The widely admired Christoph Nel died on Monday, aged 80.

Working mostly in Frankfurt, he also directed in Stuttgart, Hannover, Munich, Mannheim and Berlin.

Newly up on Youtube: Martha Argerich and friends.

The Greek musicologist and senior music critic George Leotsakos died this week, aged 89.

Born in Athens, on the 9th of August 1935, he studied with composers Kostas Kydoniatis and Yannis Andreou Papaïoannou, graduating from the Hellenic Conservatory in 1964. A contributor since the early 1970s to the Grove dictionaries (articles on both Greece and Albania), to Pangosmio Viografiko Lexiko [Universal Biographical Dictionary; published by Ekdotiki Athinon in 1983-1988], and to other encyclopedias. He remained an independent researcher until the end of his life. He was the first Western musicologist to visit Albania in 1981, a country isolated at the time, and report on its special musical culture. His most recent work is a ca 700-page monograph on composer Spyros Samaras (1861-1917).

The UK-Australian pianist who was cancelled by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra after making unacceptable remarks on the Gaza situation has issued this clarification through his PR agency:

For clariy (sic), we are releasing the comments made by Jayson Gillham during his performance on Sunday, 11 August at Melbourne Town Hall, presented by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra:

During the concert, Mr Gillham introduced each work, including the world premiere of “Witness” by composer Conor D’Netto. With Mr D’Netto’s express permission, Mr Gillham provided context for the piece, referencing the tragic deaths of journalists in Gaza—a topic of significant personal importance to him. A full transcript of his comments is below:

Over the last 10 months, Israel has killed more than one hundred Palestinian journalists. A number of these have been targeted assassinations of prominent journalists as they were travelling in marked press vehicles or wearing their press jackets. The killing of journalists is a war crime in international law, and it is done in an effort to prevent the documentation and broadcasting of war crimes to the world.

In addition to the role of journalists who bear witness, the word Witness in Arabic is Shaheed, which also means Martyr. Mr Gillham is not making any further statement at this time.

Slippedisc analysis:

The issue of journalists killed in Gaza is heatedly contested. The named Gaza fatalities were, on the whole, local residents, some of whom worked either directly for Hamas or with Hamas consent, according to independent sources. A minority, the Israelis say, took an active part in the massacres of October 7. There is no conclusive evidence on either side to support Gillham’s contentious statement, which demonstrated his personal bias in the conflict.

Gillham wrote, in a recent social media post: ‘If you are friends with friends of Israel, you need new friends.’

The vast majority of the world’s Jews are – by family or personal links – ‘friends with friends of Israel.’  Gillham’s position is definedly antisemitic.

You can now get excluded from the Last Night for carrying a flag related to ‘protest, hatred and advertising’.

Seems to cover pretty much everything.

The Iran-born soprano and teacher Haleh Abghari, renowned for New York performances of Peter Maxwell Davies’s Eight Songs for a Mad King’, has been found stabbed to death in her Colorado Springs apartment. Police are treating the death as homicide, possibly in the course of a robbery.

Abghari, 54, had been a music professor for ten years at the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs.

She is survived by her parents and her sister. A Gofundme appeal has been started to support them.

The composer Jason Eckardt writes: ‘One of the most arresting performances I have seen was Haleh Abghari’s realization of Aperghis’ Récitations. I was not alone: everyone who attended that concert at Miller Theatre was stunned and Haleh’s interpretation reverberated with the force of an earthquake throughout the new music community. Her agile, powerful, yet refined voice was matched by her sense of drama, completely inhabiting the piece, riveting every listener in the hall. I will never forget it, or her.’

The Colburn School in Los Angeles, host to Esa-Pekka Salonen’s conducting Fellowship, has received a huge $16.6 million donation from an Illinois-based foundation.

Salonen said: ‘I am deeply grateful to The Negaunee Foundation for supporting this program from the very beginning. With this new and generous gift, we hope to make the Negaunee Conducting Program into the foremost conducting apprenticeship, finding talented individuals, regardless of their age or where they are in their studies, and nurturing that talent to share with the world.’

The School will also house Salonen’s 1,400 annotated scores within a new Frank Gehry-designed campus.

Salonen, who is quitting the San Francisco Symphony after a falling out with the board, is quoted in today’s NY Times saying: ‘I’m not rushing into anything…I just want to get my priorities right.’

The soprano Elsa Charlston, renowned for her commitment to new works, has died in her hometown. After a career in chamber music as a mezzo, Elsa hit the high register as she hit 40, touring Europe with Lukas Foss’s ‘Time Cycle,’ Oliver Knussen’s ‘Rosenkranz Lieder’ and Luciano Berio’s ‘O Re’.

She premiered David del Tredici’s ‘Adventures Underground’ with the BBC Symphony, sang Lulu at Santa Fe and performed with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Solti and Giulini.Her second husband was the composer Ralph Shapey.

Bruce Duffie interview here.

The Italian soprano Celestina Casapietra died this week in her homeland. After early successes in Milan she married the DDR conductor Herbert Kegel and became half of the regime’s operatic glamour couple.

In Berlin, she performed Donna Anna in Don Giovanni, Elsa in Lohengrin and Tatiana in Eugene Onegin, among many leading roles. Elsewhere she sang at Vienna, Salzburg, Munich, Hamburg, Venice and Turin.

Two dozen of the world’s leaing musicians have published a letter of admiration for the pianist Pavel Kushnir, who was arrested for posting an anti-Putin video and was allowed to die of hunger in jail.

They attached a video of Kushnir performing Rachmaninov, a favoured Putin composer.

Here’s the letter:

Hello! My name is Pavel Kushnir. I am a pianist by profession (I am not afraid of this word), and I work as a soloist of the Kursk Philharmonic Society.”

This is how one of the letters of the thirty-nine-year-old pianist, writer and activist Pavel Kushnir begins, who recently died in a Birobidzhan prison after a dry hunger strike. He was imprisoned there awaiting trial for criticizing the Russian government’s war. His crime was running a YouTube channel with five subscribers in which he spoke out against the war. The story of Don Quixote repeats itself – with a catastrophic ending that, unfortunately, is more typical of life than of literature.

We are musicians too. Even though it is difficult to write, to think, to exist, when we are faced with such all-encompassing evil, we must take a stand. Nothing will bring Pavel Kushnir back. We write here to remember him, and we write because of the countless unknown political prisoners in Russia and all over the world. Perhaps the greatest tragedy of Pavel’s life is that we are only now realizing what a remarkable artist, writer and thinker he was. We simply did not know him. This must remind us that the perverse “selection process” of law enforcement leads to the most wonderful and fearless people being thrown into prison, often the best people of a sick nation. They have even less chance of benefiting from a prisoner exchange than the people we know from the media – but we must not forget them.

In today’s hellish kaleidoscope of fake news, false morals and false values, we have become almost deaf. When we suddenly hear a distant, beautiful sound that, despite its modesty, drowns out the omnipresent hellish roar and clang, we bow to those heroes and visionaries who, in their desperate loneliness, sacrifice themselves for humanity and pay the ultimate price.

Martha Argerich, Daniel Barenboim, Elena Bashkirova, Boris Berman, Andrey Boreyko, Yefim Bronfman, Isabelle Faust, Julia Fischer, Sol Gabetta, Kirill Gerstein, Vladimir Jurowski, Igor Levit, Alexei Lubimov, Mischa Maisky, Alexander Melnikov, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Emmanuel Pahud, Sir Antonio Pappano, Sir Simon Rattle, Sir András Schiff, Katia Skanavi, Andreas Staier

UPDATE: The letter was composed by a friend of Pavel’s, the pianist Olga Shkrygunova, and circulated by the pianist Alexander Melnikov.

In a year of generational transition with Jasper Parrott stepping back at HP and Barrett Wissman fading out at IMG,one of Germany’s older family firms is also moving on.

Cornelia Schmid is giving up executive duties at K D Schmid. Her leadership role will be split between Karen Macdonald in London and newly hired Christoph Drescher in Berlin. ‘We are deeply grateful for Cornelia’s ongoing support and continuing influence on our values,’ they say.

The Elbphilharmonie concerthall tells us that its inaugural Creator in Residence Nahre Sol amassed 13.5 million views for her videos of the course of a year.

Sounds promising.

Here’s her take on Mahler’s Adagietto.

To my mind it’s a bit like Mahler 101 at Brandeis or some other classroom with ivy on the window.

Your thoughts, please.