This Week in Classical Music-December 27, 2009

by: Randy Kinkel

December 27, 2009

J. S. Bach

This Week in Classical Music-December 27, 2009

( Phoenix, AZ )
•Still no MD for Philly
•Bach-era Organ replica in NY

This Week in Classical Music 12/27/09

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

The Philadelphia Orchestra has been without a music Director since 2008 when German Conductor Christoph Eshenbach left. What are they waiting for? Some say they are waiting for a perfect fit that may never come. Some in the orchestra Think it’s time to offer the job to Charles Dutoit, the group’s 73-year-old Chief conductor; others advocate for simultaneously naming a Principal guest conductor in the form of Russian-born Berliner Vladimir Jurowsky; and still others would like to see the orchestra stay the present course, and work through a list of promising talent for first and second visits. There’s been no consensus on who would be best for the nearly 2 million dollar a year gig; the unofficial roster of candidates who have led the orchestra in the last two years includes Michael Tilson Thomas, Iván Fischer, Osmo Vänskä, Jirí Belohlávek, Jaap van Zweden, and Stéphane Denève….will 2010 be the year Philadelphia finally finds a conductor in it’s Christmas stocking? only time will tell.
Thanks to nearly a decade of organ building and craftsmanship in the old-world style, you can now hear Bach organ music as Bach himself may have heard it—not in Germany…. but in Rochester, New York. The Place is Christ Church Episcopal, The organ, the Craighead-Saunders, is a unique instrument, not only because of its sound, but also because it is an almost exact copy of a late Baroque organ built by Adam Gottlob Casparini of East Prussia in 1776. The original stands in the Holy Ghost Church in Vilnius, Lithuania. virtually all the moving parts — stop throttles, key action, air valves and trackers — are made of wood and driven mechanically by the power of human hands and feet. The organ made its debut in October 2008, with four days of lectures, workshops and concerts. Today it is used for Mass, choral accompaniment and as a teaching instrument for Eastman students — the only opportunity they have in the United States to play an organ that is, in all respects, a Bach-era instrument. The original intent was to make a replica of an organ from the high Baroque, preferably one that Bach himself had played. The instrument is named for the Eastman organ teachers David Craighead, now retired, and Russell Saunders, who died in 1992, and whose family left the school $500,000 to begin the project at Christ Church. In all, the replica cost $3 million.
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 Phoenix, a service of Rio Salado College and Arizona state university.