MUSIClassical ALLEGRO
Topic: NEWS performers
Violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg has been named music director of the New Century Chamber Orchestra. Salerno-Sonnenberg will lead four sets of subscription concerts each season for the 17-member string orchestra. The internationally known Salerno-Sonnenberg has played with a number of orchestras and was a recipient of the prestigious Avery Fisher Prize in 1999. The New Century Chamber Orchestra was founded in 1992. The orchestra performs without a conductor and makes musical decisions collaboratively. The music director chooses programs and guides the artistic vision of the group. 
She's a leading singer at the Metropolitan Opera, she's been knighted by the French government, and she's the most recorded mezzo-soprano of all time. But Jennifer Larmore insists she's not a diva. 
Edo de Waart, chief conductor and artistic director of the Hong Kong Philharmonic, was named Thursday as the next music director of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. De Waart led the Minnesota Orchestra from 1986 to 1995. He will succeed Andreas Delfs, who has announced his intention to leave after the 2008-2009 season. De Waart is to serve as music director designate during the 2007-2008 and 2008-2009 seasons, making his Milwaukee Symphony subscription concert debut in April. 
THE Three Tenors will never reform with a third singer, says tenor Jose Carreras, because it would be disrespectful to the memory of Luciano Pavarotti. "For Placido (Domingo) and myself to do something would betray the memory of Luciano, I don't think that would be ethical," Carreras said in Sydney yesterday. Pavarotti died from pancreatic cancer in September, and Carreras - a leukemia survivor - offered his friend moral support. He said he travelled to Pavarotti's home in Modena, Italy, and called him often. 
Mother and son join the Detroit Symphony Orchestra for a stirring rendition of Felix Mendelssohn's vision of Shakespeare's woodland fantasy A Midsummer Night's Dream. Conductor Dmitry Sitkovetsky (pronounced sitt-kuh-VETT-skee) leads the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and his mother, legendary pianist Bella Davidovich, who will perform Schumann's beautiful Piano Concerto while Sitkovetsky himself takes center stage as soloist on Bach's Violin Concerto No. 1. The concerts take place in Orchestra Hall at the Max M. Fisher Music Center on Friday, January 4 at 8 p.m.; Saturday, January 5 at 8:30 p.m.; and Sunday, January 6 at 3 p.m. Famed Russian pianist Bella Davidovich performs Schumann's Piano Concerto. Celebrating her 80th birthday in 2008, she began studying the piano at the age of 6. At 18 she entered the Moscow Conservatory and, in 1949, became the youngest pianist to win the prestigious Chopin International Piano Competition in Warsaw. She has been touring for more than half a century since then, performing with the most well-known orchestras and conductors around the world. She has performed with her son Dmitry Sitkovetsky since 1966, and the pair has recorded sonatas together by Grieg, Brahms and Ravel. 