After two local officials accused the composer of being a wartime collaborator (when he was, in fact, an active member of the Résistance), the city of Paris has just announced it will affix a memorial plaque to the outer wall of the apartment where Henri Dutilleux lived for most of his adult life.

C’est bien fait.

Henri Dutilleux rue saint Louis en l' isle , près de chez lui, en 1995

We were delighted, if a little bemused, to read about an exciting new presenter on Fox News.

lebrecht fox news

“Lebrecht will bring a fine appreciation of fine culture to our viewers,” said Fox News chief Roger Ailes. “He just told me about this Mahler guy! I’m having all our shows open with different sections of the Symphony No. 5 starting next week!”

Only the date of the report let us down.

Nice one, Micaela Baranello.

HET symfonieorkest, orchestra of the East Netherlands, has announced it has run through its budget, cannot balance the books and is cancelling most concerts for the rest of the season.

HET – with Harm Mannak as general director and Jan Willem de Vriend as chief conductor – spent last year’s local subsidy of 8.3 million euros on a business plan that failed. It will now play mostly in schools and community centres until someone comes up with a better idea, or insolvency is enforced.

mannak+en+de+vriend

Dutch reports here and here.

HET made itself hugely unpopular a few years ago by fighting the Netherlands Philharmonic through the courts for the right to call itself the Netherlands Symphony Orchestra. After a six-figure pile of legal bills, HET lost.

 

Philly.com has a fascinating obit of a highly gifted musician, first trumpet in the Rochester Philharmonic and a regular in Stokowski’s orchestra, who wound up becoming a tax accountant.

Joseph Koch Koplin died of prostate cancer, aged 75. Read here.

Koplin

Etienne Abelin of Lucerne Festival Orchestra has posted this appeal:

 

etienne abelin

Please take a short moment to support this online petition (German and English) to save the professional Symphony Orchestra Biel Solothurn, Switzerland.

And please share the link on as many channels as possible.

The local council of Biel has put a request to the city council to approve to the closure of the Symphony Orchestra Biel Solothurn and to replace it with a mere project orchestra. The city council has its meeting on April 22. The more local, national and international support we can show in the coming few weeks, the better will be the chances of the orchestra’s survival. Thank you in advance for your support and for a sign of support to the orchestra musicians, something they much deserve in this difficult moment. http://bit.ly/1Dum4aT

The world has heard by now of the rock queen’s connection with Gustav Mahler.

Now she’s moved further into the 20th century.

Beyonce4PR600180511

Brilliant mash by Musical Toronto’s Michael Vincent of Beyoncé’s Single Ladies.

 

shostakovich nudes

Valery Gergiev is giving a Conductors Masterclass in Amsterdam from 10 am tomorrow with the Concertgebouw Orchestra.

Focusing on Richard Strauss’s Don Juan and Claude Debussy’s La mer, he will be sharing his knowledge with three talented young conductors: Ben Gernon from the UK, Zaurbek Gugkaev from North Ossetia and Joshua Weilerstein from the US (says the media release).

Gernon and Weilerstein are bright young talents who have won conducting positions on merit.

Zaurbek Gugkaev is new to us. He is listed on the Mariinsky website as a staff conductor.

 

gugkaev228

 

What is not listed in his c.v. is that his father Tamerlan Gugkaev is executive director of the Mariinsky concert hall.

Tamerlan is married to Gergiev’s sister (and former assistant), Svetlana.

A second sister, Larisa, is Artistic Director of the Mariinsky Academy of Young Singers and Artistic Director of the State Opera and Ballet Theatre of the Republic of Northern Ossetia-Alania (Vladikavkaz).

So much talent in one small family.

 

Just in from Toulouse, France: Tugan Sokhiev has signed on again until 2019 with the Orchestre National du Capitole, taking him out of the reckoning for limelight vacancies in Washington, New York and Berlin.

Sokhiev is also artistic director at the Bolshoi and a serious international player.

TUGAN_01-490c8

The shortlists are getting shorter day by day.

Decca’s Benedictines of Mary occupy two of the top three slots in Nielsen Soundscan’s trusted weekly sales list.

Bocelli apart, no-one else sold diddly-squit.

Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles 3

UPDATE: Nuns ask Slipped Disc to show their lighter side

We’ve had a note from the convent saying they don’t like this dark pic.

nuns montfort

Happy sunflowers, then.

London-based Intermusica has signed the violinist Noah Bendix-Balgley for worldwide management.

Noah is the new first Concertmaster of the Berliner Philharmoniker. He was formerly with the Pittsburgh Symphony.

noah bendix-bagley

From the press release: Bendix-Balgley is also active in performing traditional Jewish classical music and Klezmer music, performing with world-renowned klezmer groups such as Brave Old World and teaching klezmer violin at workshops in both Europe and the US. A klezmer violin concerto, composed by Bendix-Balgley himself, will be premiered in Spring 2016 with the Pittsburgh Symphony conducted by Manfred Honeck.

The 1982 Tchaikovsky silver-medallist Peter Donohoe, one of our foremost pianists, is increasingly appalled by musical abbreviations. (But he has some personal favourites). Read on….

Peter Donohoe  - English pianist, May 1993.

 

Perhaps I am showing my age, but actually I have never been able, and never will be able, to prevent myself cringing when I hear ‘in’ abbreviations for things that cry out for respect. In recent years, the most irritating one to creep into the wider vernacular – and thus to undermine the significance, the prestige, and the value to society of that which has been abbreviated – is ‘uni’ – meaning ‘university’. I know that I will be shouted down for objecting to it, but that is too bad. It makes the process of attending higher education seem so ordinary, so lacking in stature and, in the worse sense, ‘cool’.

But let’s face it, the music world is crammed full of ‘in’-speak. It makes my toes curl when I hear it, which I often do. This ‘in’-speak is of course now further degraded by its use in text messaging etc., in which it is beginning to seem wrong to type the full word.

And just to be clear, I am not confusing this with the debunking of preciousness or pretentiousness – something I believe it is important to do in order to establish a proper relationship between the composers, performers and listeners. In fact, ‘in’-speak is just the opposite; it IS complacent, precious, pretentious and – worse – exclusive of those who are not ‘in the know’. It comprises a peculiarly British way of showing that the users of such language are unimpressed by the stature of that to which they refer; that they find the things that non-musicians cannot fathom easy, because they are hard-bitten professionals who can take phenomenal difficulties into their stride, and so do not need to show respect – in fact, to do so would be embarrassing. To call Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor, Opus 30 ‘Rachmaninov Three’ is surely abbreviating it enough; ‘Rakkie Three’ is so appallingly embarrassing that it has made me come out in a cold sweat just from typing it – it is several steps too far. Apart from anything else, he wrote a Third Symphony as well, so even my own abbreviation of Rachmaninov Three is actually inadequate.

Here is a little compendium of some of those words and names that I have found to be an intrinsic part of the music world, and are thus regularly abbreviated in order for the abbreviator to bond with his/her colleague. [By the by, I get the impression that males are far more inclined to commit this sort of language atrocity. Why that should be, I cannot imagine.]

[If anyone can suggest why I am so bothered by this when almost no one else seems to be, I would be very grateful for your insight. It may well be that I have a problem; however, if I have, it is not that I am an incorrigible elitist – the sense that Tony Blair et al used the word for reasons of vote-cadging from the resentful – so please don’t tell me that. Neither am I old-fashioned.]
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INSTRUMENTS

Banjos are not ‘jos’.

Clarinets are not ‘clarries’.

Horns are not ‘hooters’.

Trombones are not ‘bones’.

Pianos are not ‘joannas’ – I realise that this could be viewed as an exception, as it was originally Cockney. It still gets on my pip though – in the same way as when what I do professionally is described as ‘tinkling the ivories’, especially as ‘knocking the hell out of the plastics’ would be more accurate.

Cellos and Basses in unison do not comprise ‘cellibass’.

[I have not heard bassoons being referred to as ‘basses’, ‘oons’, or ‘fags’, but there may be good, although diverse, reasons to avoid all three…. ‘Boons’ might work; however, I hope to God it never does.]

Perhaps the most ubiquitous and shoe-splittingly toe-curling: Violins are not ‘fiddles’. [Or indeed any variant upon it e.g. ‘First fiddles’ or ‘second fiddles’. AAAARRRGGGHHH! – and who are the main culprits? – yes, indeed; violinists (not usually solo violinists, but large numbers of members of the fiddle sections (ugh!) of symphony orchestras.)]
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COMPOSERS

Tchaikovsky is not ‘Chike’.

Rachmaninov is not ‘Rack’.

Shostakovich is not ‘Shosters’ or ‘Shost’.

[What would the kind of person who uses any of the above three call Messiaen?]

[I appreciate that Castelnuovo-Tedesco is something of a mouthful, and would need shortening to ‘Tesco’ or something similar, should his works become mainstream; but is Tchaikovsky really too long a name for us to be bothered with saying it properly? They certainly never say ‘Chike’ in Russia (‘Чайк?) or anywhere else outside the former British Empire in my experience. Perhaps it is names with three or more syllables that inspire this phenomenon, in which case almost all Russian composers have had it.]
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INDIVIDUAL PIECES

Sibelius’ Second Symphony is not ‘Sib Two’.

Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto is not ‘Rakkie Three’.

Prokofiev’s Sixth Sonata is not ‘Prok Six’.

Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony is not ‘Shosters Five’. In particular, it is not ‘Shostie 5’ – that one makes me nearly gag.

Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring – I can take ‘The Rite’, particularly as this is the one exception I can think of for which the abbreviation does get used in other languages: ‘Le Sacre’, ‘Vesna’ (‘Весна’), etc. It somehow does not seem exclusive to call it that – difficult to say why.

Don Juan is not ‘The Don’ – Apart from anything else, this ludicrous epithet could refer to Don Quixote, Don Carlos, Don Giovanni and probably many others. [I obviously don’t mind bering referred to as ‘The Don’ myself, but that is another story; in any case, no one does refer to me in that way. Nigel Kennedy came closest when he insisted on calling me ‘Donny’, which, actually, like, man, I can well do without, if that’s cool with you, Kenny.]
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Here are some that I do actually like, by virtue of their witticism, which is obviously very different to complacency.

Messiaen’s Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant Jésus: ‘Twenty Peeps’ (thanks to Howard Hartog for this one)

Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro: ‘Introduction and Fast Bit’ (courtesy of Andrew Penny)

Strauss’ Tod und Verklärung: ‘Turd in the Clearing’ (anon. – probably a drunken RNCM bone-player)

Strauss’ Die Frau ohne Schatten: ‘The Constipated Woman’ – (I couldn’t help but slip in one of my own…)

Strauss’ Also Sprach Zarathustra: ‘Also Sprach Zarashoetring’ – I particularly like this because if you fully translate it into English it almost becomes ‘Thus Spake Eddie Shoestring’, reminding me of a 1980s TV series I used to enjoy. (anon.)

John Faulds’ Dynamic Triptych: ‘Symphonic Dipstick’ (Jeremy Hayes)

Any contributions would be very welcome.

Stefan Arzberger, leader of the Leipzig String Quartet who was arrested at the weekend in a Manhattan hotel, has authorised a brief account of events on the ensemble’s site.

They write:

Stefan Arzberger is member of the international renowed Leipzig Quartet. This ensemble with its spectacular carreer since 1988 ranks among the top ten worldwide’s best string quartets. During their US spring tour after the concert in Washington Library of Congress and on a day offs evening in New York City he was drugged, robbed from credit cards, money and personal belongings and was desoriented for the rest of the night.

He woke up with two police officers kneeing on his back. Without any memory of the past 5 hours he was charged assaulting an 64-year-old hotel neighbour. After spending one night in prison he was granted a $100,000 bail. The expenses for preparation of an efficient defense are easily up to $50,000.

Stefan needs help with these expenses. The Quartet add:

We hope for your support and thank you for sharing this! Anyone wanting to donate to his defense fund would be appreciated, no amount is too small. All funds raised are sole for attorney fees.

Thank you!!!

stefan arzberger

To donate, please click here.

So far today, seven contributors have pledged 592.

UPDATE: Five hours later it’s €1,750 from 25 donors.