By ANDREW POWELL Published: October 5, 2015 MUNICH — Members of the Munich Philharmonic, positioned as the “orchestra of the city,” have privately raised money for work and supplies in the refugee crisis here. Together with colleagues at the Philharmonischer Chor München, their management teams, and new MPhil chief conductor Valery Gergiev, the musicians amassed […]
Read the rest of this article »By ANDREW POWELL Published: July 24, 2015 MUNICH — Bavarian State Opera has confirmed by phone it will announce a contract extension for Kirill Petrenko before the start of next season, in September. With the month of August being a house holiday, the news could come as early as next week when the company’s annual […]
Read the rest of this article »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 […]
Read the rest of this article »By ANDREW POWELL Published: April 29, 2015 MUNICH — Tomorrow, a year behind schedule but 70 years to the day since Munich fell to the Allies, a six-story-high, slatted white cube opens for visitors here: the Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism, or NS-Dokumentations-Zentrum. Significantly, it stands directly on the site of the […]
Read the rest of this article »By ANDREW POWELL Published: April 17, 2015 MUNICH — Although no news release hailed its arrival, a revamped website was launched today for the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. It is faster, navigationally flatter, and better geared to mobile platforms than the old pages, criticized here. To enable the advance, domains have been set up liberating […]
Read the rest of this article »By ANDREW POWELL Published: December 11, 2014 MUNICH — Could leaders here finally be moving ahead with a sorely needed new concert hall? Plans and sketches released this morning indicate progress on what has been an excruciatingly slow drive to supplement, or really supplant, the small Herkulessaal and hideous Gasteig venues. As presented by chief […]
Read the rest of this article »By ANDREW POWELL Published: November 24, 2014 MUNICH — It took him 39 years, but Maurizio Pollini has now completed his recorded survey of Beethoven sonatas here in the Herkulessaal, where the project began. The final sessions, for the Opp. 31 and 49 pieces, were held in June this year, and the resulting CD set […]
Read the rest of this article »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 […]
Read the rest of this article »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 […]
Read the rest of this article »By ANDREW POWELL Published: April 10, 2014 MUNICH — Local tenor Jonas Kaufmann and his wife, mezzo-soprano Margarete Joswig, have jointly announced their separation. The musicians began their careers in the middle 1990s. Both sang early on for the Saarländisches Staatstheater and at the Brahms Days festival in Tutzing, just south of here. They have […]
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