Gervase de Peyer, longtime principal clarinetist of the London Symphony Orchestra and a founding member of the Melos Ensemble, has died at the age of 90. He also contributed to the founding of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.
http://www.classicfm.com/discover-music/instruments/clarinet/features/gervase-de-peyer-dies/
A full biography, representative discography, and reminiscences available here:
I’m very happy to announce that, after several months off, Sandy Steiglitz of Sunday Morning Opera with Sandy will return to the airwaves tomorrow morning on WPRB. I hope you will join her for Charles Gounod’s “Roméo et Juliette,” from an historic Met broadcast featuring Jussi Björling and Bidú Sayão. The “pre-show,” a potpourri of arias and scenes, will begin at 05:30 EST; the opera itself will commence at 07:00.
WPRB has published its spring schedule. You might also be interested to know that Marvin Rosen of Classical Discoveries (which will continue to be heard from 5:30 to 11 a.m. on Wednesday mornings) will also be settling in on Mondays for the return of “Treasures of Early Music” (also from 5:30 to 11). So if you enjoy music of the Middle Ages, Renaissance and Baroque, set your alarm to 103.3 FM.
In addition, I will be coming back for another season of Classic Ross Amico, which will be heard as always on Thursdays from 6 to 11 a.m. I can’t deal with getting up any earlier, so please make note. If you tune in at 5:30, you may get blasted out of bed by the overnight playlist, which tends toward that bebop the kids are listening to these days.
WPRB, of course, offers all kinds of music throughout its broadcast day, from classical to world, from jazz to alt rock, from folk to classic rock, from ambient to I don’t-know-what-the-hell-you-call-it. You press the button, you win a prize, when you tune in to WPRB 103.3 FM and wrpb.com.
My guest earlier this week, on WPRB 103.3 FM and at wprb.com: Saad Haddad, Composer (left), a nice guy who writes intriguing music. I wish him all the best and hope to see him again next season (by which time maybe I’ll have my own smartphone).
Visit his website at http://www.saadnhaddad.com/
I wonder how much genius dust got spilled into the celestial mixer that classical music was blessed with three of its greatest geniuses in one week: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (born Jan. 27, 1756), Franz Schubert (Jan. 31, 1797), and now Felix Mendelssohn (Feb. 3, 1809). Was it purely by chance, or the workings of design?
Be it what it may, I will celebrate Mendelssohn in the brief time allotted to me on WWFM this afternoon, from 4 to 6 p.m. Mendelssohn, of course, was one of music’s great prodigies. His earliest masterpieces, the Octet for Strings in E-flat Major and the Overture to “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” were written at the ages of 16 and 17, respectively. In fact, there are those who say it was all downhill from there.
We’ll hear, among our featured works, Mendelssohn’s early Concerto for Violin and Strings – not to be confused with the later Violin Concerto in E minor (one of the most popular concertos in the repertoire, completed at the age of 35, thank you very much). The soloist will be Gidon Kremer, who will appear with his chamber orchestra, Kremerata Baltica, at McCarter Theatre Center in Princeton tonight at 8.
I’ll also pay tribute to Renaissance master Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina on the anniversary of his birth (in 1525). Palestrina, Catholic superstar of the Counter-Reformation, is often credited with having persuaded the Council of Trent not to ban polyphonic music. Recent scholarship has revealed that the story may have been somewhat romanticized, but, as with “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,” when the legend becomes fact, print the legend.
Finally, I’ll lend a touch of whimsy in the form of a concerto for jew’s harp, by Johann Georg Albrechtsberger (born on this date in 1736). A jew’s harp has nothing at all to do with Jews or Judaism. Rather, the term is probably a corruption of “jaw harp.” The folk instrument actually had its origin in Asia. The Chinese were playing it at least as far back as the 4th century B.C. (Snoopy picked it up in 1969.) Albrechtsberger, believe it or not, was one of Beethoven’s teachers.
At 6:00, I’ll be your host for “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies. I’ll post more about that as the time draws nigh. For now, I hope you’ll join me for Mendelssohn, Palestrina, Albrechtsberger and more, beginning at 4 p.m. EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and at wwfm.org.
This week on “Picture Perfect,” things get pretty steamy, though not in the way you might think. We’ll have an hour of scores from films exemplifying the science fiction subgenre known as “steampunk.”
Generally speaking, steampunk employs forward-looking technologies and gadgetry – in many cases literally powered by steam – in incongruous, quasi-Victorian settings.
We’ll hear selections from Martin Scorsese’s “Hugo” (2011), with its abundant gears, steam, and free-writing automaton, with music by Howard Shore; “The Golden Compass” (2007), with its carriages, old-fashioned air ships and vintage arctic gear, with music by Alexandre Desplat; “Wild Wild West” (1999), with its cowboys, proto-James Bond gadgetry and Gustave Eiffel-style iron spider, with music by Elmer Bernstein; and “Time After Time” (1979), with one of the genre’s spiritual fathers, H.G.Wells, as an actual character, who pursues Jack the Ripper to the present day via a time machine of his creation, with music by Miklós Rózsa.
We’re powered by steampunk this week, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, this Friday evening at 6:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and at wwfm.org.
PHOTO: Battling a giant iron spider from a flying bicycle? It must be steampunk!
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