber music. Goehr held a particularly close working relationship with Oliver Knussen, who recorded and gave premiere performances of many works including … a musical offering (J. S. B. 1985)… (1985), Idées Fixes (1997) and To These Dark Steps/The Fathers Are Watching (2011-12) for tenor, children’s choir and ensemble. Associations with other world-class orchestras, soloists and conductors produced numerous works: The cello concerto Romanza (1968) was written for Jacqueline du Pré and Daniel Barenboim, Bernard Haitink and the London Philharmonic Orchestra premiered Metamorphosis/Dance (1973-74), Boston Symphony Orchestra premiered Colossos or Panic (1991-92) under Seiji Ozawa, and Two Sarabandes (2014) was commissioned by Bamberg Symphony who premiered the work with Lahav Shani.
Through the chamber music medium, Goehr gained an unprecedented rhythmic and harmonic immediacy, while his music remained ever permeable by the music and imagery of other times and places. Marching to Carcassonne (2003) for Peter Serkin and London Sinfonietta, flirts with neoclassicism and Stravinsky. The set of solo piano pieces Symmetries Disorder Reach (2007), a barely disguised baroque suite, was premiered by Huw Watkins, and …between the lines… (2013), written for the Scharoun Ensemble Berlin, traces its lineage back to Schoenberg and Schubert and Shakespeare inspired Since Brass, nor Stone… written for percussionist Colin Currie and the Pavel Haas Quartet which won the chamber category of the 2009 British Composer Awards.
Goehr’s work and commitment to new music was recognised in his lifetime by numerous prestigious organisations. An honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a former Churchill Fellow, in 2019 Goehr was made an Honorary Member of the Royal Philharmonic Society in recognition of his lifelong contribution to musical culture. An archive of Goehr’s manuscripts is curated by the Berlin Akademie der Künste where it will be available to future students of composition and researchers. The collaborative book Composing a Life by Goehr and composer-musicologist and former pupil Jack Van Zandt was published by Carcanet in October 2023. One of Goehr’s final work, Ondering (2023) for string quartet was premiered by the Villiers Quartet at the Royal Northern College of Music to mark the occasion.
The world premiere of Goehr’s Seven Laments for solo clarinet performed by Ib Hausmann will be part of Langenselbolder Klassik-Festival in October 2024 and Ensemble 10:10 conducted by Geoffrey Paterson will perform Sinfonia (1979) in Liverpool in March 2025.
Sandy (to all who knew him) passed away on 26 August 2024 at home in Cambridgeshire.
photo: Tom Hurley
A sharp-eyed audience member tells us that the orchestra playing at Tangleweood is made up one-third of substitutes:
Last night’s concert at Tanglewood listed 37 substitute players, only one identified as a student at the Tanglewood Music Center. Last weekend the number was 27. Most of last season at Symphony Hall there were at least 20 non-members playing each week.
The new Concertmaster has not played in at least three weeks. The First Associate Concertmaster has not played in years. The Assistant Concertmaster has been missing since the start of the 2023-24 season. The principal second violin has not been seen in 2024.
Is this normal?
Well, you wouldn’t get that from the Vienna Philharmonic at Salzburg, that’s for sure.
In what may be the first official acknowledgement that Gustav Mahler created his last works on Italian soil, the President of the Italian Republic Sergio Mattarella visited the wooden hut in Dobbiaco (Toblach) where the nine and tenth symphonies were conceived.
He then took a walk in the meadow that formed Mahler’s view as he composed.
The Sun Symphony Orchestra of Hanoi has imported Gerry Varona as assistant principal viola.
Originally from the Philippines, Varona arrives from the Orquestra Filarmônica de Minas Gerais in Brazil.
Small world, getting smaller.
The Jerusalem chamber music festival, directed by Barenboim’s wife Elena Bashkirova and involving many of their close friends, was due to open on September 3.
It was cancelled last night because of sky wars in the refion. ‘The current security situation and the resultant cancellation of flights for the next few weeks by most of the major airlines means that many of the artists will not be able to arrive in Israel,’ a statement said.
Elena invested intense thought and preparation in the festival, which took place mostly in the YMCA in west Jerusalem. The atmosphere was sanatised of politics and people from both sides of the city attended.
The board of the embattled Australian orchestra has acted swiftly in the wake of the rebel pianist incident.
Out, immediately, goes Sophie Galaise, the Canadian chief executive. ‘We want to acknowledge Sophie’s contribution over the past eight years at the MSO and thank her for her dedication to the organisation,’ said the uncompromising statement.
In comes Richard Wigley, a New Zealander who used to run the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and the Ulster Orchestra.
Also on board is Australia’s former Federal Arts Minister Peter Garrett. he will lead an independent investigation into the orchestra’s ‘culture’, assisted by management consultants from KPMG.
These events were precipitated by the sacking of a pianist, Jayson Gillham, who made objectionable remarks about the Middle East situation in the course of a recital.
It remains to be seen whether the MSO musicians will be appeased by the sacking of Galaise, long a combative and isolated figure. The players have been demandingf the heads of other senior executives.
But this is decisively one step forward.
Here’s another rare memento of Myra, ten years after the previous collectible.
She has a splendidly leisured way of telling an anecdote.
It’s the cast of the Norwegian National opera production, conducted by Ed Gardner.
Lise Davidsen is Senta, Gerald Finley the Dutchman.
Stanislas de Barbeyrac as Erik, Brindley Sherratt as Daland and Anna Kissjudit as Mary
Lise’s management say this is the only time she will ever sing the role.
Yo-ho, to-ho!
The Royal Symphony Orchestra of Seville reports the death of its American former principal flute, James Gordon Lyman Lake. James was 64.
Local media add that he was found dead inside his car, which was in a ravine on the road from El Castillo de las Guardas to the village where he lived. He was reported missing five days ago and appears to have died on that day.
James, originally from Albion, New York, lived alone and was reported to be on medication for a number of conditions.
The orchestra says he had not played for them in several years but remained in touch with former colleagues.
The latest promo gimmick from the indefatigably commercial pianist:
Hi everyone, it’s Lang Lang here!
I am thrilled to invite you and a friend to an unforgettable evening at Carnegie Hall’s opening night in New York on October 8, 2024! I very much look forward to meeting you in person backstage after the concert, in which I’ll be performing with the incredible Los Angeles Philharmonic and maestro Gustavo Dudamel.
Flights (from anywhere in the world) and a 2-night hotel stay in New York for two people are included!
I look forward to meeting you in New York and sharing this extraordinary evening with you.
See you soon, Lang Lang
YOUR MAIN PRIZE Experience an unforgettable evening at Carnegie Hall’s opening night in New York on October 8, 2024. Receive 2 tickets for the sold-out concert with Lang Lang, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Maestro Gustavo Dudamel. Meet Lang Lang in person after the concert for the champagne toast and personal photo. Flights (from anywhere in the world) and hotel (2 nights in New York) for 2 people are included.
