June 10, 2007

It’s this week in classical music, an update on what’s happening in the classical music world, I’m Randy Kinkel.

An Alabama opthamologist has won the Van Cliburn international piano competition for outstanding amateurs.Dr. Drew Mays from Birmingham took the $2000 first prize.  In the competition’s final round last Sunday, Dr. Mays played Beethoven’s Waldstein Sonata and the Liszt Mephisto waltz #1.  the $1500 second prize went to Phoenix lawyer Mark Fuller, who also won the press jury award and best performance of a post-romantic work.  Composer Clark Griffith of Fort Worth won third prize.  Van Cliburn himself took the stage Sunday to urge the competitors to “Become Soldiers of Beauty.”

Austrian Authorities recovered a stradivari violin belonging to a top violinist worth over 3 million dollars after raiding a house in Vienna used by Georgian gangsters to stash stolen goods.  The gang had been involved in at least 21 other robberies in the Austrian capital: the violin was stolen in May.  The Austrian interior minister returned the 327-year-old instrument to Christian Altenburger, a soloist who has played with the London, New York and Vienna symphony orchestras.  Altenburger is happy to have his beloved fiddle back, he said, “I’m very happy and relieved… I didn’t think it would happen so quickly.”

Christoph Eschenbach will be a man without an orchestra—at least after 2010.  The Orchestra de Paris announced that Paavo Jarvi would replace Eschenbach starting in 2010 after his contract expires.  This after The conductor decided not to renew his contract with the Philadelphia Orchestra after the current season.  The 67-year-old maestro called the management of both organizations “amateurish”, and said “Orchestras, conductors and management are not working together anymore… I’ve struggled with this a long time in Paris… I don’t want to do that anymore.  I’m a free man.”

For more information on these and other items and events, go to the KBAQ website at KBAQ-dot-org.… be listening every week at this time for another update, and join me at noon every weekday for the Mozart Buffet, an hour of music by Mozart and his contemporaries, … I’m Randy Kinkel, for KBAQ’s  “This week in Classical Music”…  on 89-five KBAQ, K-B-A-Q Phoenix, a service of Rio Salado College and Arizona State University