This Week in Classical Music, February 1, 2009

by: Randy Kinkel

February 01, 2009

Felix Mendelssohn

This Week in Classical Music-February 1, 2009

( Phoenix )
•Mendelssohn works premiered; more found
•Sony renews commitment to Classical

This Week in Classical Music 2-1-09

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

Tuesday, February 3rd in Mendelssohn’s Birthday; last week, as if to celebrate the German composer’s 200th anniversary, Stephen Somary, director of the Mendelssohn Project, unveiled 13 never-heard-before scores by The Composer in a performance at the Museum of Jewish Heritage. The works are part of a cache of 270 scores that have languished in library basements and archives, unpublished and unperformed, since his death in 1847. Among the works are symphonies, operas, concertos and choral pieces. So why were all these works by a popular composer of his time put in storage? Somary points to anti-Semitism and Wagner’s essay “Judaism in Music”, in which he railed against Jewish influence in German Music, using Mendelssohn as an example. This led the Nazis to ban performances of Mendelssohn in 1936, and boxes and crates of the composer’s works and correspondence were sent abroad from the Berlin State Library for safekeeping. During the Second World War, they became scattered. Among the works performed last week were Songs, an early Piano Sonata, music for string quartet, and a Violin Sonata. No word yet on when or where any of the other 257 scores might be heard; we’ll keep you posted.

Sony Classical has appointed a new president—it’s Bogdan Roscic, formerly Managing Director of the Decca Music Group, who has also worked for Deutsche Gramophone and Universal Music Australia. Sony Music Entertainment CEO Rolf Schmidt-Holtz commented: "Classical music not only remains a vital part of our company's DNA, but also this is a business we are determined to grow and promote again."

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, an hour of music by Mozart and his contemporaries; I’m Randy Kinkel for This week in Classical Music, on 89.5 KBAQ Phoenix, a service of Rio Salado College and Arizona State University.

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