This week’s guest on David Krauss’s Speaking Soundly is the stellar mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, who talks about audiences… in front of a live audience. ‘You have to prove yourself every time,’ she says. ‘There is […]
The paper’s cultural reporter learned the hard way that Mistuko Uchida does not play the game any way but hers. A scholarly artist, Uchida was intent on testing my musical knowledge, stopping the interview several […]
Scrutiny of the ROH accounts for the year ending August 27, 2023 shows that the outgoing music director, Sir Antonio Pappano, earned just under £940,000 in 12 months, one-third up on the previous year. Some […]
On of the reasons orchestras organise choral concerts is because amateur singers have families who usually book to hear them. Not in Birmingham, apparently. One of our moles tells us that, with three hours to […]
The Illinois Symphony Orchestra has signed Taichi Fukumura as music director, starting next month. He succeeds Ken Lam. Taichi Fukumura came second in the 2o23 Mahler conducting competition. He has received four Solti Foundation US […]
The high point of the Lucerne Strings performance in Istanbul was a hightailed intervention by a local stray. As soon as the cat saw there was no conductor, it quickened the tempo. View this […]
The Orchestre de Paris has chosen Stéphanie Huang as principal cellist, it is reported in Brussels. The Belgian cellist, 28, audience favourite in the 2022 Queen Elisabeth competition, also starts as guest professor at the […]
This is the advance publicity pic for a mass joint performance by the Czech Philharmonic and the Bamberg Symphony of Mahler’s 7th symphony. The open-air concert will be conducted in Prague on September 11 by […]
The Italian conductor Daniele Gatti, new chief of the Staatskapelle Dresden, has taken another job as ‘artistic partner’ of the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra. The announcement has yet to be made. HK Phil lacks a […]
The pioneering early music group has posted: We mourn the passing of Jim Nicolson, one of Boston’s early music pioneers: musician, impresario, and one of the first participants in Camerata concerts. His benevolent, welcoming presence […]
