In the beginning… we’ll hear “In the Beginning.”
On the recommendation of Benjamin Britten, Aaron Copland set a passage from Genesis for a cappella chorus. A beautiful recording of the work, featuring the Choir of New College Oxford, will kick off five hours of musical creation stories for Rosh Hashanah on WPRB.
We’ll also hear the Adam and Eve duet from Franz Joseph Haydn’s oratorio “The Creation,” Jerome Moross’ Adam and Eve ballet “The Last Judgment,” and the “Creation Symphony” by Scottish composer William Wallace.
Not all of the selections will derive from the Judeo-Christian tradition. We’ll also hear Alberto Ginastera’s “Popol Vuh,” after the Mayan creation story; Darius Milhaud’s “La Création du monde,” inspired by African creation myths; “The Creation of the World” from the “Edda Oratorio” by Icelandic composer Jon Leifs; and Jean Sibelius’ “Luonnotar,” after a passage from the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala.
We’ll round out the morning with a collaborative curio organized by composer and conductor Nathaniel Shilkret. Shilkret managed to cajole a number of the day’s greatest talents, then living in California, into collaborating on the “Genesis Suite,” a seven movement work for narrator, chorus and orchestra. The individual movements were composed by Arnold Schoenberg, Alexandre Tansman, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Ernst Toch, Igor Stravinsky, Milhaud and Shilkret himself.
That’s a full morning of creation stories for the Jewish New Year, from 6 to 11 EDT, on WPRB 103.3 FM and wprb.com. When tempted with the Forbidden Fruit, we always ask, “Where’s the honey?,” on Classic Ross Amico.

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