This Week in Classical Music

by: Randy Kinkel

October 19, 2008

( Phoenix, AZ )
•Penderecki on trees and 75th BD
•Spaghetti Western Orchestra

This Week in Classical Music 10/19/08

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

Composer Kryszytof Penderecki is about to celebrate his 75th birthday next month; special concerts are being planned all over the world to showcase his music and honor the Polish-born composer. In an interview with David Stearns of the Philadelphia Enquirer, Penderecki said, “"This year, I'm a little tired of myself," he said.”I have more than 50 concerts of my music to celebrate my birthday [Nov. 23]. It's a pleasure to hear my music in different performances, and with this great orchestra and soloists. But it always takes my time from [writing] another piece." Penderecki's other passion is landscaping his 70 acre estate outside Krakow; it's the landscape of his 70-acre estate outside Krakow, which includes two topiary labyrinths to which he retreats when needing to think. "I have 1,500 to 1,600 species of trees - one of the biggest collections in Eastern Europe. Sometimes I'm not sure which passion is bigger, planting the trees or writing music," he said. "There is some similarity. When I'm putting down a tree, I have to think of how it will look in 50 years. It's like an unfinished symphony. The labyrinth is like the life of the composer. You're always lost in a labyrinth, never going in a straight way, with no way to tell if you go left or right. Just like my music."

If you like the unique music Ennio Morricone made for Director Sergio Leone’s so called Spaghetti westerns of the 60s and 70s, movies like “A Fistful of Dollars” , for a few dollars more, and “Once Upon a time in the West” but despaired of ever hearing it performed live, Don’t Despair—The Spaghetti Western orchestra will come to your rescue. Director Denis Blaise, in which five Australian musicians play up to 100 instruments, including Cornflakes and Nail clippers, is difficult to describe. ““I call it ‘soundscape cinematheque,’” he offers with a laugh. “It’s a bit of an event. It’s not just a concert, because it has so much comedy in it and quite a lot of theatrical elements.” “Everybody has some memories from these movies. And even if you don’t, the scores are so powerful — that the music continues to haunt us in a really magical way…You see these reels rolling in the audience’s heads as they create the movies in their minds,” he says. “I tell them: we’ll be Morricone; you be Leone.” The Spaghetti western Orchestra rides into town in November; they’ll be at the Scottsdale Center for the performing arts November 7th and 8th.

For more on these and other items and events, go to the website at 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.

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