This Week in Classical Music-September 14, 2008

by: Randy Kinkel

September 14, 2008

Gerard Schwarz

( Phoenix )
•New classical music download site
• Schwarz to Leave Seattle
•Bach manuscript pages found

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

At long last, there’s a download music store for classical music fans. It’s called “Passionato”, and it’s the brainchild of former Baltimore Symphony Orchestra President James Glicker. What makes it different from iTunes or napster? Well, for one thing, Passionato offers music c encoded in the lossless FLAC format, typically with bit rates eight times greater than those from iTunes. It's got catalogues from big classical names, including Naxos, Universal Classics and Jazz, Decca, BBC Worldwide, Capitol USA, Blue Note and EMI Classics. About 18,000 titles are currently available. Glicker says; “"Online music stores have typically offered MP3s at 128kbps, i.e. very compressed files, which is fine for pop music but it's not exactly high-fidelity," he said. Passionato launched last week in England, but will soon be offered in the US and worldwide.

Conductor Gerard Schwarz will be leaving The Seattle Symphony, where he has been music director since 1985. His is the longest tenure of any conductor in the orchestra’s history. His last season with the orchestra will be 2011. He said in an interview Wednesday that he decided to announce his departure now because the orchestra is at the top of it’s game and it would now have plenty of time to secure a new music director. After his departure, Schwarz will become conductor laureate and will continue to conduct the orchestra as a guest, according to a press announcement. He and his family will remain in the city. "This is where are my friends are. Jody's and my intention is to stay and be an active part of the community. I will continue to guest conduct all over the world and have started to compose."

New York Trust and Estate Lawyer Teri Noel Towe had a genuine Bach manuscript for over 25 years; it was a manuscript of the Cantata “Christ Our Lord Came to the Jordan” written in 1724 and numbered BWV 7 in the catalogue of Bach’s works. The only thing was, the manuscript was missing pages three and four of the eight-page composition. Where were the other two pages? Towe didn’t know. Then he got an email from a Frenchman named Philippe D’Anchald, who With a little bit of research, discovered the missing pages in a museum about 30 miles south of Paris. D’Anchald, like Towe, a lawyer and a Bach enthusiast, came across Towe’s web pages and the story of the missing two pages of the manuscript. He obtained copies of the pages from the museum’s curator and e-mails them to Towe. Together, they confirmed that these were the two missing pages of the Bach manuscript, which contains the final measures of the opening Choral movement and the entire following Bass aria. Until now scholars had made do with an organ part based on an existing harpsichord part, but now the original intent of the composer is known. "I'm thrilled this has been found," says Towe. "What Philippe has accomplished would not have been possible without the digital age." Both men are still trying to form theories on why the pages were originally separated from the manuscript.

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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