Anne-Sophie Mutter, Yo-Yo Ma and Daniel Barenboim celebrate the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth by recording the Triple Concerto. The CD released last Friday by Deutsche Grammophon also includes Beethoven's Seventh Symphony with the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra.

The recordings were made at concerts in Buenos Aires and Berlin – in July and October 2019 and mark two milestone anniversaries - the 20th birthday of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra and the 40th anniversary of the legendary Triple Concerto recording made by Mutter and Ma under Herbert von Karajan. 

Win a copy of the new CD by sending us the 'name' of Anne-Sophie's Stradivarius!

Answers via facebook, twitter or email tours@maestrotouring.com. Prize winner will be drawn Friday 17th April.

In 1999, Daniel Barenboim, together with the late Palestinian literary scholar Edward Said created a workshop for young musicians from Israel, Palestine and various Arab countries of the Middle East seeking to enable intercultural dialogue and to promote the experience of collaborating on a matter of common interest. The orchestra is named after Goethe’s collection of poems entitled “West-Eastern Divan”, a central work for the evolution of the concept of world culture.

Watch the 'trio' in discussion about the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra with the link below.

Thanks to all of you that entered our "What's Tony Playing" competition. Congratulations to Mr & Mrs Bailey on being the first winning entry to be drawn - a bottle of champagne will be winging their way later today. 

Their answer was

Puccini’s aria “Quello che tacete” from the opera La Fanciulla del West (half inched by
Andrew Lloyd Webber for Phantom of the Opera). 

Maestro has had 25 successful and profitable years in business. We have good reserves and have planned to being able to support a drop-off in trading for a couple of months while the situation passed.

Almost every professional touring and music holiday project we had on our books until the end of August is now cancelled. We expect that this week will see the cancellation of the Proms (or at least the reduction to a purely domestic festival) which would complete the wipe out of business with our remaining international orchestras. We are now faced with the reality that, assuming we can get back up and running in May or June, we will have a 'void' of income for the following three months.

In order to protect our team and ensure we are in as strong a position as possible when able to trade normally again we must take immediate advantage of the 'generous' offer from the government (Job Retention Scheme). This however only applies if staff are doing no work whatsoever. The rules pay no attention to the duty we have to our clients and the tasks of recovering funds on behalf of our clients for tours that have had to be cancelled. We have therefore no choice but to place the business on 'pause' until the end of April at the earliest. All our team are now on 'furlough' so that they can at least benefit from this government support.

In the event of an immediate or urgent need, please email tours@maestrotouring.com. Ken Grundy will monitor this email address each morning and take action as needed.

In case of a real and immediate emergency only, please call Ken's mobile number 0797 456 6006 (+44 797 456 6006).

We look forward to being up and running and back to normal as soon as possible.