This Week in Classical Music-December 21, 2008

by: Randy Kinkel

December 21, 2008

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•Brendel gives last concert in Vienna
•New Arvo Part Symphony online
•Lost Bassoon found on Ebay

This week in Classical music 12/21/08

It’s This week in Classical Music, an update on what’s happening in the Classical Music world; I’m Randy Kinkel.

Pianist Alfred Brendel played what he says will be his last concert last week in Vienna with the Vienna Philharmonic, and he’s doing it with a work by a composer he’s recorded a lot over the years—Mozart. Brendel played Mozart’s piano concerto #9. He was first pianist ever to record Beethoven's entire oeuvre for piano and one of the few to record all of Mozart's piano concertos. Conductor Bernhard Haitink said of him: "He is always searching for something he didn't know before. Each work Beethoven composed for piano has a different style and character, and Brendel has thought about each of them so intensely, so intellectually, so musically, that he comes up with results that are very special." Brendel, a published author of books on music and humorous verse, says he will have plenty to do after his final concert. "Unlike some of my colleagues, I'm not addicted to playing. I have interests aside from music," he said in a recent interview. "I have all sorts of plans next year. After a break of a few months, I'll be giving lectures, readings, seminars, doing more writing. I'm always writing something."
You can get a look at—if not a listen to—the latest by Arvo Part; His new Symphony “Symphony #4—“Los Angeles’-- it’s been published online by Universal Edition and available for perusal by one and all. The work has not had its premiere yet—that happens next year with Esa Pekka Salonen and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. It’s the first symphony in some 40 years by the Estonian composer.
If you’re a musician whose instrument has gone missing, in addition to filing a report with police, you may want to check Ebay—That’s where a member of the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa found a missing 1955 Heckel Bassoon for sale, put up for auction by a Montreal pawn Shop. The instrument was worth 60-100,000 dollars and had been missing for several months.

for more on these and other items and events, go to the website, kbaq.org; be listening each week at this time for another update—and join me every weekday at noon for The Mozart Buffet, and hour of music by Mozart and his contemporaries; I’m Randy Kinkel, for this week in Classical music, on 89-five KBAQ Phoenix, a service of Rio Salado College and Arizona state University.