This Week in Classical Music -- October 5, 2008

by: Randy Kinkel

October 05, 2008

Philip Glass

( Phoenix, AZ )
•New Glass Opera: Disney
•Christophers to Boston
•More Drama at Aussie Opera

This week in classical music 10-5-08

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

New York City Opera’s GM Gerard Mortier announced that the company has commissioned an opera from Philip Glass, based on the life of Walt Disney. The opera, called “The Perfect American”, will open the opera’s 2012-2013 season, just in time for the composer’s 75th birthday. "The story of the last days of Walt Disney, American icon and creator of perhaps the most pervasive fantasy world on our planet, is surprisingly gripping and at times disturbing," Glass said in a statement issued today by City Opera.

Harry Christophers, British founder of the period group “The Sixteen” will replace Grant Llewellyn as artistic director of the Handel and Haydn Society. Christophers said he plans no sweeping changes for the society, saying, “There will be perhaps a little less of the romantic… music…They’ve done a lot of Beethoven and Brahms. For me, I feel there is so much to be gained around the periods of Handel and Haydn that, for the next couple of years, I Don’t think we need to go outside that… you’ve got two of the great composers of baroque and classical music. Let’s concentrate on those two people.” Christophers will split his time between Boston and England, and remain as leader of the Sixteen
More drama for Opera Australia; bass-baritone Bruce Martin quit the company in January, reportedly resentful over what he sees as a decline in ethical standards under music director Richard Hickox.. Martin says his decision was made after hearing a recording of Rusalka produced by the English classic label Chandos. Overseen by Hickox in consultation with an English director and a sound engineer, it was recorded during a performance at the Opera House last year. Martin argued the recording made his voice sound weak and distant, as though he was singing off-stage. A trusted music professor who had attended the performance described the recorded voices as "manipulated beyond recognition" and, moreover, believed that the quality of the bass-baritone's voice "had been rendered unrecognizable at times, on occasion sounding like the bleating of a goat".

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-five KBAQ Phoenix, a service of Rio Salado College and Arizona State University.

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