The Year in Music: International

By Keith Clarke

With financial crises and military conflict topping the news agenda, along came welcome evidence that we would all be a lot happier if we spent more time singing. A new study by The Royal College of Music’s Center for Performance Science indicated that listening to and singing classical music has a positive, biological effect on mood and stress levels. It was followed by a report that Europe boasts some 37 million singers involved in about one million choirs or vocal ensembles. With 4.5 percent of the European population actively participating in collective singing activities, it should be one happy continent if the Royal College is right.

Festivals in Lucerne, Aldeburgh, and Holland were among those paying tribute to classical music’s most celebrated maverick, Pierre Boulez, who turned 90 in March. Those who went to the great green room in the sky before reaching that age included pianists Aldo Ciccolini (89) and Peter Katin (84), violinist Peter Cropper (69), composer and pianist John McCabe (75), and conductor Walter Weller (75). The U.K. lost three senior citizens of the classical-music critical fraternity with the deaths of Michael Kennedy (88), Andrew Porter (86), and Edward Greenfield (86).

British cellist Julian Lloyd Webber, whose neck injury last year forced his premature retirement from the concert platform, continued his extensive educational work with Sistema England and was appointed principal of Birmingham Conservatoire.

ORCHESTRAS

The year saw two major chief conductor appointments, one widely expected for months, the other not anticipated by even the sharpest pundits. The announcement of Simon Rattle’s move from the Berlin Philharmonic to the London Symphony Orchestra was so long coming that the reality could have come as an anti-climax, but Rattle is a past master of springing a surprise in the final bars and it was widely reported that his arrival in London was dependent on the building of a new world-class concert hall. He denied the condition, but despite the impoverished state of the U.K. economy, Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne and London Mayor Boris Johnson both leapt at the idea with enthusiasm, promising a feasibility study. Strangely, the study is being led by the Barbican Center, home to the London Symphony, which despite dodgy acoustics has long claimed to  be a world-class concert hall itself.

The process of finding Rattle’s replacement in Berlin was conducted with almost as much secrecy as the election of a new pope. In May, after more than 11 hours of deliberation, the 123 voting members of the orchestra  failed to name a successor, saying that it could take up to a year to reach consensus. In the event, the smoke went up the chimney the following month to announce the appointment of Kirill Petrenko, a publicity-shy conductor who is virtually unknown on the international stage.

In other podium changes, Riccardo Chailly (principal conductor at La Scala and slated to become music director in 2017) signed with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra through 2020 and will relinquish his post with the Leipzig Gewandhaus as of June 2016, four years before the end of his contract. No sooner had Andris Nelsons signed on as music director of the Boston Symphony than he accepted Chailly’s abandoned post in Leipzig as well—both through 2022. The two orchestras will work together in, as yet, unnamed collaborations. Daniel Harding takes over from Paavo Järvi as music director of the Orchestre de Paris in September 2016; British conductor Jonathan Nott was appointed the new music and artistic director of the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande from January 2017, succeeding Neeme Järvi; Thomas Dausgaard was named new chief conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony in September 2016, succeeding Donald Runnicles; Edo de Waart will be music director of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra from 2016; Ramon Tebar became the new principal conductor of Spain’s Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia in Valencia, Ivor Bolton will succeed Dennis Russell Davies as music director of the Basel Symphony Orchestra from the 2016-17 season.

Israeli conductor Israel Yinon collapsed and died as he was conducting Strauss’s Alpine Symphony in the Swiss city of Lucerne in January.

Myung-whun Chung, music director of the Seoul Philharmonic, was accused of cheating the orchestra, a claim backed by the city’s audit authorities. He stood accused of using the orchestra’s travel budget for his family members and various other dastardly tricks.

The Hallé Orchestra announced a series of “Priceless Classics” events with free admittance and audience members invited to pay what they think the performance was worth as they leave.

OPERA

It was another year of drama for English National Opera, which won top honors at the Olivier Awards and a Royal Philharmonic Award into the bargain but lost in succession its chairman, executive director, and artistic director. Chairman Martyn Rose quit in January, leaving behind a ticking bomb in the form of a letter leaked to the press in which he blasted Artistic Director John Berry and said the sooner the company was rid of him, the better. He was swiftly followed through the revolving door by Executive Director Henriette Götz, just eight months into the job. Berry was supported by another letter in the press, penned by the heads of 33 international opera houses. The Arts Council stepped in to help by slashing the company’s funding by almost a third. A new interim CEO, city sharpshooter Cressida Pollock, was brought in, her appointment seen as a demotion for Berry. Finally, in July, he accepted the inevitable and quit after 20 years at the company and eight seasons as artistic director.

At the Royal Opera House it was a year of protest. In June, activists held up the second act of La bohème by unfurling a banner drawing attention to the Royal Opera’s cozy relationship with BP, which is not seen as the most environmentally friendly company. There followed an open letter from 75 musicians and music scholars including composer John Luther Adams calling for the link to be  severed, and the house began a staff consultation process on the matter. In July a chorus of boos disrupted a performance of Rossini’s William Tell whose director incorporated a graphic rape scene. Much huffing and puffing ensued in the public prints. Plácido Domingo opined that directors should show some respect.

There was strife, too, at Norway Opera, where Artistic Director Per Boye Hansen was forced to quit, causing an acrimonious row. At Greek Opera, where with the national economy in crisis they must have thought things could not get worse, the box office was robbed of its few remaining euros. Bayreuth continued its reputation for offstage drama by banning co-Artistic Director Eva Wagner-Pasquier; Opera Australia said “Up yours, mate” to two negative reviewers, attempting to shut them out; Novosibirsk Opera director Boris Mezdrich was fired for failing to stop performances of a production of Tannhäuser deemed sacrilegious and offensive. Korea National Opera appointed soprano Han Ye-jin as general director in January. She quit in February. 

The world of opera caught its breath with the news that Dmitri Hvorostovsky had been diagnosed with a brain tumor.

RECORDING AND BROADCASTING

Naxos pulled ahead of the pack with the launch of a high-definition and lossless classical-music streaming service, promising no loss of signal, no buffering delays, and the highest possible sound quality on both home and mobile networks. 

In May it was announced that Harmonia Mundi was to be sold to PIAS (Play It Again, Sam), a global recordings distributor with some 250 labels. Eva Coutaz, widow of label founder Bernard, will remain a consultant to the Harmonia Mundi board. Harmonia Mundi USA remains unchanged for the immediate future.

Three U.K. music industry groups went to the High Court and successfully challenged the government’s decision to introduce a private copying exception into U.K. copyright law, arguing that it was unlawful because it failed to provide fair compensation to rights holders. 

Warner Music Group bought Poland’s oldest record label, the state-owned Polskie Nagrania Muza, for €1.9 million, but still had enough spare cash for its owner, the Ukraine-born, U.S.-educated Leonard Blavatnik, to be declared by the Sunday Times to be the wealthiest man in the U.K., having increased his wealth from $4.8 billion to $20 billion in the past year. 

Legendary record producer Brian Couzens, the founder of Chandos Records, died in April aged 82.

In broadcasting, the BBC announced former Arts Council England chief Alan Davey as the new Controller of Radio 3, the national classical-music and drama network. He in turn appointed Glyndebourne General Director David Pickard as director of the Proms from the 2016 season.

Radio France was in turmoil for much of the year. The director of Radio France Musique quit in May, adding to a growing list of vacancies that includes the artistic director of both radio orchestras. The board of directors met in July to discuss the crisis.

WINNERS

Nadine Koutcher, a 32-year-old soprano from Belarus, was named the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World. The Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow provoked its habitual controversy, awarding the top piano prize to 27-year-old Russian Dmitry Masleev, though it was 24-year-old French pianist Lucas Debargue, awarded fourth prize, who generated the most column inches. The Queen Elisabeth Competition also produced controversial results, leaving U.S.-Dutch violinist Stephen Waarts on the sidelines with fifth prize. First prize went to South Korean native Ji Young Lim, her compatriot Ji Yoon Lee mishearing the result and mistakenly walking onstage.

Leif Ove Andsnes took top honors at the BBC Music Magazine Awards, winning the Recording of the Year and Concerto Awards; 32-year-old Taiwanese conductor Tung-Chieh Chuang won the 2015 Malko Competition; Thomas Hengelbrock, principal conductor of the NDR Symphony Orchestra in Hamburg, was awarded the 2015 Karajan Music Prize. 

Choral conductor Simon Halsey was awarded Her Majesty’s Medal for Music 2014, and figures from the world of music featured prominently in the Queen’s two lists of awards, among them opera director Richard Jones, former BBC Proms chief Roger Wright, conductor Neville Marriner, and composers James MacMillan and Mark-Anthony Turnage.

Romanian tenor Ioan Hotea and Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen were first prize winners of Plácido Domingo’s 2015 Operalia competition. 

NEW MUSIC

Interim BBC Proms Director Edward Blakeman upped the ante with no fewer than 21 world premieres for the 2015 season, 13 of them BBC commissions. The BBC Philharmonic performed the world premiere of a newly discovered work by Messiaen, the four-minute Un oiseau des arbres de Vie (Oiseau tui). Other new works during the season included the world premiere of James MacMillan’s Symphony No. 4 and a new string quartet by Colin Matthews. As is traditional, the BBC came under fire for the relative lack of women in the line-up of living composers, some 81 minutes of programming compared with more than 700 minutes by men. Among the women who made it into the premieres list were Eleanor Alberga (with a three-minute work), Alissa Firsova (ten minutes), Joanna Lee (seven minutes), and Shiori Usui (seven minutes).

The Aldeburgh Festival saw the world premiere of Harrison Birtwistle’s The Cure, another collaboration with librettist David Harsent. 

It was a rich year for concertos, with world premieres of new works by Julian Anderson (violin), Nico Muhly (viola), Wolfgang Rihm (violin), Tan Dun (double bass), and James Horner, whose Collage: A Concerto for Four Horns and Orchestra was premiered in London three months before his tragic death.

The Vienna Staatsoper commissioned Olga Neuwirth to compose a new opera, Orlando, based on Virginia Woolf ’s novel, for premiere in December 2019. The story concerns gender identity, a subject close to the hearts of the Vienna Philharmonic.

PLACES

While London flirted with the idea of a new concert hall, Paris went ahead and opened one. The Philharmonie de Paris, the brainchild of Pierre Boulez, opened with a muted fanfare just days after the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack. Its opening evening was dedicated to the victims. One person not at the inaugural concert was the venue’s architect Jean Nouvel, who staged a hissy fit, saying the building was not finished. 

Sydney Opera House announced an AUD$202 million ($147 million) renovation to upgrade rehearsal spaces and improve concert hall acoustics. On a smaller scale, $111,740 was lavished on a Kosovo music school courtesy of the U.S. Embassy and the International Relief and Development to make it habitable by music students following the devastations of war. The city of Warsaw pledged $71.4 million to build the Sinfonia Varsovia European Music Center, scheduled to open in 2020.

The Wigmore Hall planned a $3 million refurbishment to add new rehearsal space, upgrade backstage areas, and install equipment for live streaming. •

Keith Clarke is consultant editor of Classical Music magazine and a regular contributor to MusicalAmerica.com.