Dedications are nothing new to ANNE-SOPHIE MUTTER. Sebastian Currier, Henri Dutilleux, Witold Lutoslawski, Norbert Moret, Krzysztof Penderecki, ex-hubby Sir André Previn, and Wolfgang Rihm have each written a piece or two (or three) with her in mind. But Sofia Gubaidulina’s concerto for violin and orchestra “In Tempus Praesens (In the Present Time)” may be the most haunting the German violinist has received. Mutter combines this with some Bach on her new album (due October 7), Bach: Violin Concerto Nos. 1 & 2 BWV 1041 & 1042; Gubaidulina: Violin Concerto “In Tempus Praesens.” Anne Sophie Mutter, violin; Trondheim Soloists; London Symphony Orchestra, Valery Gergiev cond. (Deutsche Grammophon 477 7450).

Gubaidulina’s piece features only a single violin followed by violas, cellos, and double-basses, as well as three Wagner tubas thrown in for good measure, much to Mutter’s amusement. “[Gubaidulina] explains the piece is basically the struggle between light and dark is life,” says Mutter, during an interview at a San Francisco hotel. “The light is symbolized by the violin’s very high register and the dark is the basses and winds. It’s a wonderful concept because the orchestra is constantly haunting the violin solo. Very often they are like a shadow following me, and there is no pause to it. There is no pause in intensity, in driven-ness. It’s a 40-minute exercise of the highest drama—it’s typical Gubaidulina.

“It will change your life, I’m sure. It changed mine.”

Mutter became familiar with Gubaidulina’s work through her violin concerto Offertorium. But Mutter hadn’t spoken to Gubaidulina until just two weeks before the 2007 premiere of “In Tempus Praesens” at the Lucerne Festival, with the Berlin Philharmonic under Sir Simon Rattle. “I had a few detailed questions about the work… that was the only communication we had at the time, other than a spiritual communication, which had probably started way before she wrote the piece.”

Mutter says it was clear that Bach would be a great frame for Gubaidulina’s work, as she looks to Bach for inspiration. “She is spiritually very close to Bach. Looking at the very hopeful ending of all this intense drama, it’s a little bit like the last chorale Bach was working on before he died where he says, ‘I’m standing in front of you, oh God, take my soul.’

“It’s a very meaningful combination because although the language is different, the root of the language and also the mathematical concept behind it all is very much related, although they are separated by over 300 years.”

—Rory Williams

In early May, the Vienna State Opera Orchestra, whose players form the core of the Vienna Philharmonic, announced the appointment of a new concertmaster: Bulgarian-born ALBENA DANAILOVA, 33, currently a first violinist in the Bavarian State Opera Orchestra. Only a decade has passed since the Vienna Philharmonic, founded in 1842, officially admitted a woman into its ranks. Since then, the orchestra’s gender-biased employment practices have come under increasing scrutiny.

Danailova leaves gender aside when speaking of the unique sound that VPO musicians often attribute in part to the orchestra’s all-male membership. “The Vienna sound is a long-standing tradition [connected with] Beethoven, Bruckner, Mahler,” she says. “It’s not just a sound, but an approach to style, articulation, and the shaping of the musical phrase in time. Anyone who’s listened to the Vienna Philharmonic has heard the difference from other worldclass orchestras.”

Anyone who’s heard Danailova, with her natural musical intelligence, unerring technique, and arrestingly beautiful tone, knows that she is just the woman for the job. But how will she be treated in her new post amid ongoing VPO resistance to female members? Danailova makes no predictions, stating simply, “Anything is possible.”

—Geoffrey Dean

The ground-breaking SOUTHEAST SYMPHONY, one of the oldest primarily African-American orchestras in the country, marked its 60th anniversary at a nearly sold-out July 20 concert at Disney Hall in Los Angeles. The 85-piece symphony, under music director Charles Dickerson, performed an evening of Gershwin works. “We were extremely well received by the audience, and that is always very gratifying,” Dickerson says.

The Southeast Symphony was founded in 1948 at a time when African-American musicians were shut out of American symphonies, with the exception of the HUNTINGTON PARK SYMPHONY.

Its name is a nod to neighborhoods southeast of downtown LA that housed a majority of that city’s African-American community in the years following World War II.

Today, the symphony offers several free concerts each year, hosts a pair of youth symphonies, and sponsors a classical-music conservatory serving at-risk youth in South Central LA and other neighborhoods.

“Oftentimes, in today’s society, people want to look at institutions that have some kind of ethnic basis and think that they are irrelevant or inconsistent with the great ideals of our American heritage. But nothing could be further from the truth,” says Dickerson, noting that just three members of the LA PHILHARMONIC are of African-American heritage. “I believe that just as the doors of opportunity have opened to some extent, they are not yet open to a point where we can celebrate the melting pot that we like to think our society is. To the extent that we are still a salad bowl, the Southeast Symphony still exists, but we do so with joy.”

The Southeast Symphony kicks off its 2008-09 season on October 5 with an all-Beethoven program. For details, visit southeastsymphony.org.

—Greg Cahill

ORCHESTRAS FETED FOR ADVENTUROUS PROGRAMMING

PRAISED: Minnesota Orchestra concertmaster Jorja Fleezanis. MINNES.tif

The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers and League of American Orchestras’ 51st annual Adventurous Programming Awards on June 12 during the LAO’s 63rd annual conference in Denver, Colorado, recognized 26 ensembles for promoting contemporary works during the last season.

Top honorees included the MINNESOTA ORCHESTRA for the John S. Edwards Award for Strongest Commitment to New American Music; the AMERICAN COMPOSERS ORCHESTRA or the Morton Gould Award for Innovative Programming; the BUFFALO PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA for the Leonard Bernstein Award for Educational Programming; and the EMPIRE STATE YOUTH ORCHESTRA for the Award for American Programming on Foreign Tours.

For a complete list of winners, check out the June 19 edition of Strings Week.

—R.W.

Cremonese Masters Analyzed

An article published June 16 by the online journal Nature.com predicts that wood infected with particular strains of fungus will make mellower-sounding violins. Munich violin maker MARTIN SCHLESKE plans to make six violins—three from treated spruce tops and sycamore backs, three from untreated wood—and then compare the results in a blind test by the end of the year. Radiologist Berend Stoel, from Leiden University in the Netherlands, and Arkansas violin maker TERRY BORMAN x-rayed five classical Cremonese violins and eight contemporary instruments. What they reported was a slight difference in the growth rings of wood used to make the violins. In the older instruments, there was less of a difference in density between the early spring growth (lighter colored, more porous grains) and late growth (denser, darker grains) as compared to the newer wood.

Direct Deposit

The Music Council of Australia launched on June 11 the National Instrument Bank, which aims to put pricey instruments in the hands of promising Aussie musicians with the help of investors. During a gathering at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, 2008 Young South Australian of the Year NIKI VASILAKIS performed on the bank’s first purchase, an Otello Bignami violin valued at AUD50,000.

Talent in Tokyo

Violist NOBUKO IMAI is poised to launch what has been billed as a first for Japan, the Tokyo International Viola Competition. The triennial competition, which is open to those born after Jan. 1, 1979, will run May 23–31, 2009, during Imai’s annual Viola Space. Imai, a member of the MICHELANGELO STRING QUARTET and former violist of the VERMEER QUARTET, will serve as president of a jury consisting of established violists KIM KASHKASHIAN, GARTH KNOX, THOMAS RIEBL, JEAN SULEM, and MAZUMI TANAMURA, and cellist TSUYOSHI TSUTSUMI. The festival and competition will include workshops and concerts by the judges.

Violinist Pollinates Guinness

Without a slip, DAVID GARRETT set the Guinness World Record as fastest violinist for performing “Flight of the Bumblebee” in 66 seconds, averaging 13 notes per second. The former German model, who made headlines when he tripped on stairs and broke his borrowed 1772 Guadagnini, had the feat televised on BBC’s children’s program Blue Peter.

Five Revived

The HENSCHEL QUARTET with violist KAZUKI SAWA premiered Romantic composer Max Bruch’s String Quintet in E b, which had been kept private until it sold at auction in 2006, on July 23 at Wigmore Hall in London. The 20-minute quintet, a companion to Bruch’s String Quintet in A minor, is actually a copy made by Bruch’s daughter-in-law Gertrude, according to the Henschel’s website. German publisher Henle Edition plans to release an urtext version of the quintet after the performance.

Mellow Journalism

During the New Generations Arts Festival on June 5, cellist JULIAN LLOYD WEBBER and students from the Birmingham Conservatoire improvised music to accompany the BBC4’s seven o’clock newscast.

Composer Michael Wolters was on hand during the project, titled “And Now, the News.”

Symphony Fights 0s and 1s

Technology versus humans is at the heart of many science fiction tales, but this time the storyline is sweetened by the battleground, the concert hall.

Conductor Markand Thakar will lead the BALTIMORE CHAMBER ORCHESTRA against the FAUXHARMONIC ORCHESTRA, a digital orchestra controlled by a knock-off version of Nintendo’s Wii remote, on November 2 at Bargemusic in Brooklyn, New York.

Awards and Accolades

RALPH KIRSHBAUM’S Royal Northern College of Music Cello Festival 2007 received a Royal Philharmonic Society Music Award (presented in association with BBC Radio 3) on May 15 at the Dorchester Hotel in London.

Fiddler DONNA HÉBERT has won a 2008 Artist Fellowship from the Massachusetts Cultural Council’s Folk Arts & Heritage Program for her efforts in promoting Franco-American music. Hébert, who co-founded the Franco ensembles CHANTERELLE and the BEAUDOIN LEGACY, serves as an ASTA clinician and an adjunct fiddle instructor at Amherst College.

Armenian violinist HRACHYA AVANESYAN won first prize and 125,000 kroner (about $26,000) at the Eighth Carl Nielsen International Violin Competition on June 9 in Odense, Denmark. Japan’s YUSUKE HAYASHI won both second place and the Odense Symphony Orchestra Prize, earning a total of DKK90,000. JOSEF SPACEK of the Czech Republic won both third place and Young People’s Jury Prize, earning a total of DKK60,000. Romania’s EUGEN TICHINDELEANU won fourth place and DKK30,000. Special Prizes were awarded to Denmark’s RUNE TONSGAARD SØRENSEN, who received DKK15,000; and EMILIE-ANNE GENDRON, of New York City, who won DKK10,000.

Passings

One-handed Mexican violinist ANGEL TAVIRA, who won a Cannes Film Festival award for his performance in the 2005 film The Violin, died June 30 from kidney problems in Mexico City, Mexico. He was 83.

Fiddler and founder of the TULLA CÉILÍ BAND, PADDY CANNY of Clare, Ireland, has died, the Irish public service broadcaster RTÉ reported June 29. He was 89.