Only connect: two composers who put humans at the heart of their music, and the conductor who didn’t — SkimNews
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- Steve Reich turned 90 on Saturday; his tape pieces It's Gonna Rain (1965) and Come Out (1966) looped recordings of Pentecostal street preacher Brother Walter and Daniel Hamm of the Harlem Six, with Reich saying the works 'set human beings' rather than just words.
- Hannah Kendall 'creolises' the orchestra using dreadlock-cuffed strings, walkie-talkies, music boxes, harmonicas and kettles, with Building a Burning House and the world premiere of I Have Discovered the Secret of Death with the London Symphony Orchestra scheduled at the Barbican this month.
- Biopic The Yellow Tie, the most-watched Romanian film of 2025, opens in UK cinemas this week, dramatising Celibidache's appointment to the Berlin Philharmonic at 33 and his belief that any audio recording was a 'soul-stealing lie' that could not represent live performance.
- Abbie Conant, appointed Munich Philharmonic principal trombone in 1980 at age 25 after a blind audition, was told by conductor Sergiu Celibidache 'We need a man for the solo trombone,' demoted to second trombone, paid less than male colleagues, and forced to undergo medical and physical tests to prove her stamina during a legal fight that lasted more than 12 years.
- The column frames the three figures as a single argument: Reich and Kendall compose with human histories and voices at the centre, while Celibidache's purist pursuit of musical transcendence came at a documented human cost.
Why it matters: Conant's case, resolved only after more than 12 years of legal proceedings that included medical and physical tests ordered to prove her lung capacity and stamina as a woman, is the kind of workplace discrimination story that biopics about 'genius' conductors routinely omit — and the new Celibidache film, arriving in UK cinemas this week, does not tell it.
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