June 24, 2007

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

Pianist Helene Grimaud ended a concert last Sunday night at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles after the third piece on her program after becoming ill.  The 37-year-old pianist said she felt dizzy and had spotty vision and realized that she could not continue the concert.  The incident was apparently related to a heart arrhythmia from which she suffers.  This is the second time this season health problems interfered with Grimaud’s appearance at Disney Hall; she cancelled a concert in January because of Back problems.

XM satellite radio will broadcast eight performances of the Balitimore Symphony Orchestra’s 2007-2008 season on one of its three classical music channels.  The series debuts on XM Classics and is hosted by Martin Goldsmith (former Performance Today host on KBAQ, now Program Director of XM classics) the series will feature interviews with conductor Marin Alsop, musicians and composers.

Lorin Maazel recently lashed out at music critics last week in an interview in Milan.  “Classical music is a niche field”, the conductor said, “and newspaper editors understand nothing about it…more than anything, critics hate the great music that appeals to all of us.  They turn up their noses at Puccini, Bizet and Tchaikovsky, but praise certain contemporary composers whose music is unbearable.”  

Filmmaker Woody Allen will make his opera directing debut with the Puccini comedy, “Gianni Schicci” to open the 2008-2009 season of the Los Angeles Opera.  Allen’s staging of the opera will be part of a new production of Puccini’s “Il Trittico”, a trio of one-act operas.  Director William Friedkin will direct the other two productions.

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