All signs point north!
On the next edition of “The Lost Chord,” with so much geomagnetic activity this week, we encourage you to keep looking up, with musical responses to the uncanny, natural phenomenon known as the Aurora Borealis.
Uuno Klami studied in Helsinki, with Erkki Melartin, then in Paris and Vienna. Following the premiere of his “Northern Lights” in 1948, some critics questioned whether the content of the piece lived up to the expectations engendered by its title. Klami remarked, “The northern lights can be much more than the superficial play of colors in the sky. They can be an expression of the infinite loneliness of the human spirit.” Personally, he thought it his best work.
Geirr Tveitt was born in Bergen, Edvard Grieg’s native city. Though he was very much influenced by folk music of the Norwegian countryside, he too acquired further polish abroad. He studied first in Leipzig and then in Paris, with Arthur Honegger, Heitor Villa-Lobos, and Nadia Boulanger.
In 1970, a very great tragedy occurred, when a fire swept through Tveitt’s home, a farmhouse in Nordheimsund, destroying most of his unpublished manuscripts – 300 pieces, stored in wooden chests – fully 4/5ths of his compositional output. It also crippled his ability to compose. Tveitt succumbed to alcoholism and died a broken man, with little hope of being remembered, in 1981.
Happily, since then, a number of these “lost” works have been reconstructed. In the case of his Piano Concerto No. 4, subtitled “Aurora Borealis,” from 1947, the orchestral parts survived, along with a two-piano reduction and an archived broadcast recording.
The restored concerto falls into three movements: “The Northern Lights awaken above the autumn colors,” “Glittering in the winter heavens,” and “Fading away in the bright night of spring.”
I hope you’ll join me for an hour of radiant music, on “Aural Borealis, on “The Lost Chord,” now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!
Remember, KWAX is on the West Coast, so there’s a three-hour difference for the Trenton-Princeton area. Here are the respective air-times of my recorded shows (with East Coast conversions in parentheses):
PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday on KWAX at 5:00 PACIFIC TIME (8:00 PM EST)
THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday on KWAX at 4:00 PACIFIC TIME (7:00 PM EST)
Stream them here!
Leave a Reply