This Week in Classical Music

by: Randy Kinkel

April 26, 2009

Steve Reich

This Week in Classical Music-April 26, 2009

( Phoenix, AZ )
•Reich Wins Pulitzer
•Salonen steps down in LA

This Week in Classical Music 4/26/09

It’s “This Week in Classical Music”, an update on what’s happening in the classical music world; I’m Randy Kinkel.
Composer Steve Reich won the Pulitzer Prize for Music Last Week. He won it for his piece “Double Sextet”. The award is given each year to “a distinguished musical composition by an American that has had its first performance or recording in the United States during the previous calendar year” and it comes with a $10,000 cash prize. Said Reich, “It was a completely unexpected surprise, I think Double Sextet is definitely one of my best pieces and I'm glad the Pulitzer committee felt the same way." Double Sextet was commissioned by the new music group Eighth Blackbird, which premiered it in 2008. The Pulitzer citation calls the work "a major work that displays an ability to channel an initial burst of energy into a large-scale musical event, built with masterful control and consistently intriguing to the ear." you can find out more on the group’s website, www.eighthblackbird.com; and there’s video of the first rehearsal of the work on YouTube.
Last Sunday was Conductor Esa Pekka Salonen’s last concert as Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. His 17-year tenure at the helm of the orchestra is the longest in the band’s 90-year history. During Salonen's time as music director, the Philharmonic introduced 54 commissioned works and gave 120 other pieces their world or American debuts. In an interview with a Finnish journalist, the conductor once described his relationship with the Philharmonic: “I felt from the beginning that the orchestra had enormous potential. All that had to be done was to turn its nose to the wind, and the energy raised the thing off the ground automatically." According to Tim Rutton of the Los Angeles Times, “ Salonen not only rediscovered himself as a composer but reshaped the Philharmonic into an ensemble whose ability to play the most demanding new music with conviction is unmatched by any other major orchestra”. As the final notes of the concert faded, the audience gave a ten-minute standing ovation; the brass section gave him the traditional fanfare known as a “Tusch”, the highest honor an orchestra can give another musician. The final concert was his 973rd as music director.
For more on these an 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.