Grade 1 Violin

Pablo (Pau) Casals was a great musician and great human being. He is best known as a great 'cellist and he certainly was that but the arrival of Mstislav Rostropovich meant for me at least that he wasn't necessarily the greatest 'cellist of all time.  For me, Casals's conducting was equal to his playing in a way Rostropovich's conducting was not really. I base this opinion on a relatively small number of recordings made of him in his advanced old age. They are astonishingly vital in the main although there are one or two that sound as if he was feeling his age.  I can attest personally to this energy of his on the podium in his last years because I attended a performance of his oratorio 'El pessebre' which he conducted at the Royal Festival Hall on September 29th, 1963 at the age of 87.  I remember him coming onto the stage looking like a corpse and one worried whether he would make it to the rostrum. He did however and once he had started the performance he...

    The more I listen to recordings conducted by Fritz Reiner the higher is my estimation of him. Doubtless he was capable of being a monster at times and the very epitome of the word martinet but these qualities were not the only ones in his makeup and were not exclusive to him.  Not much has been written about his more human side but it must have existed. He led the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in many highly successful tours and had very cordial relations with them following particularly successful performances for example, cmplimenting them on their playing.   Nonetheless there is a story concerning the great Hungarian conductor Ivan Fischer who had deplored the fact there was no memorial to Reiner in Budapest or anywhere else in Hungary, In his efforts to raise money for the commissioning of a statue or bust, he thought to gather together such members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra who had played under Reiner in their youth while he was in Chicago conducti...

  Talking of great impresarios, Angelo Neumann must be countered as one together with Maddox (see our post below), Barbaia, Laneri, Diaghilev, Astruc, Mapleson, Hammerstein, Hurok, Christie, Hochhauser and so forth.  Wagner's 'Ring' was premiered at Bayreuth in 1876. In 1878, Angelo Neumann had it performed in the Bayreuth sets at Leipzig. From there he toured it around Europe in 135 complete performances and 50 concerts. In this way he did for Wagner what Barbaia had done for Rossini and Lanari for  Bellini and Donizetti. A man of many parts, he had been a prominent singer and Intendant of various opera houses.  Not bad for a Jew born in Stampfen (Stupava), a small town 15 km West of Bratislava, population 12,000. 

  I have an ambivalent attitude to Muti. I first heard him decades ago when he conducted L'Africaine' in Florence with the young Jessye Norman. Not a great conductors' opera. I never really bothered to go to his concerts when he was chief of the Philharmonia and he didn't do much at Covent Garden. However just on the strength of his Busoni Turandot Suite (better than anyone else's) I do acknowledge he has some worth. Confidentially, a friend of mine at the Chicago Symphony had even less regard for him. Apparently when it looked as if he might be leaving, they asked the players who they would like to succeed him and the answer was - Solti! Also there are tales of Muti's after concert dinners where he would hold forth.  He has 3 hobby-horses; Anglo Saxon people are ugly Women conductors are no good Baroque music is a waste of time He is respected by the musicians of the orchestra and despite his abIlity to be overbearing, he was descri...

  Igor Markevich was indeed an excellent conductor. When I was in Bordeaux in 1963/4 working as Assistant de langue anglaise at the Lycee mixte de Libourne, Markevich gave the Bordeaux premiere of 'Le Sacre du Printemps'! Except in a sense he didn't because the last chord was obliterated by applause. Much later, I represented his son, Oleg Caetani. Caetani's mother was a Caetani, ancient noble Roman family. Oleg is a charming and delightful person - until he remembers he is a Roman aristocrat and then can be tough with the orchestra. He told me a funny story as to how his mother and father met. She was much younger than him and was taken to Markevich's  dressing room after a concert he had been conducting. While everyone was talking and no doubt feeling left out she sat on the sofa not realising she was sitting on his baton which had been lying there and which she broke with her derriere. An interesting introduction! The Caetanis had a great fortune but it w...

  One of the greatest disasters of my career was representing Andrei Serban to Covent Garden for ... Fidelio. I absolutely knew it would be a disaster based on Serban's unsuitable personality. His Turandot for the ROH (still running)  was a fantastic success but truth be known, he had little to do with it. When they offered it to him for the ROH at the Los Angeles olympics,he said he had only 10 days availability so he got them to engage a team from Peter Brook's company (his Dramaturg and Chloe Obolensky) and Kate Flatt for movement and said they should get on with it and he would come in at the end and change everything as was his wont. For the re-engagement they said he could do either 'Dutchman'* or 'Fidelio.' Andrew and I had the following conversation; Me: Drew, what should I do? ROH want Serban to direct 'Fidelio' and I know for a fact it's going to be a disaster. He has no idea what Fidelio is and he doesn't have the character to do i...

  Can there be a more musical nation than the Hungarians? More great conductors, soloists, singers and others seem to have come from Hungary per capita than any other country. Apart from the obvious Richter, Nikitsch, Szell, Reiner, Ormandy, Fricsay, Dorati, Solti, Kertesz, Fischer Ivan among the great conductors, there were pianists Anda, Cziffra, Fischer Annie, Schiff and violinists Joachim, Auer, Szigeti, Hubay, d'Aranyi, Vegh and many others. Composers include Kalman, von Dohnanyi, Lehar, Bartok, Kodaly, Ligeti, Kurtag. Singers Barabas, Hamari, Laszlo Marta, Marton, Rosa Pauly, Sass, Varady, Kelemen, Konya Sandor, von Pataky, Polgar, Simandy, Sved, Szekely etc. The famous Liszt Academy played an enormous part in producing these great talents. Leo Weiner in particular was key in the education of many of these great names. Liszt himself paid for the building of the Academy. There is also a number of 'hidden' Hungarians in the music world. Carl Flesch was originally Flesch...

  Question: who built the Bolshoi Theatre and founded the Bolshoi Ballet? Answer: an Englishman called Michael Maddox (1747 - 1822). The Bolshoi Ballet was founded in 1776 by Maddox together with Prince Urusov. The first theatre on the site of the present Bolshoi Theatre was built by Maddox in 1780. As you may read below. Maddox was himself a performer an amazing impresario and perhaps also an academic and pedagogue. His life was the very definition of picaresque. I came across this person in the excellent book 'Boshoi Confidential' by Simon Morrison (recommended!). No one in Moscow or Russia remembers Michael Maddox still less in the UK or elsewhere. This is a pity because he was a truly great historical figure.    Michael Maddox 5 languages Article Talk Read Edit View history From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Michael Maddox   (1747–1822; Russian: Михаил Егорович Маддокс,   Mikhail Yegorovich Maddox , also spelled   Medoks ,   Maddocks ,   Ma...

 The Cetra 'Rigoletto' has always been considered of the best. Lina Paliughi is a soprano with a very 'little girl sound. She didn't make the career she migh have owing to her appearance which was more that of a 'patata' than a young girl. Ferruccio Tagliavini was the peerless Duke and Giorgio Taddei the perfect Rigoletto. Smaller roles were cast from strength. If there is a greater Sparafucile than Giulio Neri I would like to know about it. His voice was the very epitome of 'black,' he died of a heart attack tragically young at the age of 48. Another great artist involved in  this recording was the conductor Arturo Basile. He also was to die young at the age of 54, in a car accident. He was born in 1914 in Siracusa, Sicily. In 1946 he won a conducting competition of which Tulio Serafin was chairman of the jury. He was soon conducting in the world's major Opera houses with Callas, Tebaldi, Leontyne Price, Corelli, Tucker and di Stefano as soloists. H...

  I was introduced to Ch. W. Ritter von Gluck in my early teens by my dear departed friend Nicholas Snowman - one of many introductions he made for me. Berlioz was another and related to Gluck as everyone knows. Those were the days when we all bought whatever recordings our fellow musketeers were buying. Nicholas had Gluck's Orphee in the French version with tenor. That was sung by the incomparable Leopold Simoneau and conducted by the great Hans Rosbaud.  The love of that recording led me to Alceste and the two Iphigenies. these are great masterpieces showing Gluck's famous reforms and pointing the way to Beethoven and beyond.  However he composed another 34 operas which are rather more conventional. I have enjoyed several of these such as Le Cinesi, Le Cadi dupe and L'Ivrogne corrige without guilty feelings but I have to admit certain important and even mature works have not left me wanting to hear them again: Paride ed Elena and Armide for example. So here we have a co...

Before tha Opera Bastille was even thought of, the Paris Opera meant the Palais Garnier. It was a rum place in those days. Georges Auric was the Director. Programmes ('Demandez le programme! Demandez le programme! sellers used to shout in the foyers giving an impression you were in a market of some sort) were in French and execrable English. I wrote to Auric offering to correct the English free of charge. My offer was serious. After all I was employed at one of the most prominent Lycees, the Lycee Janson de Sailly as Assistant delangue anglaise. Anser came there none. Years later when Terry Hands produced 'Otello' with Solti conducting and featuring Domingo in one of his first forays in the title role, Terry told me that things were so disorganised that within a day or two of the dress rehearsal he still hadn't seen some of the scenery or costumes or both, I forget which. Terry was married to the wonderful French actress  Ludmila Mikaël   so spoke fluent French and had ...