I was having morning tea on Friday with Anne-Sofie von Otter and her accompanist Bengt Forsberg across the road from the BBC when Bengt's mobile bleeped with a text and his face lost most of its colour. As soon as Anne-Sofie was out of earshot he said to me, 'what do you do if you're giving a recital in 24 hours and someone has left your music on a plane?' The music was fairly rare - some songs by Erich Wolfgang Korngold - and a call to the original publisher's London shop confirmed that it was … [Read more...]

Why is it that amateur and community orchestras can be so much more adventurous in their programming than the heavily-funded behemoths who occupy Carnegie and other great halls? After writing on Nigel Kennedy's current advocacy for the Mieczyslaw Karlowicz concerto, I heard from two players who had been involved in performances in the past year. Francis Norton of London, a member of the (amateur) Royal Orchestral Society, reported his delight at a concert he played in at St John's, Smith Square, … [Read more...]

I was saddened and suprised to learn of Maggie Carson's death. Saddened because I liked the old girl, and suprised because I thought she'd gone years ago. That's the thing with musical PRs: you don't hear from them for a month or two and you assume they have either died or married a conductor. When I started out at this game, there were two tough ladies in New York who could lunch you to death. One was Dorle Soria who, with her husband Dario, ran Angel Records, and the other was Margaret Carson … [Read more...]

Here's a reality check from a western musician now living in the Slovak capital, Bratislava: The decline in state contributions (sponsors do exist, but not fully interested in performing arts) musicians have perhaps grim prospects. An orchestra member of the national no.1 orchestra the Slovak Philharmonic earns only one third of the average income. Just above the minimum wage (of course he still teaches in the afternoon, etc). But they compare themselves to their colleagues in Vienna, half an … [Read more...]