Posts Tagged ‘Münchner Philharmoniker’

Bumps and Bychkov at MPhil

Thursday, June 25th, 2015

By ANDREW POWELL Published: June 25, 2015 MUNICH — 2014–15 has been a rough transitional season for the Munich Philharmonic. Lorin Maazel’s sudden resignation a year ago forced its managers into much recasting, and some feeble programs. Then, midseason, came worse news. An irksome pact between Munich’s Bürgermeister Dieter Reiter and Bavaria’s Minister-Präsident Horst Seehofer […]

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Gergiev Prep Hours Clarified

Friday, March 13th, 2015

By ANDREW POWELL Published: March 13, 2015 MUNICH — This morning the Munich Philharmonic detailed the rehearsal hours put in by Valery Gergiev for a Stravinsky program here in December 2013. They totaled 14¼, a lavish allocation by the heavily branded maestro given his skimpy work in Poland and Russia the same week, to wit: […]

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MPhil Vague on Gergiev Hours

Tuesday, February 24th, 2015

By ANDREW POWELL Published: February 24, 2015 MUNICH — Fourteen months ago irate journalists confronted Valery Gergiev at a news conference here amid his preparations for a Stravinsky program with the Munich Philharmonic. The confrontation wasn’t over music, rather politics, but it did lead to questions for the orchestra’s management about his hours and pay, […]

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MPhil Vacuum: Maazel Out

Thursday, June 12th, 2014

By ANDREW POWELL Published: June 12, 2014 MUNICH — Lorin Maazel, 84, has quit the post of Chefdirigent of the Munich Philharmonic, according to a statement this morning by this city’s Kulturreferat, the government entity responsible for the orchestra. Reasons of health were cited. The news follows several weeks of concert cancellations by the American […]

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Gergiev Undissuaded

Tuesday, May 20th, 2014

By ANDREW POWELL Published: May 20, 2014 MUNICH — In a rambling, two-page “personal statement” to Munich Philharmonic subscribers made public today (May 20), Valery Gergiev stressed the role of music as bridge-builder and affirmed his now divisive assumption of the post of Chefdirigent of the orchestra, effective in fall 2015. The statement covers a […]

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Honeck Honors Strauss

Friday, April 11th, 2014

By ANDREW POWELL Published: April 11, 2014 MUNICH — Watching Manfred Honeck lead the Munich Philharmonic in Strauss last Sunday (April 6), a question came to mind. Why isn’t this the man replacing Lorin Maazel next year? With refreshing conviction and broad arm gestures à la Carlos Kleiber, Honeck drew polished performances from the orchestra […]

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Gergiev, Munich’s Mistake

Wednesday, April 9th, 2014

By ANDREW POWELL Published: April 9, 2014 MUNICH — Not a week goes by here now without media mention of Valery Gergiev. The musical friend of Vladimir Putin and, more to the point, high-profile employee-to-be of the City of Munich inspires comment even in modest suburban newspapers. Many want his alarmingly long contract (2015–20) shredded. […]

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Busy Week

Tuesday, April 1st, 2014

By ANDREW POWELL Published: April 1, 2014 MUNICH — In every book on time management, there is a chapter about giving your work to someone else. Delegation, they say, is a virtue: an assistant exercises new authority and the delegator accomplishes other tasks, perhaps in other places. Maybe in another country. Or two. Take Valery […]

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Stravinsky On Autopilot

Thursday, March 27th, 2014

By ANDREW POWELL Published: March 27, 2014 MUNICH — In eight days in May 2004, as a kind of audition for the post of principal conductor, Valery Gergiev drove the London Symphony Orchestra brilliantly, if roughly, through recorded concerts of all of Prokofiev’s symphonies. Acclaim ensued, he got the job, and two years later the […]

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On Wenlock Edge with MPhil

Thursday, January 9th, 2014

By ANDREW POWELL Published: January 9, 2014 MUNICH — Sullen, virile, often disembodied voices speak bluntly in Vaughan Williams’s On Wenlock Edge (1909). They are lost and living British Empire soldiers. Their plights, in six Housman texts, shape the 22-minute song cycle and its mildly chromatic “atmospheric effects,” resulting in music of stimulating directness — […]

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