This month I’m launching Backgrounders, a monthly illustrated intensive look into a person or event in the arts news that I don’t have space for on Ruth Leon’s Theatrewise. Please let me know if you’d like to receive Backgrounders. There […]
News has reached us of the death of Ernst Mahle, a German composer from Stuttgart who migrated to Brazil in 1962. For half a century Mahle (sic) was artistic director and conductor of the Escola […]
The head of the U.S. Copyright Office, Shira Perlmutter, has been abruptly dismissed by an email from the White House. It read: ‘Your position as the Register of Copyrights and Director at the U.S. Copyright […]
The Heath Quartet has replaced Juliette Roos with Maja Horvath (pic). Roos succeeded Marije Johnston in 2023. Johnston joined in 2021, replacing founder Oliver Heath. Turnover is healthy. The other players are Sara Wolstenholme, Christopher […]
Our roving critic Susan Hall went to see John Adams’ version of Antony and Cleopatra at the Metropolitan Opera. No-one there seems to remember the Samuel Barber opera that opened the new Met in 1966. […]
This week’s Apple Classical hit-list, exclusive to slippedisc.com: 1 Shostakovich: Piano Concertos… Yuja Wang, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Andris Nelsons 2 Rimsky-Korsakov / Rachmaninoff/Dvorak Wiener Philharmoniker, Lorenzo Viotti 3 Field: Complete Nocturnes Alice Sara Ott 4 […]
The 2025 Ernst von Siemens Music Prize is to be awarded to Sir Simon Rattle, 70, ‘in recognition of his lifetime dedication to music’. The prize comes with a 250,000 Euros money order. It will […]
The background to this morning’s election of the next music director at La Scala is becoming a little clearer. As so often, the data say it all. Myung Whun Chung debuted at La Scala in […]
In the past few minutes it has been decided that the next chief at La Scala will be the Korean conductor Myung Whun Chung. Catch your breath. He will start in 2027. The favourite to […]
The formidable organist and pianist Alena Štěpánková-Veselá has died two months short of her 102nd birthday. She taught for more than half a cnetury at the Faculty of Music of the Janáček Academy of Performing […]
