Monday Morning Violin Gossip, Op. 11

By Darcy Lewis

I’m pleased to announce that Violinist.com member Igor Yuzefovich has been named the assistant concertmaster of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Congratulations, Igor! ‘Tis the season for auditions…

Upcoming Auditions (See orchestras’ websites for full details)
Section Violin (3), Boston Symph, 10/31, 8/15 deadline
Section Violin II (2), Dayton Phil, 9/7, 8/15 deadline
Assoc. Princ. Viola, Cello & Bass, Section Violin & Viola – Cedar Rapids Symph, 8/27, 8/15 deadline
Section Violin (3) – Albany Symph, 9/7, 8/19 deadline
Concertmaster, Section Violin, Viola & Double Bass – Austin (TX) Symph, 8/25-28, 8/19 deadline
Section Viola - Kansas City Symph, 8/30, 8/22 deadline
Principal Viola – Memphis Symph, 8/28, 8/22 deadline
Section Violin, Section Viola – Wisconsin Chamber Orch, 9/12-9/14, 8/22 deadline
Section Violin, Viola, Double Bass – Green Bay Symph, 9/17, 8/24 deadline
Asst. Concertmaster, per-service Various Strings – Florida West Coast Symph, 9/8, 8/24 deadline
Concertmaster – Florida Orch, 9/26-27, 8/29 deadline
Section Violin, Cello, Double Bass – Quad City (IL/IA) Symph, 9/3, no deadline specified
Asst. Princ. Violin II, Section Violin, Section Viola – NW Indiana Symph, 9/7-8, no deadline specified
Section Violin I, Violin II, Viola, Double Bass – Duluth Superior Symph, 9/8, no deadline specified
Section Violin (2) – Charleston (SC) Symph, 9/9, no deadline specified
Asst. Concertmaster, Section Violin, Section Viola – Ann Arbor Symph., 9/11-18, no deadline specified
Assoc. Princ. Violin I & II - San Diego Symph, 10/10, 9/10 deadline

8/5/05 – According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the musicians union representing Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre orchestra musicians is filing unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board over PBT's decision to use recorded music during the 2005-06 season. "We believe their decision to go with recorded music should have been negotiated with the union before the decision was made."

8/8/05 – The San Jose Mercury News reviewed the first concert from this year’s Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, which featured Dutch violinist and composer Marjin Simons. First up was Scotsman’s James MacMillan's violin concerto, A Deep but Dazzling Darkness: "This piece, with its dripping textures and electronic murmurings, conjured up gargoyles, blood-red stained glass, and the pain of trapped souls, begging for divine mercy. There was an awestruck, medieval gloom to it." The program also featured Simons playing his own 'Secret Notes' Violin Concerto No. 2, which the paper called “a bafflingly awkward work.”

8/9/05 – An Associated Press story posted on Strings Magazine website and summarized by Arts Journal notes that ever since legendary violinist Isaac Stern passed away in 2001, a vicious court fight has been raging between the executor of Stern's will and the performer's children, who believe that he was taken advantage of on his deathbed and convinced to sign over most of his property to his wife of five years. The deathbed transfer led directly to the semi-secret sale of Stern's priceless violins by the executor, a fact which his children learned about only when tipped off by a musician in the Philadelphia Orchestra. This week, a Connecticut court ruled in favor of the children and ordered executor William Moorhead to pay back $562,000 in fees he had charged to the Stern estate.

8/9/05 - The Cleveland Plain Dealer reviewed the Blossom Festival debut of violinist Sergey Khachatryan, "the 20-year-old sensation who soared to world renown five years ago when he won first prize in the Sibelius competition in Helsinki." The paper opined: "The extraordinary violinist penetrated to the soul of [Khachaturian's Violin Concerto] with sweet tone and flawless technique."

8/10/05 - Australian musicologist Janice Stockigt discovered a previously misattributed major work by Antonio Vivaldi, Dixit Dominus, while performing research in a German musical archive. After referring her theory to Professor Michael Talbot, a Vivaldi specialist at the University of Liverpool, Ms Stockigt was told the manuscript was, in fact, the work of Vivaldi, and was the most important musical discovery for more than 75 years." Stockigt comments: "It's just wonderful music ... There's not a weak moment from the beginning to the end." One aria from the 11-movement work was performed on 8/9 by counter-tenor Christopher Field and the [Melbourne] University's Baroque ensemble.

8/11/05 - Conductor Lorin Maazel has canceled performances with the Sydney Symphony to have unexpected surgery. "Maazel withdrew as music director of an epic outdoor production of Carmen for the Seville International Music Festival last year due to emergency cataract surgery. The Sydney Symphony did not comment on whether his latest medical treatment involved similar problems, except to say that he was expected to make a full recovery," writes the Sydney Morning Herald. Tugan Sokhiev and Yannick Nezet-Seguin, will take over for Maazel.

8/12/05 – The New York Times reported: "The Brooklyn Philharmonic yesterday named Michael Christie, a 31-year-old Buffalo native and the recently appointed chief of the Phoenix Symphony, as its music director. He takes over after a two-year search that left the orchestra leaderless after the departure of Robert Spano, who had stayed on as an adviser.”

Finally, several notable musicians have died in recent weeks….

8/4/05 - The Cleveland Plain Dealer reported the death of Donald White, a cellist who became the first black member of the Cleveland Orchestra in 1957. White, who was 80, played in the orchestra for 39 years. "[White's] hiring by music director George Szell made news at a time when racial segregation was common" and notes that when the orchestra made a southern tour in 1961, "White was given the option of not going rather than having to stay in private homes or black colleges because he would not be admitted to hotels with the rest of the orchestra. But Szell and 85 percent of the musicians signed a petition urging White to make the tour." White also taught at the College of Wooster and The Cleveland Music School Settlement.

8/9/05 – The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported the death of Albert J. Hirtz, a longtime violinist with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, at age 85. Mr. Hirtz joined the Pittsburgh Symphony in 1948, when his stand partner was Lorin Maazel. "He was a member of the orchestra through the entire tenures of music directors William Steinberg and Andre Previn and retired in 1992" Hirtz taught violin privately and at Carnegie Mellon University.

8/10/05 - Alice Pfaelzer, who co-founded the Merit School of Music, has died at age 69 of pancreatic cancer, according to the Chicago Tribune. The nationally known school, which offers free or low-cost music lessons to Chicago-area children, has provided music training for about 35,000 schoolchildren in the last 26 years.

8/10/05 – Cellist Christopher Bunting has died at age 80, according to the Daily Telegraph. He gave the first performances of the concertos by Gerald Finzi in 1955 and by Alan Rawsthorne in 1967, as well as the first British broadcast performances of Shostakovich's First Cello Concerto. Bunting wrote several works, including a concerto, a fugue for six cellos, three pieces for cello ensemble and an elegy for cello and piano.

http://www.calendarlive.com/music/cl-ca-orchestras14aug14,0,7626313.story?coll=cl-home-top-blurb-right

http://www.deutschegrammophon.com/yellownews/2005-08-09.html

http://www.deutschegrammophon.com/yellownews/2005-06-29.html