MUSIClassical ALLEGRO
Topic: NEWS performers
Luciano Pavarotti reacting well to treatment for pancreatic cancer ...
The wife of Luciano Pavarotti says the tenor is "fighting like a lion" against cancer. She told an Italian newspaper he is responding well to treatment...The 71-year-old Opera star underwent surgery last year, after doctors discovered a malignant pancreatic mass. Pavarotti's manager says he is teaching and working on a recording of sacred music. He is also considering resuming the "Pavarotti and Friends" benefit concert.
See all stories on this topic | ...MORE...
Ever since the art of opera developed—its first stars were castratos who became fat after being snipped— singers both fat and thin have gained stardom. Luisa Tetrazzini (1871-1941), the Italian coloratura soprano after whom a caloric chicken-and-pastadish was named, would say in her later years: “I am old, I am fat, but I am still Tetrazzini.” Indeed, her buoyant, exuberant performances may be enjoyed on CD reissues from Pearl and Nimbus. 
Estonian-born Järvi is Cincinnati Symphony music director Paavo Jarvi's younger brother and very much his own man. Writer Mary Ellyn Hutton of the Cincinnatti Post caught up with him at a café in Tallinn in May, where he conducted a show-stopping "Aladdin" Suite by Carl Nielsen on a concert honoring their father Neeme Jarvi's 70th birthday. With him were his two sons, Finn Byron, born in February to Kristjan and his wife Hayley Melitta, and Lukas, 7, from his first marriage to violinist Leila Josefowicz. 
The Fourth Great Mountains International Music Festival, which combines classical music performances of top-notch musicians from around the world with classes and competition programs for international young talent, will take place from Aug. 3-26. Largely based in YongPyong Resort, nestled in the scenic resort area of Gangwon Province, the three-week annual festival will include about 50 performance programs, some scores of which will be performed for the first time in Korea or even in the world. 
This is an expertly played, beautifully recorded take on Gershwin standards. One way to look at the panoply of recordings of the "Piano Concerto in F" and "Rhapsody in Blue" is to consider the respective weight of the classical and jazz/pop aspects of Gershwin's language in each one. This disc, perhaps surprisingly in view of the jazz background of Rochester Philharmonic conductor Jeff Tyzik, doesn't play up the jazziness of Gershwin. Listen to the finale of the piano concerto: it is brisk and sharp but not brassy. California pianist Jon Nakamatsu elaborates the work in ways related to Romantic pianism rather than to jazz, most noticeably with a good deal of tempo rubato. Given that these performances stress Gershwin's symphonic aspect (which was how 1920s audiences encountered these pieces, the rediscovery of the small-orchestra versions of the "Rhapsody in Blue" coming only much later), the listener will find them among the very best available in that style. These readings are detailed and subtle -- not words always used in connection with Gershwin, but this recording finds those qualities in his music. 
The leading orchestra in the ancient city of Jerusalem is living what may be its final days. A year short of its 70th anniversary, the Jerusalem Symphony ...
Erik Schumann, a rising 25-year-old violinist from Germany, had been expecting a career landmark. He was scheduled to make his Philadelphia Orchestra debut playing Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto at the second concert of the Orchestra's first residency at the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival. Schumann's visa application was one of many caught in the notorious processing backlog at United States Citizenship and Immigration Services; by Saturday (July 7), one day before the concert and the last possible day he could depart, he had not received his visa to perform in the U.S. 
Régine Crespin (23 February 1927, Marseille – 5 July 2007, Paris)
German city of Eisenach is now launching a campaign to publicise its association with the most famous of all baroque musicians...JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH... after decades during which the composer was hijacked by various ideologies, including nazism and communism. It rankles with the Eisenachers that his name is so little associated with the place. "You hear the name Salzburg, and you immediately think of Mozart," said the museum's marketing manager Silvia Hochkirch. "My life's aim is to ensure that Eisenach is one day similarly connected in minds across the world with Bach." 