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Former South African President Nelson
Mandela temporarily Places, Please Violinist Itzhak Perlman has been named principal guest conductor of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra beginning with the 2001–02 season. This will be his first steady conducting position with a major orchestra. As part of the three-year agreement, Perlman will lead the DSO for three weeks each season, soloing as well in some of the performances. William Preucil, who is currently Distinguished Professor of Violin at the Cleveland Institute of Music and concertmaster of the Cleveland Orchestra, will add a role as artist in residence at the University of Maryland School of Music in Fall 2000. Preucil says that this "will allow me to help young people build careers in music. It’s beneficial to both schools." Yoel Levi has been named music director emeritus of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, beginning in August 2000 and running for five years. The Southeastern Ohio Symphony has appointed Laura E. Schumann as music director and conductor. The Grande Ronde Symphony of La Grande, Oregon, has chosen Kenneth Woods as music director. And John W. Strickler is the new music director and conductor of the Gulf Coast Symphony, in Biloxi, Mississippi. Susanna Perry Gilmore, who has served as acting concertmaster of the Memphis Symphony Orchestra for the past two seasons, was named concertmaster after national auditions were held in early December. When not working as a classical violinist, Gilmore plays Irish fiddle with her husband in the band Planet Reel. Prize Wise The 2000 Young Concert Artists International Auditions were held January 16, 2000, at the 92nd Street Y in New York City. Any number of winners can be selected from among the finalists; string winners this year were Korean violinist Ju-Young Baek, 23, and Japanese violinist Mayuko Kamio, 13. Each received $5,000, joined the management roster of Young Concert Artists, and won recital appearances in New York, Boston, and Washington, D.C. Baek also took the Paul A. Fish Memorial Prize and one of two Usedom Music Festival Prizes (for a concert engagement in Germany); Kamio took the second Usedom Prize as well as the Diallo Prize ($500), the Pasadena Symphony Soloist Prize (a concert engagement), and the Buffalo Chamber Music Society Prize ($500 and a concert engagement). Second-place string winners were cellists Emil Rovner of Russia, 25, and Wolfgang Schmidt of Germany, 28. Each took home $1,000. Rovner also took the Fergus Prize for Special Merit worth another $1,000. In Memory Conductor Georg Tintner died on October 2, 1999, after falling from the 11th-story balcony of his Nova Scotia home. He was 82. Tintner began his musical life as a singer in the Vienna Boys Choir. He narrowly escaped the Holocaust, going on to pursue his career in New Zealand, Australia, the U.K., and Canada and giving concerts all over the world. In recent years he served as principal conductor and then (following retirement) conductor laureate of Symphony Nova Scotia. At the time of his death, Tintner was working on a series of recordings of the complete orchestral and choral music of Anton Bruckner for Naxos, and had just completed the symphonic portion. Symphonies Nos. 0, 2, and 4–9 have already been released; Symphonies Nos. 00, 1, and 3 will be released over the next six months. Jacob Glick died on November 1, 1999. A viola and viola d’amore player, composer, and teacher, Glick was born in Philadelphia in 1926. He became principal viola with a variety of New York groups, including Clarion Concerts, the Esterhazy Orchestra, and the Robert Shaw Chorale, as well as a member of the Contemporary Chamber Ensemble, the Philadelphia Composers Forum, the Contemporary Quartet, the Silvermine String Quartet, and other ensembles. Although he performed worldwide, Glick’s greatest legacy may spring from his more than 20 years on the faculty of Bennington College in Vermont, where he was also director of the school’s annual Chamber Music Conference and Composer’s Forum of the East. Glick was both a teacher and a chamber-music coach and was known for his supportive style. Oncoming Competitions The seventh triennial Lionel Tertis International Viola Competition and Workshop will be held August 19–26, 2000, at Port Erin on the Isle of Man in Britain. The competition is open to violists of all nationalities who will be age 30 or under as of August 19, and will be juried by Yuri Bashmet, Sally Beamish, Masao Kawasaki, Hartmut Lindemann, Irina Morzova, Bruno Pasquier, and Howard Snell. Awards total more than £6,500 ($11,000) and the first-prize winner will be invited to give a recital at the Wigmore Hall in London. The workshop is open to all and features master classes, recitals, and lectures with jury members plus other players and teachers. For more information, write to Lionel Tertis Secretariat, Erin Arts Centre, Port Erin, Isle of Man IM9 6LD, British Isles; call (44) 624 835858; or e-mail erinartscentre@enterprise.net. The triennial Hannover International Violin Competition will be held in November 2000 in Hannover, Germany. Open to violinists of all nationalities born between November 18, 1970, and November 5, 1984, this prestigious competition offers a first prize of DM50,000 ($26,350), a CD contract with Naxos, concert debuts, and management. Furthermore, accommodations and travel for all competitors are paid for by the competition. Applications must be received by June 1, 2000. To learn more, write to Stiftung Niedersachsen, Internationaler Violin-Wettbewerb Hannover, Ferdinandstrasse 4, D-30175 Hannover, Germany; call (49) 511 990 51 13; or e-mail sn.kultur@t-online.de. The Aleksander Tansman International Competition of Musical Personalities will be held in Lódz, Poland, in November 2000. The competition is open to violinists, cellists, pianists, guitarists, oboists, and singers under age 30, and offers a grand prize of $12,000. Competition rules state that "the main criteria for judging will be the artist’s personality, his musical individuality." Applications must be posted by August 22, 2000. For more information, write to Stowarzyszenie Promocji Kultury im. Aleksandra Tansmana, ul. Legionów 2, 90-401 Lódz, Poland; telephone or fax (48) 42 63 99 386; e-mail wendland@tansman.lodz.pl; or go to www.tansman. lodz.pl. Distance Learning The Cleveland Institute of Music, which is part of Ohio’s SOMAC (State of Ohio MultiAgency Computer System) distance-learning network, is pushing the musical possibilities of distance learning. Using an interactive videoconferencing link, the Institute joined with the Manhattan School of Music on November 12, 1999, to provide a master class operating simultaneously in Cleveland and New York City. The class was headed in Ohio by Stephen Geber, head of the Institute’s cello department and principal cellist of the Cleveland Orchestra, and in New York by his brother, David Geber, head of the cello department at MSM and a member of the American String Quartet. Students of both schools attended the class, to perform for each other and both master teachers. "New" Music from Bach A collection of music written by Johann Sebastian Bach and his children has been discovered in the Ukraine, more than 50 years after it was lost in World War II. Part of the missing archives of the Berlin Sing-Akademie, the music was found in Kiev after two decades of searching by Harvard music professor Christoph Wolff. "For a long time, we Bach scholars were led to believe that the material was destroyed," he says. The break came in April 1999, when another researcher found a postwar Russian document describing "the existence of 5,000-plus music manuscripts in Kiev." Months later, Wolff finally located the collection at Ukraine’s Central State Archive. "This is really adding a significant new dimension to the study of 18th-century music," Wolff says. The compositions found were part of the musical estate of Carl Philipp Emanuel (C.P.E.) Bach, one of Johann Sebastian Bach’s sons. They include works by some of J.S. Bach’s 19 other children, as well as many other 18th- and early-19th-century German composers. It has not yet been decided where the manuscripts will be kept. The Seattle Symphony played under an unusual guest conductor on December 8, 1999: former South African President Nelson Mandela. After listening to the symphony play the U.S. national anthem and the final movement of Sibelius’ Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 43, Mandela took the baton to lead the orchestra and more than 80 local choral students in his country’s national anthem. The event was hosted by the Rotary Club of Seattle and was part of a visit to that city by Mandela and his wife, Graca Machel, the former minister of education in Mozambique. The December 8–10 visit was designed to generate support for the new Nelson Mandela Foundation, which promotes health care, education, and conflict resolution in Africa, and Machel’s Foundation for Community Development, which helps establish economic development, health care, and other programs in disadvantaged communities in parts of Africa. Ironically, this event was followed a few weeks later by the news that the 76-year-old South Africa National Symphony Orchestra has run out of money and is folding. The suffering South African economy has led to a drop in private donations and the government has refused a bailout request. Many of the musicians reportedly have already taken other jobs; the symphony said goodbye with two free concerts at the end of January 2000. Shakespearean Lutherie Students in the "Making Early Stringed Musical Instruments" postgraduate diploma course at West Dean College in Chichester, England, have created three instruments, with the help of tutor Roger Rose, that will be housed in a permanent exhibition at the Globe Theatre in London opening in February 2000. It will be the world’s largest exhibition dedicated to Shakespeare and his workplace. The Globe is a re-creation of the theater that debuted many of Shakespeare’s plays, and the purpose of the exhibition is to bring the bard to life. The instruments, to be housed in the "undercroft" area directly beneath the theater, duplicate a cittern, treble viol, and seven-course Renaissance lute of the type that would have been used in the Globe. The complete exhibition will try to illuminate Elizabethan architecture, music, playwriting, and more, and include a reproduction of an early printing press (in working order), costumes, and quills for people to try writing with. For more information on the Globe and its current season, call (44) 020-7902-1500 or go to www.shakespearesglobe.com. Classical News by Computer Looking for a source of up-to-the-minute news and information on classical music? Classical London, a new weekly international classical-music newsletter edited by Dr. Malcolm Galloway, is delivered via e-mail. Classical London offers CD reviews, concert previews, classical music news, and information on composer and performer competitions and opportunities, plus links to internet sites of interest to classical-music aficionados. Best of all, the newsletter is free. "Although the concert information focuses on London, the majority of the content is of international interest," says Galloway. "Many of our subscribers are based in other countries, and we welcome subscribers from all over the world." As of January there were 500 subscribers, "and the numbers are growing each day." To subscribe, send an e-mail to classicallondon@aol.com (one can unsubscribe at any time at no cost, and names are neither traded nor sold). Or check out the archived back issues first by pointing your Web browser to welcome.to/classicallondon. News, from the U.S. or abroad, is always welcome. Please mail to Jessamyn Reeves-Brown, News & Notes, Strings, PO Box 767, San Anselmo, CA 94979; fax to (415) 485-0831; or e-mail to jessamyn@stringletter.com.
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