Valery Gergiev's idea of playing two Mahler symphonies in the same BBC Prom concert - the fourth before the interval and the fifth after - is a product of our special-offer times. If neon-strip retailers can accustom us to buying more than we want by pretending to give it away free, what's to stop conductors cramming our heads with musical excess? I can think of no obvious precedent or justification for doing two Mahler symphonies in the same concert. Mahler once performed the fourth … [Read more...]
So cheap it cannot be legal
April 22, 2010 By
The first three nights of the 2010 BBC Proms, announced today, consist of - Mahler's Symphony of a Thousand, conducted by Jiri Belohlavek; - Bryn Terfel singing Hans Sachs in a Welsh concert staging of Wagner's Mastersingers of Nuremberg; - and Placido Domingo as Simon Boccanegra in a production transferred from the Royal Opera, Covent Garden. The cost of a weekend ticket for these three shows - if you're quick and lucky enough to land one - is as little as £12.50 ($19). Nowhere on … [Read more...]
New face of the BBC Proms
April 22, 2010 By
I was thrilled to learn this morning that Katie Derham is joining the BBC to present the Proms on television and radio. It is a significant step in Mark Thompson's strategic review to reverse the insistent dumbing down of culture that has raged in recent years. The Proms has been a particular target of the dumb clucks who run the main TV channel. First, they imposed as presenter the grinning gardener, Alan Titchmarsh, a cuddly fellow who endeared himself to the nation's middle-aged female spread … [Read more...]
Ashkenazy, the reel-time rerun
April 21, 2010 By
Quite by chance, I have just heard that the BBC will be running a repeat of my Lebrecht Interview with Vladimir Ashkenazy this weekend - the one in which he discloses his recruitment by the KGB and his 'accidental' defection to the West. I may be the last person to know about this programme, but since a lot of people have asked me if they could hear it again, I thought I should pass on the information. The broadcast is on Radio 3, Sunday night at 2130, at which time I shall … [Read more...]
Mariss misses out on Vienna
April 21, 2010 By
Mariss Jansons, a rare sighting in the opera house, has been forced to cancel on the Vienna State Opera's revival of Carmen for a bout of surgery that will put him out of action for the next 2-3 months. Jansons, who heads the Amsterdam Concergebouw and the Bavarian Radio orchestra, is unlucky at opera. He suffered a heart attack while leading an Oslo Bohème in 1996 and, apart from a stunning Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk in Amsterdam, has little to show for his love of opera other than … [Read more...]
It’s parachute time again at EMI
April 20, 2010 By
Stephen Johns, V-P of artists and repertoire for EMI Classics, is on his way out. Before the axe starts falling in the next wave of Terra Firma cutbacks, Stephen has lined himself up a new venture as artistic director of the Royal College of Music. The idea is that he will train students to find a foothold in the performing sector - and, perhaps, in whatever corners are left of the mainstream record industry. It's a smart move by the College and its principal, Colin … [Read more...]
Grounded in New York?
April 20, 2010 By
The American Classical Orchestra is offering free - or rather 2-for-1 - tickets to Europeans who can't catch a flight home by Saturday night. You will need to show a passport to gain entry. The program is an all-singing, all-dancing Beethoven 9th with Handel Coronation anthems, conducted by Thomas Crawford (details below). Whether it will be improved by a bunch of castaways checking their blackberrys between movements for signs of life in the skies is a matter of conjecture. Anyway, if you make … [Read more...]
Chaos theory
April 19, 2010 By
The London Book Fair, which opened this morning, looked more like the Gobi Desert at noon than a hub of industry. Many of the foreign stands were vacant, the publishers and sales staff having failed to reach London through the curtain of Icelandic stardust. 'Half of our meetings are off,' one publishers told me. 'All we're doing is swapping gossip with competitors.' 'Do you publish any Norwegian books in Nigeria?' said one lone foreign exhibitor to another across an echoing aisle. One in … [Read more...]
Armenian genocide enters the concert hall
April 18, 2010 By
The line between music and politics is becoming ever more blurred. Here's the text of a talk I gave on BBC Radio 3 Music matters yesterday. You can hear it here for a week. ------ The international Cologne Triennale opens next weekend with the world premiere of a cello concerto. Nothing remarkable about that. The conductor who commissioned it is Semyon Bychkov, newly decorated with a BBC Music magazine award, the soloist is Jan Vogler and the composer is … [Read more...]
The next political flashpoint
April 16, 2010 By
On the BBC's Music Matters tomorrow, I discuss the forthcoming premiere of Armenian composer Tigran Mansurian's Cello Concerto on April 24th, a day that Armenians the world over mark as the start of the Turkish massacres in 1915. It is an overtly political piece of music and Turkey will doubtless make its usual diplomatic protests. What concerns me here is not the historic event - appalling as it was - so much as the aptness of creating a political flashpoint in the concert hall. I shall post … [Read more...]
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