KPAC Blog

This past year was a good one for Naxos Records. In fact, it's been a great quarter century for the company, which has grown from a budget-label punch line to a leading force in classical music recording.

Russian composer Nicolai Medtner had it all; he was a brilliant pianist who was a musical intellectual, and while he could have made a comfortable living playing the classics, he was devoted to his composition.

On The Piano this Sunday, three aspects of Medtner.

I first present the lyrical genius of the composer, then his love of structure and complexity with his theme and variations, and the program concludes with his grand expression of lyricism in the Ballade Concerto in e minor.

Got an idea for a classical cartoon, or a reaction to this one? Leave your thoughts in the comments section.

Pablo Helguera is a New York-based artist working with sculpture, drawing, photography and performance. His new book is Helguera's Artunes. You can see more of his work at Artworld Salon and on his own site.

One of opera's most comical and telling facts was that Giuseppe Verdi was poised at the height of his middle period -- between "Rigoletto" and "La Traviata"  -- to first tackle nothing less than "King Lear," until finally deciding on "Il Trovatore" (The Troubadour).

Could any two themes be less alike?

Great popular music of America, from Broadway to Hollywood, is featured Saturday night in Kerrville.

Typically, the Symphony of the Hills plays Thursday evenings. Nine times out of ten, they are also playing standard repertory, from baroque to modern masterpieces, but for their first concert of 2013, Symphony Director Jay Dunahoo had a new idea.

"Let's just try some different kinds of music, do it early in the year, and hopefully attract some people who might not normally come to a Symphony of the Hills concert."

While the new year is still fresh, let's take a look in the rearview mirror at some of the noteworthy happenings in the classical music world. Were you listening last year? See if you remember the big, and not-so-big, stories from 2012 in our quiz.

Copyright 2013 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Jeff Garza solos with the symphony this weekend in Mozart's Fourth Horn Concerto

You often see Jeff Garza at the back of the orchestra, leading the San Antonio Symphony horn section, but this weekend, you'll have the chance to hear Jeff also shine in a concerto, out in front of the orchestra!

Violinist Leonidas Kavakos is something of a musician's musician in the classical world. He's a favorite among his collaborators: He's the artist in residence this season at the Berlin Philharmonic, and as a soloist/conductor, he's worked with ensembles ranging from the Boston Symphony to the Budapest Festival Orchestra.

Sunday Bloody Sunday is one of those films that lets you into the lives of believable, complicated characters. A handsome, self-centered young artist played by the actor/rock singer Murray Head is having simultaneous affairs with both an older woman (played with infinitely nuanced self-irony by Glenda Jackson) and an older man, a Jewish doctor (the touching Peter Finch), two intelligent adults who have mutual friends and even know each other slightly.