Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh…

Today is the birthday of Amilcare Ponchielli. It’s possible you may not know his name, but you certainly know his music, thanks to Allan Sherman and Walt Disney.

Join me this afternoon at 4:00 sharp for his most famous piece, “The Dance of the Hours” from the opera “La Gioconda.” We’ll also have a chance to hear his charming Quartet for Winds with Piano.

Then in the 5:00 hour, among our featured works, we’ll have the so-called “Odense” Symphony, which generated a lot of buzz in the 1980s, when the rediscovered piece (uncovered in Odense, Denmark) was thought to be the creation of one Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

We’ll also celebrate the birthday today of Itzhak Perlman. At some point during the late afternoon, I would like to play his recording of Karl Goldmark’s Violin Concerto in A Minor. I don’t think it has been heard on the station for a little while. We’ll also enjoy a Brahms violin sonata in the 6:00 hour.

But it will be a riot of ostriches, elephants, gators, and hippopotami to begin, as I’ll be doing the heavy lifting from 4 to 7 p.m. EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and at wwfm.org.