Category: people

Former Financial Times music critic Ronald Crichton, who died last week, was a force on the newspaper’s arts page in the 1960s and ’70s. “A man of broad culture and wide horizons, Crichton wrote with belle-lettriste style and elegance, which led some to assume he had an old-fashioned mind. Not so: he was decidedly modern in outlook, following the new music scene with unquenchable curiosity and showing an early appreciation of avant-garde productions. Crichton would often see the less obvious side of a performance, in a way envied by other critics. He was not a spectacular writer: you had to live with his writing before realising what an interesting, enjoyable and illuminating critic he was.”

The 50-year-old singer was in Spain, and her performances have been canceled for the next three months. “Local newspaper Diario de Leon reported Monday that Studer had received rapid medical attention and was diagnosed as having suffered a mild heart attack. She had been scheduled to perform Friday at the Auditorium of the City of Leon.”

Sir Charles Mackerras turned 80 while standing on the podium of the Royal Opera House this weekend, and while he is by no means alone in the ranks of living octogenarian conductors, there is little question that the career he has built in his six decades in the music business is the envy of the orchestral world. What makes Mackerras almost unique among conductors is his diversity of interests: “[perhaps no] other conductor has acquired quite so many specialties or put them into practice with so many ensembles.”

“The son of Russian émigré musicians who were brought to the U.S. by Hurok in 1923, Max Gershunoff came to arts management indirectly. He first studied trumpet at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where Leonard Bernstein and Samuel Barber were among his classmates. He then played under Fritz Reiner and Arturo Toscanini but grew increasingly bored by the repetitive aspects of the job. So, with encouragement from conductor Dimitri Mitropoulos, he went into arts management, ultimately serving for 12 years as vice president of Hurok Concerts Inc. He remains active in the field, representing, among others, soprano Marni Nixon and conductor José Serebrier.”

The Guardian corrects and clarifies a number of points in an incendiary article about Noam Chomsky published last month.

Norman Mailer was honored for lifetime achievement at the National Book Awards this week, and he was feisty as ever. “The passion readers used to feel for venturing into the serious novel has withered,” he said. Mailer, whose other books include such award-winning nonfiction as ‘The Armies of the Night,’ disparaged commercial fiction and likened himself to a carriage maker watching the ‘disappearance of his trade before the onrush of the automobile’.”

“The son of Yehudi Menuhin was ousted as head of the German branch of the music foundation set up by the violinist and humanist after comments he made to a newspaper run by Germany’s leading far-right party, the foundation said.”

“With an arrestingly open and curious mind, a rascally sense of humor and an energizing and controversial conducting technique, he has risen from relative obscurity to prominence in a few short years. Not only is he viewed by many as the savior of this once-major orchestra (St. Louis) crippled by deficits and a recent strike — it will give two concerts this week at Carnegie Hall — but the New York Philharmonic clearly has its eye and ear on him as a potential successor to Lorin Maazel, who is scheduled to step down in 2009.”

“Although he reached the pinnacle of fame inside the ballet world, greater renown was denied him by mischance. In the summer of 1974, for instance, the great Russian ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov defected at nearly the same time as Bujones won his ballet olympics medal, overshadowing the young American’s triumph. ‘Baryshnikov has the publicity, I have the talent,’ Bujones said at the time. And he was half-right: Both had the talent, but in Cold War America, a defection from the Soviet Union created instant stardom like nothing else.”

Dean Koontz is being accused of racism after the author recounted to an audience a story of his dispute with a Japanese executive over a movie.”Dear Mr Teriyaki,” he read to the audience. “My letter of 10 November has not been answered … I would assume your silence results from the mistaken belief that World War II is still in progress and that the citizens of your country and mine are forbidden to communicate. Enclosed is a copy of the front page of the New York Times from 1945, with the headline, ‘Japan Surrenders’.” In other letters Koontz talked about the Bataan Death March and Godzilla.