PODCAST: John Dante Prevedini leads a discussion about Classical Music and Visual Disability, including contributions from Charlotte Hardwick, Robert McCarney, Halida Dinova and Giuseppe Pennisi.
FROM ROME: From December 2009 until March 2023, the late Giuseppe Pennisi sent us regular reports from the Italian opera and classical music scene.
The Swedish conductor Sixten Ehrling, born in Malmö on 3 April 1918, studied piano and violin at Stockholm's Royal Academy of Music, and was awarded the Jenny Lind Scholarship in 1939. He worked as a repetiteur at Royal Swedish Opera, and was an assistant to Karl Böhm at Dresden State Opera.
Following some criticism, Ehrling left his job as principal conductor at Royal Swedish Opera, and worked in the USA, conducting the Detroit Symphony Orchestra for 10 years from 1963. He later taught conducting at Juilliard, and worked with the Denver Symphony and the San Antonio Symphony. Known for his focus, clarity and perfectionism, he also had a notoriously short fuse, which sometimes lost him contracts. Ehrling died in New York City on 13 February 2005, aged 86.