Music

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

Members of The Guarneri Quartet announced this week that they are retiring in 2009. After 45 years of performing, the group has decided it is time to leave the stage. In a press release the quartet said “This has not only been a long journey, but a deeply satisfying one as well.” Founded in 1964 at the Marlborough Music festival, the group includes Arnold Steinhardt and John Dalley, violins, Michael Tree, Viola, and Peter Wiley, cello. Wiley succeeded David Stoyer as cellist in the only personnel change in the group’s history.

A German Court has ordered the heirs of Composer Richard Strauss to share royalties with the heirs of librettist and poet Hugo von Hoffmansthal for nine collaborations, including the operas Elektra and Der Rosenkavalier. While restoring payments to the Hoffmansthal side, the judges turned back requests for royalties from record sales and performances that did not contain text. A Munich state court ruled that letters between the two men confirmed that they had planned to share the profits from their collaborations. Payments to the heirs of von Hoffmansthal stopped in 1999 after the expiration of a 70-year protection period. The Strauss rights are still under protection because he died later and they are still covered by the 70-year protection period.

The case of an ex-oboist who filed a sexual discrimination suit with the Buffalo Philharmonic and then a retaliation complaint after he was fired from the orchestra, has been settled. A hearing on the allegations had been set for tomorrow, but apparently the parties came to an agreement. J. Bud Roach, the oboist in question, said, ”all I can tell you is that the situation has been resolved.” Daniel Hart, executive director of the Buffalo Philharmonic, said, “the matter with Bud Roach has been mutually resolved and we have no further statement to make.”

For more information on these and other items and events, go to the KBAQ website at KBAQ-dot-org.… be listening every week at this time for another update, and join me at noon every weekday for the Mozart Buffet, an hour of music by Mozart and his contemporaries, … I’m Randy Kinkel, for KBAQ’s “This week in Classical Music”… on 89-five KBAQ, K-B-A-Q Phoenix, a service of Rio Salado College and Arizona State University