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The music of Taylor Swift rules Billboard’s main classical chart, as Vitamin String Quartet’s VSQ Performs Taylor Swift opens atop the Classical Albums survey dated May 18. The 16-song set, originally released in February, enters atop the chart with 3,000 equivalent album units earned in the U.S. May 3-9, according to Luminate. Of that sum, […]
Maurizio Pollini, a Grammy-winning Italian pianist who performed frequently at La Scala opera house in Milan, has died. He was 82.
Pollini died on Saturday (March 23), La Scala said in a statement. The announcement didn’t specify a cause of death, but Pollini had been forced to cancel a concert at the Salzburg Festival in 2022 because of heart problems.
During a six decades-long international career, Pollini’s repertoire expanded beyond the standard classics. He embraced early 20th-century masterpieces by Igor Stravinsky, Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern and postwar modernists such as Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Boulez and Luigi Nono.
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La Scala defined the pianist as “one of the great musicians of our time and a fundamental reference in the artistic life of the theater for over 50 years.”
Pollini was considered a pianist with unique intellectual power, whose unrivaled technique and interpretive drive compelled listeners to think deeply.
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He was born in Milan on Jan. 5, 1942, into a family of artists. His father, Gino Pollini, was a violinist and a leading rationalist architect. His mother, Renata Melotti, sang and played the piano, as did her brother, Fausto Melotti, who was also a pioneer of abstract sculpture.
“I grew up in a house with art and artists,” Pollini said in an interview. “Old works and modern works coexisted together as part of life.”
Pollini began giving concerts before his 10th birthday, performing Chopin’s Etudes at age 14 and then winning the International Chopin Piano Competition at 18, as the youngest foreign pianist among a group of 89 contestants.
Arthur Rubinstein, president of the jury, reportedly said that the young pianist “already plays better than any of us.”
After his first international recognition, however, Pollini put his career on hold to study, explaining that performing right away would have been for him “a little premature.”
“I wanted to study, get to know the repertoire better, play the music of Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms,” he said.
In the late 1960s, Pollini participated in improvised concerts in factories and programs for students and workers at La Scala, conducted by longtime friend Claudio Abbado.
During his long international career, he also collaborated with other famous conductors, including Riccardo Muti, Daniel Barenboim and Riccardo Chailly.
Pollini performed his first American tour in 1968. From the 1970s to the ‘90s, he made a series of recordings with the Deutsche Grammophon label, becoming a celebrated interpreter of classics like Beethoven, Schumann and Schubert.
His albums won several awards, including a Grammy in 2007 for Best Instrumental Soloist Performance (without orchestra) for Chopin: Nocturnes.
He is survived by his wife Marilisa, and his son Daniele, also an acclaimed pianist and conductor.
Byron Janis, the celebrated classical pianist who studied with Vladimir Horowitz, recorded previously unknown Chopin waltzes from manuscripts he unearthed and became a cultural hero in the U.S. after performing in the Soviet Union during the Cold War, has died. He was 95.
Janis died Thursday (March 14) at The Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, his wife, Maria Cooper Janis, daughter of two-time Oscar-winning actor Gary Cooper, announced.
“I have been blessed with the privilege for 58 years of loving and being loved by not only one of the greatest artists of the 20th century, but by an exceptional human being who took his talents to their highest pinnacle,” she said in a statement.
During his 85-year career, Janis covered composers from Bach to David W. Guion and performed major piano concertos from Chopin, Mozart, Rachmaninoff, Liszt and Prokofiev. He occupied two volumes of the 1999 Mercury Philips series Great Pianists of the 20th Century and recorded for Philips, EMI, Sony and Universal as well.
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In 1944, Janis became Horowitz’s first student and made his orchestral debut with conductor Arturo Toscanini’s NBC Symphony Orchestra. At 18, he was signed by RCA Victor Records as its youngest artist.
He performed at Carnegie Hall on Oct. 29, 1948, and Olin Downes in The New York Times wrote: “Not for a long time had this writer heard such a talent allied with the musicianship, the feeling, the intelligence and artistic balance shown by the twenty-year-old pianist, Byron Janis … Whatever he touched, he made significant and fascinating by the most legitimate and expressive means.”
During the Cold War, Janis became the first American artist chosen to participate in the 1960 Cultural Exchange between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Later, he was the first American concert pianist to be asked back to Cuba, 40 years after his previous performance there.
Byron Yanks (shortened from Yankilevich) was born on March 24, 1928, in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Pittsburgh. His father, Samuel, owned several Army-Navy stores in the area but lost all but one of them during the Depression.
Janis started out playing the xylophone before moving with his mother, Hattie, and sister in 1936 to New York to study piano with Josef and Rosina Lhévinne and then Adele Marcus.
Horowitz saw Janis perform Rachmaninoff’s “Concerto No. 2” at a concert in Pittsburgh and went on to give him lessons at his home on the Upper East Side in New York for three years. “Can you imagine how exciting it was? I was the very first person he worked with,” Janis recalled in the 2009 PBS documentary The Byron Janis Story.
“He said something very interesting to me: ‘You play a bit in watercolors, but you could play more in oils.’ What he was saying was, you could be a bigger, romantic, virtuoso concert pianist.”
(Only two other pianists, Gary Graffman and Ronald Turini, were ever acknowledged by Horowitz as his students.)
In 1967, Janis accidentally discovered two previously unknown manuscripts of Chopin waltzes in France and later found two others while teaching at Yale University. The discoveries provided new insight into Chopin’s creative process, and EMI would release his Chopin Collection in 2012.
Janis performed six times by four sitting presidents at the White House, and among his awards were the Commander of the French Legion d’Honneur for Arts and Letters, the Grand Prix du Disque, the Stanford Fellowship from Yale and the gold medal from the French Society for the Encouragement of Progress (he was the first musician to receive that honor since its inception in 1906).
He composed the scores for major musical productions of The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates and wrote one for The True Gen, a 2013 documentary on the 20-year friendship between Gary Cooper and Ernest Hemingway.
His trip to the Soviet Union was important, he noted, “because the Russians were saying America can only produce cars. The total propaganda was we were totally uncultured.” He impressed the audience there and returned home a hero. (Watch him perform in 1965 on The Ed Sullivan Show here.)
Another performance that year was released in 2018 as Live From Leningrad, 1960.
“According to Janis,” John Von Rhein of the Chicago Tribune wrote, “he was unaware a recording had been made until a vinyl disc transfer sent by an anonymous source turned up in a mailbox of his sound engineer. The pianist is in peak form (his Chopin ‘Funeral March’ sonata is positively hair-raising), and the restoration captures the frisson of a live performance the Russian audience obviously savored.”
A selection of original compositions from Janis will be released this year.
He published his memoirs, Chopin and Beyond: My Extraordinary Life in Music and the Paranormal, in 2010.
His son, Stefan, whom he had with his first wife, June Dickson Wright, died in 2017.
When he was 11, Janis tore tendons when he accidentally put his left hand through a glass door, forcing him to alter his playing. “I had to learn a way of using my eye instead of my finger so I knew where I was going,” he once told Barbara Walters. “People thought I was finished.”
And in 1973, he developed painful psoriatic arthritis in both hands but kept it secret until 1985 when, after a performance at the White House, Nancy Reagan made his condition public when she announced his role as spokesperson for the Arthritis Foundation. He underwent several surgeries to fix the problem.
“In spite of adverse physical challenges throughout his career, he overcame them, and it did not diminish his artistry,” Maria Cooper Janis, 86, wrote. “Music is Byron’s soul, not a ticket to stardom, and his passion for and love of creating music informed every day of his life of 95 years.
“The music world, if it knows how to listen, will be constantly enriched and educated by the music created by Byron Janis, my best friend, companion, LOVE — what gratitude I have lived with every day and shall continue to do so all the rest of my days.”
This article originally appeared on The Hollywood Reporter.
Japanese conductor Seiji Ozawa died at his home in Tokyo on Feb. 6, 2024, due to heart failure. He was 88 years old.
A private funeral was held with his close family in accordance with the deceased’s wishes, with a memorial service scheduled at a later date.
Ozawa was born in 1935 in Shenyang, China. After studying under Karajan and Bernstein, he served as the assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic, and music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Ravinia Festival, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and the San Francisco Symphony.
In 1973, Ozawa was appointed as the thirteenth music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He became the first Asian music director at Wiener Staatsoper in the autumn of 2002, a position he held until spring 2010.
Among the many awards and accolades Ozawa has received in Japan and internationally include the Asahi Prize (1985), the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art, First Class (2002), the Mainichi Art Award (2003), the Suntory Music Award (2003), honorary membership of the Wiener Staatsoper (2007), France’s Officier de la Légion d’Honneur (2008), Foreign Associated Member in the Académie des BeauxArts de l’Institut de France (2008), the Order of Culture in Japan (2008), Giglio D’Oro by Premio Galileo 2000 Foundation of Italy (2008), the Praemium Imperiale from the Japan Art Association (2011), the Akeo Watanabe Foundation Music Award (2011), and the Kennedy Center Honors (2015), as well as an honorary doctorate from Harvard University (2000) and Sorbonne University (2004).
In 2010, he also became the first Japanese to be bestowed an honorary membership to the Vienna Philharmonic.
Ozawa won Best Opera Recording at the 58th Grammy Awards in 2016 for Ravel: L’Enfant et les Sortilèges, recorded at the 2013 Saito Kinen Festival Matsumoto, in which he conducted the Saito Kinen Orchestra.
The same year, he was named an honorary member of the Berlin Philharmonic and an honorary citizen of Tokyo.
He has been an elected member of the Japan Art Academy since March 2022.
WME has signed pianist, composer and activist Chloe Flower for global representation. The signing comes just ahead of the release of Flower’s sophomore album, Chloe Hearts Christmas, out Nov. 1 on Sony Masterworks. The album follows Flower’s most recent single, “Christmas Tree,” which was released on Sept. 22. In 2021, Flower released her eponymous debut album, which […]
Apple Music is doubling down on classical music with the acquisition of Swedish label BIS Records.
Following the launch earlier this year of its standalone app Apple Music Classical (AMC), the tech giant makes its move for BIS, a classical specialist which has operated since 1973.
The acquisition ticks several boxes for both parties.
For BIS, the timing, and its new teammates, were right. “A few days ago BIS Records turned 50 years old and I am immensely proud of what our small team of people has accomplished during this half-century,” writes BIS founder Robert von Bahr in a blog post.
Its strong suit, “while paying our dues to the core repertoire,” he continues, “has been to nurture young classical artists and interesting living composers and to safeguard the musical treasure that we all represent long into the future. It is to that end that, after much careful consideration, and having just turned 80, I am excited to announce the rather momentous news that we have made the decision to become part of the Apple family.”
For Apple, the hardware colossus with a market cap that’s fast approaching $3 trillion, its latest purchase is a statement of intent. Classical music is hot right now, the newest member of its family comes bearing the goods, with a catalog of contemporary composers and early music. And Apple wants ownership.
Apple made its splash in the classical water with the March launch of AMC, stemming from its August 2021 acquisition of Primephonic.
The new app, Apple boldly declared at the time, was the “ultimate classical experience” with the “largest classical music catalog,” boasting over 5 million tracks and works from new releases to recognized masterpieces.
The game is changing, fast. Last November, Deutsche Grammophon launched a new standalone streaming service, Stage+, catering to its own catalog and that of Decca Classics. And, recently, Universal Music Group bought Hyperion Records, and announced its asset would finally enter into the streaming age.
Following the latest transaction, BIS will become part of Apple Music Classical and its artist services service Platoon. Financial terms of the arrangement were not disclosed. At the time of writing, BIS Recordings were available on Apple’s DSPs and eClassical.
Von Bahr and his staff won’t be going anywhere. “As proud as I am of this milestone,” he writes, “I am even more proud of the fact that the entire personnel of BIS, including me, have been retained. We all look forward to a future, filled with new music and artists in golden sound from this increased force in classical music.”
Read more here.
Hyperion Records has entered the streaming age.
From today (July 28), the venerated British classical label begins the rollout of its catalog on streaming platforms, starting with a batch of 200 titles.
The initial run includes “key recordings” from Hyperion’s roster, including Arcangelo, Mahan Esfahani, Marc-André Hamelin, Angela Hewitt, Sir Stephen Hough, Alina Ibragimova, Steven Isserlis, Steven Osborne and Polyphony.
All 2,000-plus LPs from the Hyperion vault will be available to stream by spring 2024, reads a statement. Collections should follow every two weeks from Sept. 15, 2023, until the complete set is ingested and available across the myriad platforms.
The long-overdue streaming push follows Universal Music Group (UMG) acquisition of the label, in a deal announced in March which sees Hyperion join Decca Classics and Deutsche Grammophon in UMG’s classical portfolio.
Also from today, three new Hyperion releases are made available for streaming, including the latest Dvořák album from the Takács Quartet; and a collection of choral anthems from Stephen Layton and Trinity College Choir Cambridge.
Going forward, all new Hyperion titles will be simultaneously available for streaming, physical purchase and download, explains the statement from UMG.
The 43-year-old label — which is home to artists like Marc-André Hamelin, Angela Hewitt and Stephen Osborne, and some works which date back to the 12th century — was founded in South London by Ted Perry, a classical enthusiast who moonlighted as a mini-cab driver to fund its early recordings.
“These first 200 albums tell our story, and we look forward to presenting all our work from the past four decades to a new global streaming audience artist-by-artist, series-by-series,” comments Simon Perry, managing director of Hyperion and son of the label’s founder. “Each had their challenges and now they come together to tell a narrative, hopefully a powerful one, of what can happen when you make space for musicians to thrive: it’s why Hyperion has worked.”
The second release phase will “showcase some of Hyperion’s great piano and keyboard stars” including pianists Danny Driver, Stephen Hough, Pavel Kolesnikov, Steven Osborne, and harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani.
Subsequent “release chapters” will feature choral music, string quartets, Baroque, early music and solo vocal, and more.
The acquisition came as the classical music world emerged as a hive of activity. Last November, Deutsche Grammophon launched a new standalone streaming service, Stage+, catering to its own catalog and that of Decca Classics. And earlier this year, Apple Music launched its own standalone streaming app, Apple Music Classical, which stems from its August 2021 acquisition of Primephonic.
“The arrival of Hyperion on the world’s streaming platforms,” comments Dickon Stainer, UMG’s president of global classics & jazz, “offers a special moment of discovery for this precious and pioneering label.”
John Williams surprised the audience at Wednesday night’s (June 14) Hollywood premiere of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. According to Deadline, the five-time Oscar-winning 91-year-old composer was joined by a full orchestra for a performance of several movements from the movie, including the main title theme and “Helena’s Theme,” which he wrote for […]
A legal cacophony is brewing in the City of Brotherly Love.
In a lawsuit filed Thursday, the Philly Pops accused the Philadelphia Orchestra of violating federal antitrust laws by abusing its control over local concert venues and ticketing services to try to crush its smaller rival.
“Defendants have engaged … in unlawful, anticompetitive and predatory conduct with respect to the Philly POPS for the purpose and with the intent to force the Philly POPS out of business so that Philadelphia Orchestra could eliminate the Philly Pops as a competitor in and monopolize the market for live symphonic popular concert music concerts in the Greater Philadelphia Metropolitan Area,” lawyers for the Pops wrote.
Philly Pops claims that it has long peacefully co-existed with the Orchestra, one of America’s so-called Big Five symphony orchestras. The Pops has played symphonic versions of Broadway show tunes, movie scores and popular music, while the Orchestra has stuck to classical symphonic – and the two have been “marketed to different potential patrons” and “attended by audiences with little duplication.”
But starting last year, Philly Pops says the Orchestra has been jumping into the pops space and trying to put its smaller rival out of business. The lawsuit claims that the Orchestra has done so mostly by abusing its merger with the Kimmel Center, the primary orchestra venue in the city and the ticketing service Ticket Philadelphia.
According to the lawsuit, the Orchestra “substantially and unreasonably” increased fees for the Pops to perform at the Kimmel Center and slowed down the sale of tickets to previously scheduled shows. It then hired a PR firm to “create media messaging” that the Pops would be absorbed by the Orchestra after the 2023 season.
When the Pops said it would not go along with such a plan, the Orchestra “summarily evicted the POPS from the Kimmel Center forcing the POPS to cancel and postpone its concerts [there] and scramble for different but substantially less viable indoor venues.”
In addition to naming the Philadelphia Orchestra-Kimmel Center, Inc. as a defendant, the lawsuit also named Matias Tarnopolsky, the company’s president and CEO.
In a statement to Billboard, a spokesperson for the Orchestra said: “We have just received the lawsuit, which was brought to our attention by the media. As the complaint has yet to be formally served, we will reserve comment until then and once it has been reviewed with counsel.”
Read the entire lawsuit against the Philadelphia Orchestra here:
Universal Music Group has acquired the British indie classical label Hyperion Records, the company announced Wednesday (March 15).
The 43-year-old label — which is home to artists like Marc-André Hamelin, Angela Hewitt and Stephen Osborne and represents a catalog of 2,5000 recordings, some of which date back to the 12th century — will operate as a standalone label within Universal Music U.K. alongside Decca Classics. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Hyperion will now join Decca Classics and Deutsche Grammophon in UMG’s classical portfolio, while Simon Perry — who has overseen the label for more than 20 years, after taking over from his father, Hyperion founder Ted Perry — will remain as managing director.
“I’m thrilled to bring Hyperion to Universal Music Group, a company that shares Hyperion’s commitment to bringing the most distinctive and brilliant musicians to as wide a public as possible,” Perry said in a statement. “By being part of UMG, while keeping our artists and staff together, we can continue to build on my father’s legacy and that of everyone who’s been part of the Hyperion family over the past 43 years. My debt to all of them is huge and I look forward to leading this incredible label into an exciting new chapter.”
Hyperion is next set to release Vaughan Williams’ Sinfonia Antartica and Symphony No.9 with BBC Symphony Orchestra, a series it says is dedicated to the Masses and Magnificats of Cristóbal de Morales, as well as recordings from the London Haydn Quartet and Stephen Layton and the Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge, among others. In a statement, UMG president/CEO of global classics and jazz Dickon Stainer called Hyperion “a jewel of a label,” adding that “we are committed to continuing the magnificent work done by the Perry family and to preserving and building on the special place Hyperion occupies in the hearts of artists and music fans alike.”
The acquisition comes amid a veritable wave of news spilling from the world of classical music lately. In November, Deutsche Grammophon launched a new standalone streaming service, Stage+, catering to its own catalog and that of Decca Classics. And earlier this month, Apple Music announced its own standalone streaming app, Apple Music Classical, which will roll out later this month and stems from its August 2021 acquisition of Primephonic.
“We are enormously proud that Hyperion has joined Universal’s family of classical labels to sit alongside Decca Classics in London,” Decca Label Group co-presidents Tom Lewis and Laura Monks said in a statement. “Simon and his father have created a very important recorded classical catalogue that serves a dedicated global audience. And the label continues to work with artists who are the best of the best. We are determined to celebrate the label’s legacy and continue its extraordinary story.”
