If Osama bin Laden were to sue Citibank for giving him false advice in a takeover deal, he’d stand a decent chance in a New York court, given the general low repute of City bankers.

No such luck for Guy Hands, the man who owns the hedge fund that owns EMI. His $7 bn court claim that he was swindled into paying over the odds for the company was thrown out in four hours by a jury, unmoved by wails that Hands had lost 70 percent of his personal fortune when EMI’s share price fell by half.

Where that leaves EMI is firmly in the knackers yard. If the company cannot meet its next debt repayment, Citibank will call in the loan and put the comany into administration.

Vultures are circling. If Warner pass yet again on the chance to pick up the oldest and deepest music catalogue on the cheap, sources at Sony and Universal say the two giants will carve up EMI between them. Neither can buy the company without facing anti-trust action. But if they cherry-pick the remains, Citibank will get repaid and the label will fade into history.

As for Terry Hands, he’s running low on friends and the high-wire case will have cost him another chunk of an already depleted fortune. So sad.

The new recording by Gabriela Montero has been decked out, at her request, in the national colours of Venezuela. Ms Montero is not a supporter of the Hugo Chavez regime. She chooses to live abroad.

The record, of music by various Latin American composers including herself and the 19th century Venezuelan virtuosa Teresa Carreno, is a love letter to her country.

In the booklet, which I haven’t yet seen, she makes the point with greater precision. And she does not stand alone. EMI, uniquely for a major label, allowed her to change its logo from red to blue on the sleeve to conform to her political and aesthetic standpoint.

Go, Gabi!

 

 

Here’s the microsite for track details.

The new recording by Gabriela Montero has been decked out, at her request, in the national colours of Venezuela. Ms Montero is not a supporter of the Hugo Chavez regime. She chooses to live abroad.

The record, of music by various Latin American composers including herself and the 19th century Venezuelan virtuosa Teresa Carreno, is a love letter to her country.

In the booklet, which I haven’t yet seen, she makes the point with greater precision. And she does not stand alone. EMI, uniquely for a major label, allowed her to change its logo from red to blue on the sleeve to conform to her political and aesthetic standpoint.

Go, Gabi!

 

 

Here’s the microsite for track details.

Solomon001.jpg

What you see here is a photograph that cannot be printed in any self-respecting newspaper in the year of our enlightenment 2010.

It shows a man smoking a cigarette. Everyone knows that smoking kills. Depicting a man in the act of lighting a fag amounts to an inducement to homicide. That’s why no newspaper editor will permit it.

So what is it doing on the cover of a classical record?

My first response, when I reviewed the record here and here, was that the German producers had erred against current codes of public decency and should, perhaps, have chosen another photo. On second thoughts, I think they were right.

Nine months after this photo was taken, the pianist in the picture, known as Solomon, suffered a paralysing stroke and never played again. Once you know this, the picture and its story constitute a subtle but highly effective health advertising campaign.  Don’t you think?

 

 

 

Solomon001.jpg

What you see here is a photograph that cannot be printed in any self-respecting newspaper in the year of our enlightenment 2010.

It shows a man smoking a cigarette. Everyone knows that smoking kills. Depicting a man in the act of lighting a fag amounts to an inducement to homicide. That’s why no newspaper editor will permit it.

So what is it doing on the cover of a classical record?

My first response, when I reviewed the record here and here, was that the German producers had erred against current codes of public decency and should, perhaps, have chosen another photo. On second thoughts, I think they were right.

Nine months after this photo was taken, the pianist in the picture, known as Solomon, suffered a paralysing stroke and never played again. Once you know this, the picture and its story constitute a subtle but highly effective health advertising campaign.  Don’t you think?

 

 

 

The world’s favourite Finnish violinist is, I’m glad to report, back on the boards. Linda Lampenius, renamed Brava when she stripped bare for Playboy, is playing with the Irish choral group Anuna and preparing a release of Christmas songs.

Interviewed in the Irish Metro Herald, she complains that the media went negative on her ‘when I started doing things considered inappropriate for a serious classical musician – like modelling, acting and playing pop/rock’. Not to mention getting naked for Playboy and its legion of grubby retards.

I have, as it happens, great sympathy for Linda and have fought her corner more than once. A former orchestral player, she was the victim of cruel exploitation by salacious elements in the music industry and she has worked very hard to get back on her feet and find a career in entertainment. She was recently a judge on Finland’s X Factor contest.

My Finnish is not up to much but I guess she was required, as X Factor judges are the world over, to dish out some fairly harsh stuff to the hapless contenders. In other words, she can give as good as she got.

It was not the media that derailed Ms Brava. Rather, it was her own naive decisions and the callousness of her managers. She needs to put the blame where it belongs.

Still, I’m delighted she’s back on form and I look forward to her Christmas release. 

One of the worst-kept secrets in the conducting world is out this morning with a press release confirming that Gustavo Dudamel has dumped his mentors.

Here’s the full story. Late last year, Dudamel’s agent Mark Newbanks became unsettled with his lack of personal advancement at Holt Askonas, an old-fashioned British agency, and arranged to join his former colleague Stephen Wright, who had bought out Van Walsum Management.

The pin-stripes at Holt Askonas went into damage-limitation, imposing vows of silence on all and sundry and wheeling out Dudamel’s closest advisers – led by Sir Simon Rattle – to persuade the young whizzkid to stay with the stable that launched him. The Dude, music director at the Los Angeles Phil and in demand the world over, is worth some $300,000 to his management over the next 3-4 contract years, say insiders. That’s big money in classical music, and big worries for Askonas Holt.

Rattle did his best at bending the Dude’s ear, and so did other Holt trusties, badgering the young conductor to stay put. But the Dude is a man of personal loyalties and Mark Newbanks is both close to his own age and a good buddy. This morning, Askonas Holt admitted defeat and announced ‘a significant change at the company’ with the loss of its fastes rising star.

Dudamel moves to Van Walsum from today and the Rattle shop is left licking its wounds. Askonas Holt publishes a list of ‘lengenday figures’ and ‘fantastic … young conductors’ whom it maintains under contract. But the Dude’s move is seismic, signifiying a shift in power in classical management.

Wright, who started out himself at Askonas Holt, has scores to settle with former allies and an expansion plans in mind. His new business partner is Costa Pilavachi, former head of Decca and EMI Classics. The wind of change is picking up.

 

One of the worst-kept secrets in the conducting world is out this morning with a press release confirming that Gustavo Dudamel has dumped his mentors.

Here’s the full story. Late last year, Dudamel’s agent Mark Newbanks became unsettled with his lack of personal advancement at Askonas Holt, an old-fashioned British agency, and arranged to join his former colleague Stephen Wright, who had bought out Van Walsum Management.

The pin-stripes at Holt went into damage-limitation, imposing vows of silence on all and sundry and wheeling out Dudamel’s closest advisers – led by Sir Simon Rattle – to persuade the young whizzkid to stay with the stable that launched him. The Dude, music director at the Los Angeles Phil and in demand the world over, is worth some $300,000 to his management over the next 3-4 contract years, say insiders. That’s big money in classical music, and big worries for Askonas Holt.

Rattle did his best at bending the Dude’s ear, and so did other Holt trusties, badgering the young conductor to stay put. But the Dude is a man of personal loyalties and Mark Newbanks is both close to his own age and a good buddy. This morning, Askonas Holt admitted defeat and announced ‘a significant change at the company’ with the loss of its fastes rising star.

Dudamel moves to Van Walsum from today and the Rattle shop is left licking its wounds. Askonas Holt publishes in its press release a list of ‘legendary figures’ and ‘fantastic … young conductors’ whom it maintains under contract. But the Dude’s move is seismic, signifiying a generational shift in power in classical management.

Wright, who started out himself at Askonas Holt, has scores to settle with former allies and an expansion plans in mind. His new business partner is Costa Pilavachi, former head of Decca and EMI Classics. The wind of change is picking up. 

 

Nothing has been solved by the British Government’s preservation order on Abbey Road studios. All it means is that the building cannot be demolished for the time being, although it can and will continue to lose money – or not make enough – for its owners, EMI, and their owners, the hedge fund Terra Firma.

So what’s to be done? I shall be talking about it at 2pm New York time today with John Schaefer on WNYC’s Soundcheck. If you’re snowbound or otherwise free, you can listen in real time or playback at your leisure just here. 

The studio man most trusted by Herbert von Karajan has died in Paris, aged 79. Michel Glotz was the maestro’s ears and eyes.

An EMI flak who fell out with the label’s British management when, after sacking Walter Legge, they proposed to replace Karajan with Sir John Barbirolli, he had been helping Maria Callas through her Onassis crisis when Karajan made him an irresistible offer.

As Glotz told Karajan’s biographer, Richard Osborne, over dinner in New York in 1965 he was asked ‘to coordinate all Karajan’s musical activities: conducting and touring, stage direction, recordings, films, television and, in particular, (founding) the (Salzburg) Easter Festival’ (Osborne, 531).

For the next quarter of a century, nothing significant happened in Karajan’s empire without Glotz’s say-so. He lasted longer with Karajan than any other close aide and was much resented by record producers when he second-guessed them in studio, prompting the maestro to reject an apparently acceptable take.

Never a whizz at technology or a pair of golden ears, Glotz had studied piano with Marguerite Long and possessed an aesthethic sensibility which, combined with his business sense and general good humour, was what earned him Karajan’s unwavering trust. A studio picture  by Lauterwasser shows Karajan shushing the orchestra wth one finger to his lips while Glotz, beside him, is thumbing his nose in mild mockery.

Part-Jewish by origin, Glotz went into hiding with his family during the Second World War while Karajan conducted the Horst Wessel Led in  Paris. Glotz’s brother joined the Résistance and was shot by the Germans.

But the past was not allowed to come between them. Glotz and Karajan spoke French or English together, never German, and Karajan was welcomed into Glotz’s family circle. Glotz told colleagues that the conductor was not an anti-semite and never a Nazi, just an opportunist with his eye on the main chance.  

Aside from Karajan’s affairs, Glotz ran a successful artists agency in Paris, with many Karajan allies as his clients. He was formidably discreet, deflecting my research inquiries with an affable courtesy, backed by a battery of lawyers. 

Michel Glotz was the last survivor of the golden era of classical recording, and his death, on February 15, has yet to be acknowledged by the corporate relics of that defunct industry.

EMI have moved – very slowly, after a week’s deliberation – to deny that the Abbey Road studios are up for sale. Since the original reports were planted on the Financial Times by EMI’s owners, the hedge fund Terra Firma, today’s denial has to be seen as an exercise in testing the market – an attempt to see whether the site might fetch a higher price than the £30 million which EMI now admits it was offered last summer.

As property prices in the NW8 postal district continue to heat up in rising inflation, it is only a matter of time before Terra Firma is made an offer it cannot refuse. In the meantime, the firm is discussing ‘revitalisation’ of the studios with ‘interested third parties’.

So far, the most interested party to declare itself is Andrew Lloyd Webber, whose interest tends towards self-promotion. Sir Paul McCartney made some vague noises and English Heritage made sure that the block could not be turned into luxury housing.

All agree that Abbey Road will require ‘a substantial injection of capital’ to keep it open. Terra Firma may think it can capitalise on a wave of popular sentiment to claim public funds from the National Lottery to restock and refurbish its ailing facility.

This is not altogether a pipe dream, but if such money were to be granted it must be on the condition that the studios are opened to the public, as I and others have proposed, as London’s museum of music. That concept is so compelling and so long overdue that I am putting together a proposal and a costing for the next government, due to be elected in May.

The combination of archival display and live performance coculd make Abbey Road a magnet for music lovers of all genres.