This Week in Classical Music

by: Randy Kinkel

May 24, 2009

Cecilia Bartoli

This Week in Classical Music-May 24, 2009

( Phoenix, AZ )
•Bartoli wins Sonning
•PHX Sym pay cut
•Scent Opera

It’s This Week in Classical Music, an update on what’s happening in the classical music world; I’m Randy Kinkel.
Italian Mezzo-Soprano Cecilia Bartoli has won Denmark’s Sonning Prize. Named after the widow of Danish editor Carl Johan Sonning, the Sonning Music Prize has been awarded annually since 1959 to honor an internationally celebrated composer, musician, conductor or singer. In announcing Bartoli as this year's recipient of the 600,000-kroner award (about $112,000 dollars), members of the prize committee praised the 42-year-old singer, saying "her sound is unique, her technique unsurpassed … and her radiation like that of [opera icon Maria] Callas." As part of the prize, Bartoli agreed to give a master’s class at the Danish Royal academy of Music; she will receive her award at a concert in Tivoli, Italy in June of Next year.
The Phoenix Symphony’s Music Director, Musicians and Staff have agreed to take a 17 % pay cut over the course of three years to ease the organizations financial burden; Sources say the musicians pay cut will save about 2 million dollars over the three years and other money-saving policies will let the orchestra members remain full-time and give around 200 performances a year. The Symphony had to re-negotiate musicians’ contracts after a sharp drop in donations due to the recession.
Coming up next May at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, An opera that really stinks—literally! French Fragrance Designer Christophe Laudamiel is collaborating with a couple of composers on a “Scent Opera” Five years in the making called “Green Aria”—combining music and specific scents. Theatergoers will be sprayed with a scent blasted at them in six-second sequences by a “Scent microphone” attached to each seat. Periodically the “microphone will blast unscented air to clear the palate, so to speak. The scents tell the story of an epic struggle between nature and industry. Icelandic composer Valgeir Sigurdsson, who originally called the idea “Insane”, teamed up with composer Nico Muhly to write music based on the scents.

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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