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If it’s Thursday, Why Mahler? is in Harrogate

July 28, 2010 By

http://www.harrogate-festival.org.uk/events/mendelssohn-and-mahler/   Mendelssohn and Mahler Lecture by Norman Lebrecht Thur 29 July | Royal Hall | 2.30pm Music historian and award-winning novelist Norman Lebrecht offers a radical interpretation on the Jewish nature of Felix Mendelssohn and Gustav Mahler. Mahler converted to Christianity to become head of the Vienna Opera, but always sought to explain his peculiar identity. 'I am three times homeless,' said Mahler, 'as a Czech among … [Read more...]

07/28/10 6:38 PM | filed under: main |

Playing through the pain

July 27, 2010 By

Chatting in a BBC green room this morning with the pianist Paul Lewis - before we went onto Breakfast to discuss the perennial Proms question of clapping between movements - I was alarmed to hear that he had torn a muscle in his arm while rehearsing a Beethoven concerto last week. Paul is performing all five concertos at the BBC Proms. Cancellation was not an option. So he played on through the pain, and with barely a grimace. That's what artists do. Last week, I visited Maria Joao Pires … [Read more...]

07/27/10 2:28 PM | filed under: main |

Linda’s being very Brava once again

July 26, 2010 By

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 … [Read more...]

07/26/10 3:52 PM | filed under: main |

Marilyn Horne sings My Way

July 26, 2010 By

Telling all on The Lebrecht Interview this week is Marilyn Horne, one of the first Americans to bestride world opera and the diva to did most to restore Rossini to centre stage. Hers is a story of unyielding courage and self-confidence. As a college student, she corrected Stravinsky and Hindemith on baroque singing. Fifty years ago, she stormed the German scene with one of the most powerful renditions of Marie in Berg's Wozzeck. Against her family's wishes, she married Henry Lewis, an … [Read more...]

07/26/10 10:27 AM | filed under: main |

A quality glitch on BBC Proms

July 25, 2010 By

This just in from a top-end sound engineer:   Did you watch the Paul Lewis Beethoven 4th piano concerto this evening? The BBC abandoned the usual broadcast cameras and used 'Q-Ball'  cameras instead. The pictures were very poor resolution and foggy in comparison, and the obsession with close-ups through a wide-angle lens makes everyone look close as well as bulbous. What is in the BBC's heads? The cameras have a single 1/3" 2MP sensor which is comparable with the Canon … [Read more...]

07/25/10 6:02 PM | filed under: main |

Some gentle arts brain-twisters for a summer’s day

July 23, 2010 By

1 Why has the Welsh Assembly voted £250,000 for Bryn Terfel's private festival when Welsh National Opera faces devastation by cuts? 2 Was the UK Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt 'really looking forward' (his words) to the DCMS staff awards when he's planning to sack half the workforce? 3 Who thinks a committed pornographer is a fit and proper person to own a British national television channel? (see question #2, perhaps) 4 Why is a summer breezer allowed … [Read more...]

07/23/10 2:30 PM | filed under: main |

A great singer with Alzheimer’s

July 22, 2010 By

I did not want to be the first to mention it, but it now appears to be public knowledge on music sites that Anthony Rolfe Johnson was suffering from Alzheimers in the last years of his career, and died of it this week. The symptoms were first noticed in 1998, on a Spanish tour with Sir Neville Marriner. There were further lapses in Munich at the Staatsoper when he played Emaeus in Monteverdi's Ulisse in 2001. 'His confidence began to suffer enormously,' writes a trusted colleague, 'and … [Read more...]

07/22/10 12:59 PM | filed under: main |

Now Sir Colin crashes out

July 22, 2010 By

The latest withdrawal from the BBC Proms is Sir Colin Davis, officially on health grounds. My understanding is that he has asked to be released from engagements during a period of family mourning. His absence, coming so soon after the deaths of Sir Charles Mackerras, who was down for two Proms, and Anthony Rolfe Johnson casts a pall on an otherwise glorious musical summer - a reminder of our fragility and mortality. Sombre times, indeed. BBC press release: Matthias Bamert to replace Sir … [Read more...]

07/22/10 10:55 AM | filed under: main |

Farewell to another trailblazing tenor

July 21, 2010 By

That fine singer Anthony Rolfe Johnson died yesterday, aged 69. He had been suffering for a while from a degenerative condition. Former colleagues were first to post the sad news. Johnson appeared all over the world in Bach and Handel oratorios and Mozart operas. He was a memorable Peter Grimes and he sang Aschenbach powerfully in Death in Venice at the Metropolitan Opera, New York. In Brussels, where he was a popular Pelleas, he created the role of Polixenes in Phililippe Boesman's … [Read more...]

07/21/10 3:09 PM | filed under: main |

Another VP overboard at EMI Classics

July 20, 2010 By

To lose one vice president, as Oscar Wilde so aptly put it, may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose two looks like carelessness. Three months after parting company with A& R chief Stephen Johns, EMI Classics today sailed ahead without Graham Southern, V-P Catalogue, who looks after backlist releases, including such current triumphs as the phenomenal Mahler box. Graham, I understand, left of his own volition, a pretty brave thing to do in these tricky times. He told friends he was … [Read more...]

07/20/10 3:28 PM | filed under: main |
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