Friday Miscellanea

 Here is a look at Less Common Instruments:

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For those lucky enough to reside in London, Wigmore Hall announces the beginning of the fall season:

Bringing this season to life are the world’s most sought-after soloists and chamber musicians including Boris Giltburg in a Ravel piano series, a debut recital from soprano Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha, Angela Hewitt in a residency commencing on 22 September, a season long focus on the works of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a residency from Pavel Haas Quartet and much more.

£5 tickets to be made available to people under 35, as well as free tickets for under 26s to selected concerts through Wigmore Hall’s partnership with the CAVATINA Chamber Music Trust.

Visit the Wigmore Hall website for full concert listings.

Discover the 2022/23 Season 

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And here is an unusual concert from Europe: TEARS FLOW FROM BOWS AT THE LONG NIGHT OF THE CELLOS.

“Cellists are sociable and love to get together” says Jan Vogler, director of the Dresden Music Festival and cellist. So why not make something of it? Vogler has given his address book a workout and invited as many cello A-listers as possible to Dresden for Cellomania: a “festival within the festival”, climaxing with the unnervingly (but accurately) named Long Night of the Cellos, a 4.5 hour marathon concert starring 17 of the finest cellists on the planet.

I put this up partly because it is an interesting concert and partly because I will be in Dresden towards the end of July and this was held at the Dresden Kulturpalast.

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As readers know, I am as much a fan of traditionalism as I am of progressivism so this caught my attention: Aristotle goes to Hollywood

If you wanted to write a screenplay for a blockbuster film, Aristotle is the last person you might ask for advice... But some of the best contemporary writers of stage and screen, such as Aaron Sorkin and David Mamet, think that this ancient Greek philosopher knew exactly how to tell a gripping story for any age. ‘The rulebook is the Poetics of Aristotle,’ Sorkin says. ‘All the rules are there.’

Worth having a look at the whole essay.

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It is hard to avoid the feeling these days that the institutional leaders of our time (I refuse to call them a "cultural elite" because I think they are nothing of the kind) have become hopelessly corrupt. One example: Former Louvre Director Jean-Luc Martinez Has Been Charged With Money Laundering Over Ties to Alleged Antiquities Trafficking Ring.

The charges against Jean-Luc Martinez, who stepped down last year, concern five antiquities allegedly taken illegally from Egypt and sold to the Louvre Abu Dhabi.

How did it happen that people who a generation or so ago would have been sober, moral adults have transformed into crooks and liars?

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Now here is a shockingly good piece of news: Bravo! Music at reopened Kyiv opera replaces noise of Russian artillery

Kyiv’s opera house has seen a lot over the years, on and off the stage. Opened in 1901 after a fire destroyed the previous building, a decade later it was the scene of a dramatic assassination.

Prime minister Pyotr Stolypin, attending a Rimsky-Korsakov opera with Tsar Nicholas II, was shot dead during the interval while standing in the front row of the stalls.

The pause in performances during the Russian invasion is only the third lengthy gap in activity over the past century, said the theatre’s archivist Larisa Tarasenko.

The first was between the end of the Nazi occupation and the return of the evacuated Soviet troupe. The second was due to Covid. Otherwise, performances continued even as regimes, empires and ideological slants changed.

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Here is a touchy subject: Is the Middle Class Musician Disappearing?

The most taboo subject in the arts is how people pay the bills.

Students embarking on careers in creative fields deserve better information and more honest feedback on this subject. But artists are more likely to reveal tawdry details of their bedroom antics than a cash flow statement.

Often newbies are told that baldfaced lie: “Do what you love and the money will follow.” Which sounds great—but also like blind faith in the irrational.

Does the money really follow if you pursue your dream?

I guess we all know the answer to that question.

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Let's kick off our envois with a recent Wigmore Hall concert. This is the Gringolts Quartet playing Stravinsky and Schoenberg:

 And here is the Berlin Philharmonic cello section playing the first of Villa-Lobos' Bachianas Brasleiras pieces:

And finally the overture to Rossini's Barber of Seville, the first opera performed in the newly-open Kyiv opera house.

In defiance of the current ban on all things Russian, I choose a performance by the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, Yuri Temirkanov, conductor. I just can't see how the musicians of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic are in any way responsible for the imperialist militarism of Vladimir Putin.