This Week in Classical Music-July 19,2009

January 01, 2009

Prokofiev

( Phoenix, AZ )
• 1939 Prokofiev piece gets premiere
•Official wants Wagner fest banned in LA

This Week in Classical Music 7/19/09

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

A work that Russian Composer Sergei Prokofiev wrote in 1939 finally got its premiere last week at Princeton. Pianist Ilyan Itin played the world premiere of Prokofiev’s “Music for Atheletes” Thursday night at the Golandsky international Piano Festival at Princeton University. Professor Simon Moerison discovered the work while researching a book on the composer. Morrison describes the work as “…A short, fun piece that he composed during a period of great creative inspiration that actually has a great deal of humor and wit built into it.” The piece was originally intended for a Children’s athletic event that never took place.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Antonovich is demanding that Los Angeles Opera Discontinue the Ring Festival planned for next year because Compose5r Richard Wagner was an anti-Semite and that Nazis used his music to further heir goals. In a Statement released last week, Antonovitch said, “To specifically honor and glorify the man whose music and racist anti-Semitic writings inspired Hitler and became the de facto soundtrack for the Holocaust in a countywide festival is an affront to those who have suffered or have been impacted by the horrors of Adolf Hitler’s National Socialistic Worker Party,” Holocaust survivors have also expressed outrage and threatened to picket. According to the Opera Company, the show will go on as planned, but noted, “Ring Festival LA will specifically address the subject of Wagner’s anti-Semitism in several contexts, including seminars, panel conversations and performances.”

all over the city of London, people are playing pianos outdoors— the instruments, all 30 of them, spread throughout the city—are part of an interactive art project meant to challenge people to come out of their urban cocoons and also to provide some summertime music. “They’re out there to get people talking to one another and to claim ownership and activate the public space,” said the creator of the project, Luke Jerram, an artist who lives in Bristol. “It’s a blank canvas for everyone’s creativity.” The London project is scheduled to last until Monday and has cost about $22,000.

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 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, a service of Rio Salado College and Arizona State University.