Yesterday, the Arts Council of England announced wide-ranging cuts to the institutions it supports, as expected and required by the new UK government austerity measures.

Many of our closest friends have been affected. Some have got off relatively lightly; others will have to deal with huge shortfalls. Please see the various comments from the BCMG, the London Sinfonietta, Opera North, the Royal Opera House, The Opera Group, and Sound and Music for more details.

When asked recently about similar cuts in the Netherlands, Wolfgang Rihm answered:

“It is always astonishing to hear that of all people it is the conservative politicians who above all destroy cultural value. You would think that a Conservative would want to preserve something … When something is gone, it’s gone.”

Here’s a brief postscript to the many obituaries for Robert Tear. I read in the Guardian and the Telegraph that he had sung in the world première of Lulu in 1979, with the new third act by Friedrich Cerha.

After a brief glance into the hallowed UE archive folders, I found the Observer’s review of the première, where Tears’ “absorbing performance” as the painter is commended.

As part of the Mahler series at the Salle Pleyel, Valery Gergiev conducts the London Symphony Orchestra in Paris tonight (Monday 28th March). On the programme are Mahler’s 9th Symphony and the Adagio from the 10th Symphony.

Watch the live video broadcast of the concert on cité de la musique live tonight at 8pm Paris time.

Follow the LSO on Twitter at @londonsymphony (and us of course at @uemusic).

Watch our video interview with Valery Gergiev from the UE Mahler Interviews series.

Update 31.03.2011

The video of the concert is now available.

Watch on the Cité de la musique website

Here’s a video of Alarm Will Sound rehearsing Wolfgang Rihm’s Will Sound at the Maerzmusik Festival in Berlin last week.

Watch you YouTube.

The New York City Opera’s impressive Monodramas production opens tonight. See our news item for full details and fascinating videos.

Alarm Will Sound take to the stage tonight at the MaerzMusik Festival in Berlin.

On the programme are Harrison Birtwistle’s Carmen Arcadiae Mechanicae Perpetuum and Wolfgang Rihm’s Will Sound, which was written for the ensemble. Alan Pierson conducts.

The concert will be broadcast on Thursday 24th on Deutschlandradio Kultur.

The Festive Days of Early Music begin next week at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna.

We could argue about the meaning of ‘early music’ (in German ‘alte Musik’ literally means old music) and ‘modern music’, but we can safely call music that was composed a hundred years ago ‘old’. And it’s this music that will be presented by Klangforum Wien in three concerts this March.

The series begins with a programme containing Alban Berg’s Chamber Concerto, Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen in the Schönberg arrangement, and Schönberg’s own Chamber Symphony Op. 9.

On the request of Elena Denisova, Franz Hummel has arranged Zemlinsky’s Serenade for violin and orchestra. The world première is this Sunday.

Our full news item is here.

British artists flock to set up home in liberating Berlin

Charlotte Higgins reports in the Guardian on a growing number of young (and not so young) artists who have chosen Berlin as their home.

“When you say you are a composer it feels really normal in Berlin”, says Luke Bedford. “In Britain people often don't seem to think you can actually be a composer; people are rather confused by it and think you must write music for TV, or something.”

The full article is here.

Here’s a full list of works by Luke Bedford.

His new opera, Seven Angels, will be premièred by the Opera Group and BCMG this June.

Jay Schwartz’ chamber opera Narcissus & Echo receives its Austrian première this Saturday at the Salzburg Biennale.

The work is scored for counter-tenor, viola, percussion and organ. The composer is leading this performance from the organ, joined by Charles Maxwell (counter-tenor), Werner Dickel (viola), Sebastian Hausl and Adrian Schmid (percussion). Stage direction is by Tilman Hecker.

More information on the work, including an audio excerpt, is here.

The next performance of Narcissus & Echo is the Spanish première on 23 March at the Teatros del Canal, as part of Operadhoy.

Update 14.03.2011

German reviews from the Salzburg production:

Magie von Klang und Raum (Das Werk „gelingt durch ungewöhnliche Besetzung und Raumklangwirkungen von magischer Eindringlichkeit.“ Karl Harb, Salzburger Nachrichten)
Narcissus & Echo (Tiroler Tageszeitung)
Wandertag für einen Countertenor (Reinhard Kriechbaum, DrehPunktKultur)

This March, Theo Verbey’s completed arrangement of Alban Berg’s Lyric Suite for string orchestra goes on tour with the Amsterdam Sinfonietta, in a new programme staged by Pierre Audi with the title Liebestod (The Death of Love).

Read more about the programme, which also includes Wagner’s Prelude from Tristan and Isolde and a new work by Michel van der Aa.

Performances start today in Stockholm, followed by Luxembourg, Brussels, Amsterdam, London and Hamburg.

Video introduction:

(view on YouTube)

Measha Brueggergosman and Ensemble Intercontemporain revive their 2008 production of Luciano Berio’s Recital for Cathy this March. Peter Eötvös conducts.

Performances start today in Barcelona, followed by Cologne, Lisbon, Antwerp and Amsterdam. See the Ensemble Intercontemporain website for details, as well as a video excerpt of the 2008 performance. 

In a break from rehearsals in Paris, Measha Brueggergosman gave us her impression of Berio’s work.

(View on Vimeo)

The new Gustav Mahler exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay opened this week in Paris.

The exhibition shows a fascinating collection of material from the archives of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna and the Médiathèque Musicale Mahler in Paris. Many of the objects are on display for the first time ever.

The centrepiece of the exhibition is a facsimile of the complete manuscript score of the 4th Symphony. As the music plays from loudspeakers (Jascha Horenstein’s 1970 recording with the London Symphony Orchestra) lights illuminate the relevant page in the score.

Curator Pierre Korzilius spoke to Universal Edition about the exhibition.

The exhibition is on until 29 May 2011.

Press reports:

Naturbursche und Musiktyrann (Deutschlandradio Kultur)
Gustav Mahlers Leid an der Seine (Die Presse)

Christoph Marthaler’s celebrated production of Janáček’s Katya Kabanova, first seen at the Salzburg Festival in 1998, returns to the Opéra de Paris with Angela Denoke in the lead role.

The clip above is from the DVD of the Salzburg production, available from Kultur.

“Nicolas Joel programmes Christoph Marthaler? Spot the mistake,” is the sarcastic comment of Le Figaro.

Have you seen this production? Are you going? Comments are always welcome.

The new UE Website is one year old today. How time flies. Happy Birthday to us!

We’ve been very busy behind the scenes these last twelve months, and have put a huge amount of text, photos, audio excerpts, covers, sample pages and a whole lot more online. There’s a lot to discover. We hope you like it.

Here are some things you might not yet have seen on the site:

Audio Excerpts

You can click play on the audio excerpts on the front page and just sit back and listen to hours of music. Just refresh the page and you’ll get a whole new selection. The excerpts are also shown next to each composer and next to each respective work.

Ensembles that played this …

At the bottom of the page for every work is a list of five ensembles that have performed it. If you click on their names, you can see five other works that they’ve performed. Try this one for example.

Catalogues galore …

On this page you can browse our printed catalogues with an online viewer.

Performances and Radio Broadcasts

Our performance calendar now has a much more powerful search function, and it loads much faster. If you click the link at the top of the list, you can also see forthcoming radio broadcasts of our works.

Music for Film and TV

Our film section gives you inspiration for your next Hollywood blockbuster.

Facebook and Twitter

Yes, we're there as well. Follow us here and here.

We’ve just received the new book by Jonathan Goldman: The Musical Language of Pierre Boulez – part of the Cambridge University Press “Music Since 1900” series.

From the jacket:

“Pierre Boulez is arguably the most influential composer of the second half of the twentieth century. Here, Jonathan Goldman provides a fresh appraisal of the composer's music, demonstrating how understanding the evolution of Boulez's ideas on musical form is an important step towards evaluating his musical thought generally.”

You can read the preface and a large part of the introduction at the Cambridge University Press website.

Order online at Amazon, Cambridge University Press or others.