Leonard Slatkin "sort of" collapsed in his dressing room while guesting with the Rotterdam Philharmonic, and is recovering in a Rotterdam hospital after a stent procedure, the Detroit Free Press reports. The 65-year-old music director of the Detroit Symphony has canceled performances in the coming weeks, but could return to the podium in Detroit as soon as the end of November.

One more chance to hear the Philadelphia Orchestra in incredible form - tonight. Here's a review.

JoAnn Falletta conducting the Curtis orchestra Tuesday night, with concertmaster Joel Link. Photo: David DeBalko

This review is scheduled to run in the physical version of The Inquirer Friday.

Nights like the one the Curtis Institute of Music had Tuesday — in which everything is going right and everyone in the room seems to feel it — are dear in the life of arts institutions, especially in tough times. The Curtis orchestra, in its first concert of the season, played with a magnificent assuredness. Much of the city’s arts and civic leadership was in Verizon Hall, buzzing about the school’s new dorm and orchestra rehearsal hall quickly taking shape a few blocks away.
And you couldn’t help noticing that while all this spoke gamely of the future, in the audience were teachers such as Eleanor Sokoloff, charismatic Curtis piano pedagogue for nearly 75 years and living evidence that its new leadership still values the conservatory’s lineage.
Of course, none of this would have mattered had the level of playing not been so high. JoAnn Falletta, music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, brought clarity to the Violin Concerto of Behzad Ranjbaran, order to Strauss’ Don Juan, and, to Rimsky-Korsakov’s Sheherazade, a surprising and lucid reanimation.
I never tire of hearing Sheherazade, in part since I don’t hear it much anymore. Once a staple, it now shows up less often in concert halls. The work’s youthful narrative is ideally suited to this orchestra; it asks for virtuosity, and the ensemble repays it in the form of ecstasy.
Falletta’s interpretation was self-effacing. She provided a stable framework of tempos, occasionally veering away for expressive purposes, but mostly leaving individuality to unfold in the dozens of instrumental solos. William Short was not merely technically all there in the work’s famous dancerly bassoon solo, but also highly individual in a way that would be notable even in a professional setting. Clarinetist Ruokai Chen placed a subtle elongation in tempo at the top of a run, transforming an excerpt lick into an artistic statement. All throughout the piece, concertmaster Joel Link, a fourth-year student, projected warmth and stability in notoriously treacherous solos.
Don Juan had great structure, though in the details was perhaps slightly prim and proper for the subject at hand. But Falletta was just right in Ranjbaran’s Violin Concerto. The Tehran-born Juilliard composer might be thought of as music’s magical realist. In this work — as well as in his "Persian Trilogy" — a passage can be going along at midlevel dissonance when, as if a light suddenly refracted, the orchestration turns lustrous and the harmonies seductive. You might hear film scoring in his sound. The composer himself identifies Persian modes and rhythms as inspiration, as well as the kamancheh, a traditional Persian bowed instrument.
But for the soloist, the more relevant cousins in the repertoire to this 2003 work are Barber and Korngold, whose spirit Elissa Lee Koljonen evoked in the formidable passage work. Koljonen, a 1994 Curtis graduate who studied with Aaron Rosand, is also Mrs. Roberto Diaz, wife of the director of Curtis, but her appearance on this program was no concession to family ties. She is apart from all her connections a violinist of immense presence. Technique is a given, but with a purpose. Case in point: the many fleeting moments of bending pitch and changing tone for expressive purposes. This was a knowing audience, so it might have detected her exquisite timing and precision. Or perhaps all it sensed was a violinist of considerable soul.

- Peter Dobrin
 

It's apparently finally done. Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic have penned a deal keeping him there through 2018. For how many weeks per year, we do not know.

What was the hold up? The AP story doesn't say.

Rattle's signing had been predicted by the Philharmonic before - and repeatedly over a period of many months - after a mysterious and confusing moment in which the orchestra wasn't sure whether it wanted to keep him.

No one is good enough to be musical leader of the Berlin Philharmonic. We all get that. Players have made that clear before with their complaining about Rattle and previous music directors. So maybe the past few months of Rattle not signing his contract were about getting players to be sure, to be really, really sure.

Rattle is a frequent visitor to the podium of the Philadelphia Orchestra, which has made it clear on several occasions it would like him to be music director.

Conductors, these days especially, have to be more than musicians. They are advocates, teachers and, in a substantive way, cheerleaders for the art form. Vladimir Jurowski, who guest conducts the Philadelphia Orchestra this week, has a couple of charismatic gifts unseen by the public during his previous visits here.

In this clip (from 2003) of him speaking about Die Fledermaus, he not only proves an elegant pianist, but also an insightful thinker. It's clear Jurowski is a conductor who makes interpretive choices based on clues in the score and deep consideration. Listen to five minutes of what he has to say about Fledermaus and you'll never hear the piece the same way again.

Jurowski leads the orchestra Thursday, Friday and Saturday in Stravinsky's Scherzo Fantastique, the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto with the astonishing young violinist Sergey Khachatryan and one of the lesser-heard symphonies of Prokofiev, the No. 4.

Dallas Symphony Orchestra music director Jaap van Zweden will extend his current four-year contract, stretching his commitment to the orchestra through the 2015-2016 season. This after just one season on the podium. The pact, the orchestra notes, will "mark eight years at its conclusion." By today's standards, the Dutch conductor is giving the orchestra a good number of weeks: he will lead 15 weeks each season through May, 2012 and 16 weeks per season after that.

Why do orchestras peer so far into the future? Conductors have commitments with multiple orchestras, so their schedules have to be nailed down as early as possible. It makes it easier to plan repertoire and hire soloists. It's smart on the public-message front, especiallly when it comes to fund-raising; donors want to know they are giving to stability. And determining an end-date for a maestro's tenure allows an orchestra to begin looking for the next music director on the orchestra's timetable, which is what you want in a process that often takes several years.

Here's one critic's view of the relationship in Dallas: a review by Scott Cantrell of a recent Beethoven 9th.

Jacques Lacombe is the new leader of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, the orchestra announced today. Lacombe conducts two weeks of concerts this season as music-director-designate. Starting in Sept. 2010, he takes the full title, conducting the orchestra nine or ten weeks a year. He has a three-year contract.

Lacombe, 46, has only led the New Jersey orchestra once before - a Carmina Burana in November. Born in Cap-de-la-Madeleine, Quebec, he was principal guest conductor of the Montreal Symphony, and has led opera performances at the Bavarian State Opera, Covent Garden and Deutsche Oper Berlin.

More locally, we know his work from Opera Company of Philadelphia productions of Carmen, Faust, Macbeth, The Pearl Fishers and Werther.

Lacombe - artistic director and principal conductor of the Orchestre Symphonique de Trois-Rivières in Quebec - follows Neeme Järvi, who led the New Jersey orchestra from 2004-09.

The Star-Ledger has more.

Sarah Hicks succeeds Doc Severinsen as the Minnesota Orchestra’s principal conductor of pops and presentations. The Curtis Institute of Music grad starts her new four-year post immediately. Hicks (pictured) joined the orchestra as assistant conductor in 2006...

Academy of Natural Sciences president and CEO William Y. Brown is stepping down early next year to become president of the Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts. Dr. Ted Daeschler, the Academy’s vice president of systematic biology and library, will be acting president while a search for a permanent successor takes place. Brown has been leader since Feb. 2007. The Academy hosts its next show, on George Washington Carver, starting Nov. 14...

We hate to bring this up, but it just keeps happening. The Berlin Philharmonic's prediction for when Simon Rattle would sign his contract has come and gone - again. September was their latest prediction, and it's now the middle of October. Rattle and the orchestra affirmed their commitment to each other more than a year ago, and yet, despite several statements that a deal was about to be signed, it's still not in writing. By the way, for what it's worth, the orchestra now says the contract will be signed this month.

Memorials

Seán Deibler will be remembered Oct. 24 at 2 p.m. at the Church of St. Luke and the Epiphany, 330 S. 13th Street, with a chorus under the direction of Bernard Kunkel performing Mozart, Kodály, Duruflé, Martin and others. The stalwart and charismatic figure on the local choral scene died in August. He had founded the Music Group of Philadelphia and the Choral Arts Society. Does anyone recall Deibler the singer?

A memorial honoring English hornist Louis Rosenblatt will be held Nov. 1 at the Academy of Music ballroom from 3 to 5 p.m. Rosenblatt, the oboist and English hornist with the Philadelphia Orchestra for three and a half decades and a man of uncommon dignity and intelligence, died in August.

Everybody is excited for Gustavo Dudamel's impending inaguration, too. But when you start alluding to Dudamel as a deity ("Some have taken to referring to the new music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic by his initials, thus: G*D."), when you seriously start comparing a great talent with a major league career that started 3 years ago with Leonard Bernstein, things are starting to get seriously out of hand. And when it comes to the mostly embarrassing, fawning, breathless media coverage of Dudamel's debut as Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, we can safely say that most of the "general-interest" media is behaving poorly.

And this from a Dudamel fan.

Read more from Opera Chic for a much-needed reality check on marketing and the Los Angeles Philharmonic's new music director.

The Dude comes to the Kimmel May 19.