Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

MUSIC

OBIT: Top Spanish conductor Jesus Lopez Cobos

Top Spanish conductor Jesus Lopez Cobos, who wielded the baton at a clutch of top ensembles including the Spanish National Orchestra and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra (CSO), has died of cancer aged 78, his entourage said Friday in Madrid.

Published: 2 March 2018 16:53 CET
OBIT: Top Spanish conductor Jesus Lopez Cobos
Photo: AFP

Lopez Cobos, born in the small town of Toro in northwestern Spain, died in Berlin where he had notably been general music director of the Deutsche Oper Berlin through the 1980s before following up a decade with the CSO with a seven-year spell at Madrid's Teatro Real.

The Madrid institution said it was saddened to note the loss of “one of the great figures of the international music scene”.   

“Spain has lost one of the music world's greats,” said Minister of Culture Inigo Mendez de Vigo.

“He was one of Spain's most prestigious and notable active orchestra directors,” he added.   

On its Facebook page, Toro town hall declared three days of mourning after the loss of “one of its most illustrious sons”.   

Lopez Cobos' services remained in high demand well into the twilight of his career as far afield as Japan and China and the United States.   

He regularly conducted a swathe of other top orchestras including the Berlin Philharmonic, the London Symphony, the Vienna Philharmonic and the Vienna Symphony.

He was also Principal Guest Conductor with the London Philharmonic in the early 1980s, following a 1978 debut with them.   

The Madrid-based Conciertos Vitoria agency hailed Lopez Cobos, who initially studied philosophy in Madrid, as an artist who “loved his work above all else,” and said he would be buried in his home town.

Other top venues that saw Lopez Cobos take the baton included Milan's Teatro alla Scala, London's Royal Opera House and the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

He was also a recipient of Spain's prestigious Prince of Asturias award for the arts in 1981.

Lopez Cobos enjoyed conducting a wide palette of works by an abundance of composers but had particular affection for Georges Bizet, Manuel de Falla, Maurice Ravel and Gustav Mahler.   

In operatic terms, his favourite work was Mozart's “Cosi fan tutte”.   

But he especially had a predilection for Brahms' Requiem, whose third movement includes the line, “Lord, make me to know mine end, and the measure of my days, what it is: that I may know how frail I am.”

CULTURE

New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday’s death

Fans of the late Johnny Hallyday, "the French Elvis Presley", will be able to commemorate the sixth anniversary of his death with two songs never released before.

Published: 17 November 2023 09:05 CET
New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday's death

Hallyday, blessed with a powerful husky voice and seemingly boundless energy, died in December 2017, aged 74, of lung cancer after a long music and acting career.

After an estimated 110 million records sold during his lifetime – making him one of the world’s best-selling singers -Hallyday’s success has continued unabated beyond his death.

Almost half of his current listeners on Spotify are under the age of 35, according to the streaming service, and a posthumous greatest hits collection of “France’s favourite rock’n’roller”, whose real name was Jean-Philippe Leo
Smet, sold more than half a million copies.

The two new songs, Un cri (A cry) and Grave-moi le coeur (Engrave my heart), are featured on two albums published by different labels which also contain already-known hits in remastered or symphonic versions.

Un cri was written in 2017 by guitarist and producer Maxim Nucci – better known as Yodelice – who worked with Hallyday during the singer’s final years.

At the time Hallyday had just learned that his cancer had returned, and he “felt the need to make music outside the framework of an album,” Yodelice told reporters this week.

Hallyday recorded a demo version of the song, accompanied only by an acoustic blues guitar, but never brought it to full production.

Sensing the fans’ unbroken love for Hallyday, Yodelice decided to finish the job.

He separated the voice track from the guitar which he felt was too tame, and arranged a rockier, full-band accompaniment.

“It felt like I was playing with my buddy,” he said.

The second song, Grave-moi le coeur, is to be published in December under the artistic responsibility of another of the singer’s close collaborators, the arranger Yvan Cassar.

Hallyday recorded the song – a French version of Elvis’s Love Me Tender – with a view to performing it at a 1996 show in Las Vegas.

But in the end he did not play it live, opting instead for the original English-language version, and did not include it in any album.

“This may sound crazy, but the song was on a rehearsal tape that had never been digitalised,” Cassar told AFP.

The new songs are unlikely to be the last of new Hallyday tunes to delight fans, a source with knowledge of his work said. “There’s still a huge mass of recordings out there spanning his whole career,” the source said.

SHOW COMMENTS