Play Beethoven today to #SaveEUYO

Today at 12 noon musicians from the European Union Youth Orchestra and colleagues from all over the place are getting together on the Festival Terrace outside the Royal Festival Hall to play Beethoven's Ode to Joy as a symbol of their support for a sustainable future for the EUYO and indeed the future of European culture and cooperation. All musicians are invited to come along and join in.

And around Europe musicians will be doing this same thing at the same time. You can find SaveEUYO gatherings at:

• Central Station, Brussels
• Plaza di Atocha, Madrid
• Erlebnis Europa, Brandenburg Gate, Berlin
• Museumsplatz, Vienna
• Frederiksborggade 11, Copenhagen
• Paris - flashmob, location tbc

A personal discount for you

The online music portal primephonic, for which I've been writing several reviews a month since January, asked me to write a piece about my life in music journalism et al, and are offering readers a special 20 per cent discount on the recordings I've reviewed and on all other recordings of these particular composers and artists. Their speciality is high-quality sound.

The 12 recordings concerned are all interesting and/or rewarding in their own ways, and for me the pick of the bunch is probably Gil Shaham playing the Bartók Second and Prokofiev First Violin Concertos. Plus I got a tremendous Austro-Hungarian high from Johann Strauss's Die Zigeunerbaron. Anyway, here you go: you'll find the discount code on the page. Valid from tomorrow until 5.30pm on 24 May. http://www.primephonic.com/news-jessica-duchen-life-in-music-journalism-plus

Jonas follows his Meistersinger stage debut with...

Quite a party. Photo: http://horizonteentdecken.de

OK, so you make your stage debut in Wagner's longest opera, then you go along to the first night party and start doing a spot of jazz? Only if you're Jonas, and you are. Here's the report: http://horizonteentdecken.de/der-meistersinger-jonas-kaufmann-als-crooner/

Reviews from Munich, and tweets by critics who were there, suggest that we who are due to see this later in the year (I'm heading for the last night of the BSO Festival on 31 July) are in for a musical treat, and that the modern-dress production works really well, give or take a predictable boo or two.

There's a video showing extracts at the Bayerische Staatsoper's magazine site:
https://www.staatsoper.de/medienseite.html?type=0&tx_sfstaatsoper_pi6%5Bimage%5D=17569&tx_sfstaatsoper_pi6%5Bproductions%5D=1144&tx_sfstaatsoper_pi6%5BmediaSettings%5D=mediathekPage&cHash=5c918baa3f7b8a8662501bef73388119

And let's have a quick fix of the preview:



Closer to home, Glyndebourne's revival of the David McVicar production is about to open, on Saturday, starring Gerald Finley as Hans Sachs. Details and booking here.

Time for artists to be "organised and vociferous"

At the WIPO conference in Geneva I took the opportunity to interview the organisation's director general, Australian lawyer Francis Gurry, about the challenges creative artists of all types face in today's global digital content market. Galloping technological change, collapsing incomes and a hideous climate of violence facilitated by anonymity are just a few of them. I asked him what we could do - if anything - to help redress the balance. And I have to say that if the head of the World Intellectual Property Organisation says that artists need to be more vociferous about their rights, it's probably time indeed that they were.

The full interview is now online at The Arts Desk. http://www.theartsdesk.com/interviews/digital-demands-time-artists-speak


(Meanwhile I've been away in Salzburg and missed what sounded like a simply glorious evening at the final of the BBC Young Musician of the Year, won by the cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason. Do have a read of this piece by Chi-Chi Nwanoku about him.

I'll catch up when I can, but am currently off sick.)

Igor blimey: going digital with the Philharmonia and Stravinsky

The Philharmonia goes virtual...

Self-confessed technology junkie Esa-Pekka Salonen has brought the benefits of his digital enthusiasms to his orchestra, the Philharmonia. Ahead of their new series devoted lock, stock and much flaming percussion to Stravinsky, I had a wonderful chat with him and with the Philharmonia's head of digital, Luke Ritchie, about the composer and how the orchestra has been using adventurous technological projects to attract new audiences, from virtual reality to a very lively website with a specially filmed documentary. Out now at the Independent. 

Stravinsky: Myths and Rituals is at the RFH from tomorrow.