Soundbites
Monte-carlo move
Cecilia Bartoli is to be the new artistic director of Opéra de Monte-carlo.
The Italian mezzo-soprano, who has won considerable acclaim for both her immaculate scholarship and sense of adventure in her recitals and recordings, says that her new post is the ‘realisation of a dream’. She will begin the role in 2023.
Venue vandals
Several windows were smashed when Barcelona’s Palau de la Música Catalana was attacked by people protesting at the imprisonment of the rapper Pablo Hasél. Earlier in the evening, violinist Lina Tur Bonet and the Vespres d’arnadi ensemble had been giving a concert at the historic venue, which was designed by leading Catalan architect Lluís Domènech i Montaner in 1905, but most of the audience had dispersed by the time of the attack.
A new lead
The Brodsky Quartet has announced that Krysia Osostowicz is to replace Gina Mccormack as its first violin. Osostowicz comes to the ensemble with a glowing CV that includes more than 20 years as a founder member of the Dante Quartet, with whom she won the BBC Music Magazine Chamber Award in 2009 for the group’s disc of Franck and Fauré. Mccormack is leaving the Brodskys for family reasons.
Youthful notes
Should you have the good fortune of being both youthful and talented, you may well want to enter the BBC’S Young Composer 2021 competition. Open to people aged 12-18, the competition promises winners a prize of working with a mentor and the BBC Concert Orchestra and the possibility of having one’s piece broadcast on the radio. All styles of composition are welcome, and details can be found at bbc.co.uk/youngcomposer.