Philadelphia Orchestra has just signed Esteban Batallán as principal trumpet, starting next month. The Spanish virtuoso, 40, has put in five years in the role at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, where he was recruited by […]
Happy birthday to People’s Artist of the USSR, artistic director and principal conductor of the Tchaikovsky Bolshoi Symphony Orchestra, Vladimir Fedoseyev. All round, the best Tchaikovsky conductor of his time. Certainly in the ballets and […]
The German-based pianist has pulled out of Wednesday’s performance of Beethoven’s triple concerto in Tel Aviv. According to the orchestra, Levit sends his regrets and says he hopes to return soon. The cancellation may be […]
The Wigmore Hall informs us that HM The King has chosen Mared Emyr Pugh-Evans as his official harpist. Mared says: ‘It is an honour to be appointed as Harpist to His Majesty The King, it’s a […]
Mieczysław Weinberg’s opera on Dostoievsky novel The Idiot has received audience ovations and ecstatic reviews at the Salzburg Festival. The director Krzysztof Warlikowski updates the story to Putin’s Russia, replete with characters selling their souls […]
The German gadfly Axel Brüggemann reports that Dresden’s sometime Semper Ball chief Hans-Joachim Frey is organising a St Petersburg Ball for his patron, Vladimir Putin. Top of the bill is Putin’s cellist and money-launderer Sergey […]
The bass-baritone Alfred Kuhn died this weekend at 86. He sang 15 years in Darmstadt, five in Düsseldorf and 30 at Bavarian State Opera, where he was a fixture as Antonio in The Marriage of […]
The BBC today appointed the German musician Anja Bihlmaier as principal guest conductor of the BBC Philharmonic. Bihlmaier, 45, has just left the Residentie Orchestra in The Hague after one three-year term as chief conductor. […]
Tête à Tête: The Opera Festival returns later this month with its visionary festival of new opera, with events from 24 August to 29 September 2024, a month of essential listening. The festival opens with […]
The British-Brazilian oboist Harold Emert has published this appreciation of the international cellist Antonio Meneses, who died of cancer this weekend. Rio de Janeiro– Internationally renowned Brazilian cellist who won the Tchaikovsky prize in Moscow, […]