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Latest from Latvia

September 30, 2009 By

A press release from Riga informs me that the national symphony orchestra has a new chief conductor, Karel Mark Chichon, who is apparently British. The statement neglects for some reason to mention that he is also the husband of the country's leading international opera singer, Elina Garanca, who will no doubt wish to spend more of her time in the bracing Baltic winter season. I had not heard of Mr Chichon before, though his c.v. lists dates with important orchestras. Perhaps they, … [Read more...]

09/30/09 1:27 PM | filed under: main |

How Larrocha created Pavarotti

September 29, 2009 By

My friend Paul Myers, formerly chief producer at CBS and Decca, has shared with me (and let me share with you) his reminiscence of how the diminutive and retiring Alicia de Larrocha shot to an unlikely American fame.   Step back into the 1960s, when America could be lit up overnight by a classical talent, and pin back your eyelids for Paul's first-hand account (I wish he'd told me this for my book on the record industry). Here goes:   Dear Norman, I was very … [Read more...]

09/29/09 2:24 PM | filed under: main |

Thinkin’ bout Alicia

September 27, 2009 By

Long before I listened to records for a living, I remember coming out of a store with an album I had chosen purely for the sum of its parts. Unlike any compilation known to buffs, it combined a harpsichord concerto by Bach with a keyboard work of Haydn's and a Mozart piano concerto, the 12th in A major, K414. I am not sure if it has ever been reissued on CD. The conductor was David Zinman, the orchestra the London Sinfonietta and the soloist - who clearly dictated the quirky, … [Read more...]

09/27/09 11:00 AM | filed under: main |

New Strads for Old

September 25, 2009 By

Who says Cremona always sounds best? A blind testing by Matthew Trusler, the Paris-based British violinist who once went searching with me on a BBC quest for the ideal fiddle, yielded some remarkable results. Playing behind a curtain for a jury of musicians and 180 members of a forestry conference, Matt did his riffs on a 1711 Stradivarius and on four new instruments by the Swiss maker, Michael Rhonheimer, two of them treated with an organic fungus and two au … [Read more...]

09/25/09 11:19 AM | filed under: main |

In a critical condition (6)

September 21, 2009 By

Twelve hours after the curtain fell on Le Grand Macabre at English National Opera last Thursday, there were three reviews online - from Richard Morrison of The Times, George Hall in The Stage and myself in this space. Later in the day, we were joined on Google News by Andrew Clements in the Guardian, Edward Seckerson in the Independent and Barry Millington in the London Evening Standard, the last of whom was in print but not searchably online.  On Saturday morning, 30 … [Read more...]

09/21/09 12:29 PM | filed under: main |

Macabre? No, it’s a metaphor for cruelty and financial crash

September 18, 2009 By

The composer György Ligeti once said that every note he ever wrote reflected his formative experiences as a teenaged slave labourer under the Hungarian Fracists and German Nazis in 1943-45. Never was this truer than in his only opera Le Grand Macabre, a farce about the imminent destruction of a city, which somehow fails to happen. In the finale, survivors looks around and wonder what they are doing on stage when so many others are gone. Put yourself in the broken shoes of a liberated … [Read more...]

09/18/09 9:43 AM | filed under: main |

Beethoven does the Beatles

September 14, 2009 By

Last weekend in Bonn, I heard an a capella group, the Atrium Ensemble, perform the Abbey Road album as if it were a formal Lieder cycle like An die ferne Geliebte, by the town's best-known native son. While the arrangements were too homogenous - a creative dissonance or few might have made the time pass faster - the serial concept has kept my mind occupied ever since, both about the Beatles' working method and about musical globalisation. As I report on Bloomberg today, the German … [Read more...]

09/14/09 1:25 PM | filed under: main |

Some more super stats

September 12, 2009 By

The BBC Proms have ended with another set of record attendances, five percent up overall and 87 percent averages at the Royal Albert Hall, night after night over eight weeks. More encouraging still, 37,000 attenders were first-timers and there was a sharp rise in the number of under-16s in the hall. Several of the new-music nights were sell-outs Following on good returns from Salzburg and Glyndebourne, the classical audience appears to be holding steady and even increasing during the recession - … [Read more...]

09/12/09 8:51 PM | filed under: main |

Vienna bewilders the Proms

September 11, 2009 By

There was mild bemusement among hard-core concertgoers and after-show drinkers at the end of the Vienna Philharmonic performance of Haydn's 98th symphony and Schubert's Great C major under the late-replacement baton of Franz Welser-Möst. Nothing to do with the playing, which was glorious and impeccable in every respect bar one slightly sour movement fadeout in the Schubert. Nothing to do either with the conductor's interpretation, which was uncluttered, organic and irresistibly … [Read more...]

09/11/09 11:05 AM | filed under: main |

More cause for mourning, down under

September 10, 2009 By

Dame Elisabeth Murdoch, Rupert's centenarian Mum, enjoys mother-of-the-nation status in Australia, or at least in the environs of her stately home near Melbourne. Early this year, she co-endowed the city with the southern hemisphere's first purpose-built chamber music hall, an acoustic marvel in a burgeoning arts quarter that briefly threatened to challenge Sydney's role as continental capital of culture. I saw the hall as it neared completion and reported with some … [Read more...]

09/10/09 9:13 AM | filed under: main |
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