This Week in Classical Music-April 4, 2010

by: Randy Kinkel

April 04, 2010

Boulez.....A Visionary!

( Phoenix, AZ )
•Boulez-85 and still a visionary
•Baltimore to record Prokofiev Symphonies
•Slatkin Wings Traviata at Met

This Week in Classical Music 4/4/10

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

Pierre Boulez celebrated his 85th Birthday last week. The venerable Conductor once turned heads with his brash commentary (like the time he proposed all German Opera Houses should be blown up because they were hostile to new work); but these days he seems more like a visionary than a revolutionary. His vision has always involved enlivening the concert experience and appealing to the young and hip. Now he wants the concert hall to be more than just a concert hall… he says they need to be open before and after the performances, to have media centers where Audiences can learn about music, especially new work when it is offered. In a recent interview with NY Times music critic Mark Swed, Boulez said, "That, "is absolutely necessary. You have to make the space interactive, where you have tools, where you can maneuver yourself, like in a science museum." Boulez plans to open just such a hall in Paris in 2014.

Marin Alsop and the Baltimore Symphony plans to record the complete Symphonies of Prokofiev on the Naxos label. The BSO previously recorded Dvorak’s Symphonies 6-9 on its maiden voyage for the label, which came out in 2008; the next disc, containing the 7th and 8th symphonies will drop in June. The first of the Prokofiev discs, containing Symphonies 1 and 6, will be released sometime next year.

How could it BE? In a distinguished career spanning decades with thousands of performances and critically acclaimed concerts and CDs, Conductor Leonard Slatkin had never conducted a performance of Verdi’s opera “La Traviata”? Well, apparently it’s true; OK, it’s a fact that they changed the opera from Corigliano’s “The Ghost Of Versailles” to the Verdi classic on short notice, but for his first appearance at the metropolitan opera in 12 years, Slatkin showed up for rehearsal not fully knowing the score. “I do not perform a lot of opera….had never conducted it…” Slatkin said in a post on his blog; Apparently Opening night went pretty well, though, despite some rough spots. You can read more on the conductor’s blog at leonardslatkin.com.

For more on these and other items and events, go to the website, kbaq.org; find us on Facebook and Twitter, 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.