Kathleen Ferrier - and the Kathleen Ferrier Award

That article about Kathleen Ferrier I promised you is out now in The Independent's all-new Saturday arts section, which launches today. You can read it online, naturally - here - but please buy a copy and see the goodies that the editorial team has been cooking up for us! Meanwhile, last night at the Wigmore Hall, the Kathleen Ferrier Awards for young singers held its final. Winner: 25-year-old Welsh soprano Natalya Romaniw, who also scooped the...

Read More

Encore!

Sad news from Paris this morning that Kurt Masur fell off his podium last night while conducting the third movement of Tchaikovsky's Symphony No.6. He has been taken to hospital. The concert was being broadcast live, but had to be abandoned. Apparently Sarkozy has sent him good wishes.At Masur's age (84) few of us are lucky enough still to be able to work at all (the French president, of course, may be out of a job shortly, but that's by the by). Old soldiers never die, but conductors don't even retire. With such a vocation, why would anyone wish...

Read More

Breaking: Decca signs chocolate violinist

News just in: Decca has signed up the Greek violinist Leonidas Kavakos - on JDCMB long nicknamed "the chocolate violinist" (even though I am sure the luxury confectionary brand Leonidas is really nothing to do with him). It's a super choice: a mature, significant musician who has a style and sound of his own yet always puts musical integrity first.Over the years I've loved every concert of his that I have attended - Tchaikovsky, Korngold and Stravinsky...

Read More

Meet Janina Fialkowska

I'm off to meet a very remarkable woman this morning. Here she is, talking about the influence of Rubinstein, the infighting of the French school, the progress of her career and... how she has dealt with suffering cancer of the shoulder. It's a devastating but inspiring story, given her positive nature. She has recently been awarded the 2012 Governor General's Performing Arts Award for lifetime achievement in classical music - her native Canada's highest artistic honour - and there's a new CD on the way.Above all, though, just listen to the way...

Read More

Birthdays...

Today should have been my mother's 80th birthday. She died just over 18 years ago, aged 61.Yesterday was the centenary of Kathleen Ferrier, who died at the age of only 41. At least her recordings are still here. And Shakespeare, whose birthday is today, is of course immortal.Here is Ferrier in 'Erbarme dich' from the Bach St Matthew Passion. (I have a feature about her "pending" - will post link when it's ou...

Read More

A Sunday Bach treat from Myra Hess

Dame Myra Hess plays Bach's Toccata in G, BWV916. Recorded in 1950, this performance is full of personality and poise, good sense and rhetorical flair.Someone needs to write a new biography of Hess - a great woman, a towering artist and a real emblem of her times. Existing books are out of print. I have run to earth a copy of Marion McKenna's, but it tells us everything except what we really want to know. But perhaps Hess's playing tells us the most, and always wi...

Read More

Stop press: Barenboim at SOAS - live webcast NOW

Daniel Barenboim is at SOAS right now, to be interviewed by Jon Snow of Channel 4 News. The event is being live-streamed and you can access it here: http://www.soas.ac.uk/lmei/barenboim-snow/They have started with a screening of a film about Barenboim and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. When the interview gets underway, we can expect a focus on the state of music and politics in the Middle East. It's on until 12.30pm today.Meanwhile, more about the inconvenient indivisibility of politics from goings-on that some people would prefer to dissociate...

Read More

Luxor for Mozart lovers

I've been in Egypt - for longer than expected. A few hours before our flight was due, a fearsome, hot wind sprang up from the Sahara and visibility was reduced to pea-souper levels by whirling sand. The incoming plane diverted to Hurghada and after a very long afternoon playing Scrabble in Luxor Airport we found ourselves facing an extra night away. We didn't get back until yesterday evening, so unfortunately I missed both a vital interview and the...

Read More

Anderszewski wins Recording of the Year at BBC Music Magazine Awards

Here's that exciting piano news we were waiting for: Piotr Anderszewski has won Recording of the Year at the BBC Music Magazine Awards for his CD of Schumann's Humoresque, Gesange der Fruhe and Studies for Pedal Organ. They dispatched me to Lisbon to interview him a few weeks ago and the resulting feature is in the magazine that should be out about now. Piotr is very good at winning things he didn't put in for - like this, and, about ten years ago, the small matter of the Gilmore Award (c$300,000) which lands on some unsuspecting...

Read More

ZAKHAROVA AND BOLLE IN SWAN LAKE

I'm clocking off, so here is something to keep you busy for a bit: the complete Swan Lake, starring Svetlana Zakharova and Roberto Bolle. Stay tuned for exciting piano news when I'm ba...

Read More

Musical miracle in the Congo

This, from the CBS News series 60 Minutes, is really fantastic. An ex-pilot in Kinshasa founded a symphony orchestra - starting from zero, with no musicians, instruments or teachers... I think Gareth Malone and the Military Wives have a little competition! (Sorry about the car ads...it's worth waiting for.) Thanks to Marshall Marcus for drawing attention to ...

Read More

Swiss snapshots

Here's my review for The Independent of two rather amazing concerts in the Lucerne Easter Festival. Plus some snaps. (And more soon...) Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE ...

Read More

Vengerov rides again

(Above: Maxim Vengerov plays and talks on BBC Radio 3's In Tune the day before his Wigmore comeback concert...don't miss it, even if you missed the concert.) Being Maxim Vengerov at the Wigmore Hall the other night must have been rather like being Barack Obama winning the US election. The weight of expectation had to be all but inhuman. Vengerov's comeback concert - to which his appearance as stand-in for Martha Argerich  two weeks ago was an unexpected warm-up - couldn't have announced more clearly that the violinist means business. It is...

Read More

Brucknerphobia

It's kind of ironic that this piece is out today, because a week ago, listening to Bernard Haitink coaching young conductors in Lucerne on Bruckner's Seventh, I ended up with the thing on the brain for 36 hours solid. It was the first time - and I mean the first ever - that I started thinking that there might be something more under the hot air after all... Anyway, short version is in the paper now, but in case it is not quite outrageous enough for...

Read More

Newsround: The Long Road to Parsifal

My Internet is back, so very quickly, before it vanishes again, here's a little newsround.BATONFLIPPER'S BIG BREAKDon't miss this blog by conductor Michael Seal, who tweets as @batonflipper, about how Andris Nelsons dropped out of the CBSO tour and he had to step in at an astounding 20 minutes' notice. There followed a massive programme with Jonas Kaufmann singing the Kindertotenlieder. By all accounts Michael did magnificently. Is this his big break?...

Read More

Kurze pause

Greetings from my Blackberry. Phone line fault has rendered my home an internet-free zone, which is a right neck-in-pain in my line of work. You realise how horribly dependent we've all become on the wretched thing. Hope we can get it sorted soon, after which normal service will be resumed.In case you weren't sure, the post about music critics auditioning for Gergiev was an APRIL FOOL tre...

Read More

STOP PRESS! Critics to undergo formal auditions as musicians

After many discussions in the past year about what makes a good music critic, change is afoot. A consortium of directors drawn from the ranks of arts editors, conservatoire heads and senior figures from the highest echelons of the musical profession is preparing a new scheme whereby every music critic is to be vetted for his or her abilities - as a musician. The panel will be headed by the principal conductor of the UK's top orchestra: Valery Gergiev...

Read More