The unflashy Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra woke up this morning to an extra $10 million in the company kitty. It’s the biggest gift they have ever seen. It comes from Stefan Persson, owner of the Swedish clothing chain H&M. The orchestra are just settling into life with a new chief conductor, Ryan Bancroft. The executive and artistic director Stefan Forsberg says he can now retfre after 21 years ‘with a smile on my face’. The post Orchestra receives fashion blast appeared first on Slippedisc ..read more

The Cinicannati has unveiled the Romanian Cristian Macelaru as its next music director, starting September 2025. He succeeds the long-running Louis Langrée. Macelaru, 44, is stepping down this season as music director of WDR Cologne. He is also music director of the Orchestre National de France and artistic director of the Georges Enescu Festival in his homeland. The post Maestro move: Cristian to Cincinnati appeared first on Slippedisc ..read more

The summers season, rolled out today, shows welcome returns for leading European orchestras, including the Berlin Phil, Czech Phil, Rotterdam Phil, Orchestre de Paris and Bavarian Radio. It is good to see the bar being raised again. However, there is a significant absence of US orchestras, and the cause is not simple. We are given to understand that the Cleveland Orchestra, America’s finest, had accepted invitations to appear to both the BBC Proms and the Edinburgh Festival as part of a ten-stop Europe tour. But when it came to doing the sums it appeared that the orchestra would suffer conside ..read more

Andrew had a second coming on record when Chandos gave him carte blanche to perform what mattered to him most. The post The very best of Andrew Davis (6): Recording the 9th appeared first on Slippedisc ..read more

Decca is marking the birth centenary of John Culshaw on May 28 with a box set of his early productions. Culshaw, fresh out of Navy service in 1946, reinvented the role of music producer as initiator and artist controller. He never followed his stars Walter Legge, but was led by two dreams – creating Wagner’s Ring on record and facilitating a lifetime monument to Benjamin Britten. You can read more in his own two books, and in my work, The Life and Death of Classical Music. The post The Ring man cometh appeared first on Slippedisc ..read more

The Last Night that was picketed because Sir Andrew programmed a new work by Harrison Birtwistle. It’s gorgeous.     The post The very best of Andrew Davis (5): Panic stations appeared first on Slippedisc ..read more

We hear that Andrew recently recorded for Chandos some of his own orchestrations of organ works by Bach. Not enough to fill a record. Chandos are pondering how to release the set. Meanwhile… In 2001, to mark the 50th Anniversary of the opening of the hall, the BBC Symphony under its Conductor Laureate, Sir Andrew Davis, gave a ‘Tribute to Stokowski’ concert which included the Maestro’s own orchestration of Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition” and the Bach Toccata and Fugue in D minor heard here. Sir Andrew’s performances received high praise from the critics, with one remarking on “how wo ..read more

The high point of this choreographed political concert shows Leonard Bernstein paying homage to Dmitri Shostakovich. More interesting is his close greenroom engagement with the poet and Doctor Zhivago novelist Boris Pasternak. Watch to the end.   The post Bernstein meets Pasternak appeared first on Slippedisc ..read more

Explaining Elgar to Australia. The post The very best of Andrew Davis (3): On approaching death appeared first on Slippedisc ..read more

Don’t say you haven’t dreamed of this. The man who makes it come tru is called David Tebbe.     The post At last, Beethoven’s 5th played on viola solo appeared first on Slippedisc ..read more