Friday Miscellanea

Some weeks it is tempting to just link to a bunch of Slipped Disc posts on Friday. It is the silly post of the week, after all. Some examples:

3 CANADIAN COMPOSERS ARE PAID TO WRITE CAT OPERAS AT HOME

LET’S DO MAHLER’S RESURRECTION FROM HOME. READY, DEAR?

JUSTIN TIME: WHAT’S KEEPING CANADA LAUGHING

But I do have standards...

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Alex Ross does the valuable public service of listing a number of livestreamed concerts we can watch:

April 16

7pm CET: Igor Levit Hauskonzert.

7pm CET: Alan Gilbert conducts the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic in music of Torbjörn Iwan Lundquist, Mozart, and Haydn.

8pm ET: Musicians from the Philadelphia Orchestra perform from their homes.

See also Recital Streams.

April 17

7pm CET: Daniel Barenboim and Michael Barenboim play Mozart sonatas at Boulez Saal.

830pm CET: At the Schinkel Pavilion, Tabea Zimmermann and Francesco Piemontesi perform works for viola and piano.

73opm ET: Pianist Pedja Muzijevic performs music of CPE Bach, Antheil, Glass, Satie, and Cage, courtesy of the 92nd St. Y.

730pm ET: Violinist Alexi Kenney performs in lieu of a scheduled concert with the New Haven Symphony

April 18

2pm CET: Dante Boon performers Tom Johnson's An Hour for Piano.

April 19

5pm ET: The American Composers Orchestra presents the first in a series of commissioned solo works. Miranda Cuckson plays a piece by Ethan Iverson. Ticketed event on Zoom, with proceeds going to benefit artists.

April 20

830pm CET: At the Schinkel Pavilion, pianist Severin von Eckardstein performs Prokofiev, Medtner, Chopin.

April 24

830pm CET: At the Schinkel Pavilion, Gabriel Schwabe and Nicholas Rimmer perform cello-and-piano works by Schubert and Chopin.

6pm ET: Live-stream from ThingNY.

April 25

6pm ET: Live-stream from ThingNY.

April 26

5pmET: American Composers Orchestra presents harpist Ahya Simone playing a new work by Shara Nova. Ticketed event on Zoom, with proceeds going to benefit artists.

6pm ET: Live-stream from ThingNY.

Other lists of this kind: VAN, WKAR.

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 Another Canadian orchestra steps up to the plate and rescinds layoffs: COVID-19: Vancouver Symphony Orchestra rescinds layoffs and looks to online offerings.

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The Royal Family of the UK is one of the last remaining niches of aristocracy and recently demonstrated that they can be useful patrons of the arts: John Tavener's 'magical' last opera to be staged for first time.

A newly discovered opera by Sir John Tavener is to be staged for the first time after the late composer’s friend Prince Charles flagged up its potential.

Tavener, one of the most acclaimed British composers of his generation, completed his final opera, Krishna, in 2005 but it has remained in manuscript form, unperformed and largely unknown, since then.

A number of years after Tavener’s death in 2013, Prince Charles approached Sir David Pountney, then artistic director of the Welsh National Opera, to ask if he would take a look at Krishna to see if it was a viable opera project.

“I did look and I thought yes it was definitely an interesting project,” said Pountney. “I was astonished to discover this massive complete work, never performed, and on a subject which is so close to Tavener’s music and life. It is a very exciting prospect.”

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Here is a little account of just how devastating the coronavirus shutdown has been for musicians: The Day the Music Stopped: Standing Still Together.

It was a Thursday, the day the music stopped. For us musicians, the emails and phone calls started as a trickle that turned into a flood. Two weeks of dates cancelled, and then before we knew it, two months. Every single concert, opera, festival, club date–our calendars were wiped clean. When it happened, some of us were out on the road, and we made our way home in confusion and panic. Some of us were getting ready to head out on tour, and we cancelled flights, unpacked suitcases. We were all stunned. It was surreal and impossible. 

Musicians like me exist in the present and the future at the same time, with our schedules planned out years in advance and our daily practice focused on performances months ahead. Always moving forward, never standing still. Always focused on tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. But that Thursday, when the scale of the global COVID-19 pandemic stopped us all in our tracks, I had to stop, too. Tomorrow was unknowable. As the world spun out of control, I had to stand still, and it made me dizzy.

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For our envois today, first, another streamed concert from Frankfurt with Maximillian Junghanns and Asli Kilic playing the Beethoven A minor Violin Sonata:

And on the more popular side, Martin Scales & Paul Höchstädter play some tunes by John Lennon, Bob Marley and others:

From the beginning of the pandemic, here is the Vancouver Symphony conducted by Otto Tausk in a performance of the Symphony No. 6 by Beethoven to an empty hall.