James Levine to Miss Met Fall Season Because of New Back Injury

James Levine, the Metropolitan Opera’s music director, has withdrawn from all performances at the Met for the rest of the year after falling while on vacation in Vermont and damaging a vertebra, the house said on Tuesday. Mr. Levine had emergency surgery on Thursday and was to have begun rehearsals on Monday. The injury comes on top of a series of back operations followed by periods of rehabilitation to correct a painful spinal condition, called stenosis.

While the Met said Mr. Levine would remain music director, it immediately elevated its principal guest conductor, Fabio Luisi, to the title of principal conductor and handed over to him most of Mr. Levine’s fall conducting assignments.

We wish the Meastro a speedy recovery and continued good health.

Our congratulations are extended to Maestro Luisi, who will fill these large shoes well.

Classical music in Dartford tunnel stops vandalism

Prince's Tunnel links Dartford's Central Park with Brooklands Lakes

Music played in a pedestrian tunnel has stopped any graffiti or anti-social behaviour, according to a Kent council.

Classical music has been pumped into the Edwardian Prince's Tunnel, linking Dartford's Central Park with Brooklands Lakes, for the past four years.

Jeremy Kite, leader of Conservative-controlled Dartford Borough Council, said initially the music was played to uplift people using the tunnel.

But he said it was soon apparent that any vandals were leaving it alone.

He said: "We weren't getting any of the anticipated graffiti and none of the damage you'd normally expect in an urban tunnel.

'Enormous impact'

"The only difference between this subway and other subways in the town is the fact that we're playing classical music."

The music has been played in the tunnel since it was renovated for the benefit of the town's residents and visitors after falling into disuse.

Mr Kite said the installation of the music and the lighting system in the tunnel cost just less than £20,000, and was "money very well spent".

"The impact has been enormous," he added.

URL: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/music-obituaries/8624101/Josef-Suk.html

7:26PM BST 07 Jul 2011

Josef Suk

Josef Suk, who died on July 6 aged 81, was a Czech violinist who carried the mantle of his grandfather, the composer Josef Suk, and his great-grandfather, Antonin Dvorák.

His was a middle-European – lofty, even – approach to performance, strong on technique and light on showmanship, and invariably underlined with a strong, masculine sound. He fared well both as a soloist and as leader of the Prague Quartet and his own Suk Trio. But as audience – and media – tastes veered towards more flashy performances, Suk found there was less demand for his intellectual approach to musical interpretation.

Unlike many violinists he could switch effortlessly between violin and viola (a skill that Dvorák also possessed), finding with ease the rich depth of tone and vibrato that the deeper instrument requires. In this he was undoubtedly helped by his tall, elegant figure and large hands.

If the family lineage was a burden, he rarely let it show. "Of course there was a lot of pressure on me," he told an interviewer in 1997. "On one side it helped me, but on the other side people always watched me more closely.”

Josef Suk was born in Prague on August 8 1929. His grandfather, who was Dvorák's favourite pupil at the Prague Conservatoire and a member of the Bohemian Quartet, had married Dvorák's daughter Otilie in 1898 and later served as Rector of the Conservatoire. His father, although musical and an amateur composer and painter, chose to pursue a career in engineering, while his mother died when he was eight.

Josef never knew Dvorák and he was only 5 when his grandfather died, but the musical dynasty was rescued when his talent was spotted at an early age by the great Bach interpreter Jaroslav Kocián, one of the foremost Czech pedagogues; they remained teacher and pupil until Kocián's death in 1950. Josef was 11 when he first appeared in public, and eight years later he was sent to Paris and Brussels to represent the younger generation of Czech musicians as part of a cultural exchange.

By the 1950s he was orchestral leader at the Prague National Theatre, leader of the Prague Quartet (1951-52) and had founded the Suk Trio with Josef Cuchro (cello) and Jan Panenka (piano). It was named after his grandfather rather than himself. He also made regular guest appearances with the peerless Smetana Quartet, notably as first viola when they needed a fifth instrumentalist to perform his great-grandfather's String Quintet.

The Czech Philharmonic's world tour in 1959, on which he appeared as soloist, brought Suk's mellow violin tone to an international audience, and he was soon making regular forays west of the Iron Curtain. By then he had already appeared at the Prague Spring, an annual festival that long predates the political events of 1968.

His first major concert in London was at the Proms in August 1964 where, appropriately enough, he performed his great-grandfather's Violin Concerto with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Sir Malcolm Sargent – as well as Mozart's G major Concerto. He was, noted one critic, "a superbly accomplished violinist with a silken tone and complete command of his instrument". He joined the same team the following summer to play the Beethoven Concerto with a "beautiful tone, superb sense of phrase and spectacular double-stopping”.

Although he never returned to the Proms, he became a regular visitor to London for the next three decades, performing works by Brahms and Mozart as well as music by his compatriots. There was also a Beethoven chamber music cycle with Panenka at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in 1968 which foreshadowed an increasing chamber music presence.

He founded the Suk Chamber Orchestra in 1974, the centenary of his grandfather's birth, but declined any opportunity to compose in his own right. "To be a composer after Dvorák and after Suk, I would have to be sensational," he mused. "I don't have that sort of inspiration. I tried, but it wasn't that good so I stayed with my fiddle.”

After the Suk Trio disbanded he played trios with the cellist János Starker and the pianist Julius Katchen. He continued to travel to Britain, setting the seal of authenticity on the Wigmore Hall's Bohemian Festival in 1990; in 1996 he gave what the critics called a "passionately spontaneous performance" of the Violin Sonata by Leos Janácek, another of his compatriots.

While his great-grandfather is indelibly associated with the New World, Suk's own visits across the Atlantic, though meaningful, were rare, although he appeared with the Suk Trio at the Kennedy Centre, Washington, in 1986.

In 1999 President Havel awarded Suk his country's highest medal for merit. He was decorated again on his 80th birthday by President Klaus. He also held the title of National Artist in the Czech Republic.

He formally retired after a final appearance at the Prague Spring in 2004, but continued to make occasional appearances. Last year he recorded his own transcription of 30 of Dvorák's songs for violin and viola with piano accompaniment, with Vladimir Ashkenazy at the keyboard; they were packaged as Songs My Great-Grandfather Taught Me, a play on Dvorák's Songs my Mother Taught Me that was once a middle-class musical favourite. Among his other recordings one, on the Supraphon label, stands out, featuring works by his grandfather, his father and himself.

The Josef Suk Chamber Music Competition, of which he was president, is presently underway in Prague.