In Brief: In Paradisum Deducant Te Angeli

Anyone who attended Mass at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in the 1990s, or watched Mass from there on TV, knows the face and voice of the Shrine in those years, cantor Virginia Brubaker. It is with great sadness that I pass along to anyone who watched and heard her sing the news that Mrs. Brubaker passed away on Saturday morning. Anyone who knew Ginny would expect that she fought her illness, cancer, with every ounce of very considerable fierceness in her. Many of her singing colleagues, from over so many years, are planning to come together again to sing at her memorial service. As one singer put it, "after the choir is seated there will be no room for the congregation." Ginny can be seen in the video, starting at about 4:05, singing the responsorial psalm Here am I, Lord: I come to do your will. Our hearts and prayers are with her husband, Jerry. [YouTube]


Here is your regular Sunday selection of links to good things in Blogville and Beyond.

• For your online listening this week, the London Symphony Orchestra with Valery Gergiev and Mozart's La Clemenza di Tito at the Aix-en-Provence Festival, James MacMillan's new concerto, George Onslow's nonet, Théodore Dubois's Le Paradis perdu (1878), and much more from the Festival de Radio France et Montpellier Languedoc-Roussillon, Nelson Freire and Martha Argerich from Lugano. [France Musique]


• Also, more from the BBC Philharmonic and, coming up this week, the Elias Quartet (coming to the Library of Congress next season), the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra bids farewell to retiring principal conductor Roger Norrington with Mahler's ninth symphony, Vladimir Jurowski leading a program of Kodály, Bartók, and Liszt, Emmanuel Pahud with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Oliver Knussen (returning to the NSO this November) leading the BBC Symphony Orchestra in Honegger, Bridge, Berg, Castiglioni, and Debussy. [BBC Proms]


• More online video of concerts from the Verbier Festival, including Martha Argerich and friends, Bryn Terfel, Angela Hewitt, Stephen Hough, Martin Helmchen, Evgeny Kissin, Yuja Wang, and Arabella Steinbacher. [Medici.tv]


• Don't watch the Verbier videos, though, if you do not want to be associated with the "sensationalism" of the classical music star system attacked by Gidon Kremer. [Jessica Duchen]


• Also, God forbid that Kremer's decision to withdraw from the Verbier Festival be associated with "any ambitions or desire to look at everything as a snob, as many critics do! – With their prejudice, so to say- 'from above'." [Slipped Disc]


• More online video: the final round of the Operalia competition. [Medici.tv]


• Painter Lucian Freud is dead at 88. [The Guardian]


• We admit that the heat kept Ionarts from reviewing Friday night's Sweeney Todd at the outdoor Filene Center at Wolf Trap. How do the singers and staff there cope with this epic heat? [New York Times]


• It is sad to see Borders close, if not really surprising. [Slate]


• This does not look good: the Pittsburgh Symphony has gone $3 million into debt in the last two years, but its endowment has recovered somewhat. [Pittsburgh Tribune-Review]