Only 11 days to Christmas. Tune in this afternoon to hear music for the season by Howard Hanson, Joseph Jongen, Benjamin Britten and Cecilia McDowall. We’ll also mark the birthday anniversaries of Ron Nelson, Rosalyn Tureck, Christopher Parkening, and maybe even Spike Jones.
There’s a lot to celebrate this afternoon, as we continue our countdown to Christmas, from 4 to 7:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
Christmas now is drawing near.
Join me this afternoon to hear Rutland Boughton’s “Bethlehem,” a choral drama adapted from the 14th century Coventry Nativity Play. Composed in 1915, and written very much in the English pastoral idiom, the work incorporates settings of familiar carols, such as “O come, all ye faithful” and “The Holly and the Ivy.” If you gravitate toward the music of Ralph Vaughan Williams, I think you’ll really enjoy this.
It will come your way following today’s noontime concert, as I sit the board for a recorded program, “A Spanish Christmas Celebration,” featuring the Philadelphia-based Piffaro, The Renaissance Band. WWFM’s David Osenberg will co-host with Piffaro’s founders and artistic directors, Joan Kimball and Robert Wiemken.
Piffaro’s next set of concerts, “La Nochebuena,” will take place this weekend, at Trinity Center for Urban Life in Philadelphia on Friday at 7:30 p.m., the Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill on Saturday at 7:30 p.m., and Immanuel Church Highlands in Wilmington, DE, on Sunday at 3:30 p.m. For more information, consult the group’s website at piffaro.org.
Rutland Boughton’s “Bethlehem” will begin at 2:00 this afternoon.
Join us today for theses ghosts of Christmases past, from noon to 4 p.m. EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
Anybody else care about keeping Westminster Choir College in Princeton (as opposed to it being relegated to the music department of Rider University)? Sign the petition now.
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So how soon is too soon to unleash the pent-up forces of Christmas? It’s less than two weeks away. I’ve got enough in my library, probably, to program the entire month, without repeating – and yet I’ve felt sheepish about already letting slip the fairly secular “Tuttifäntchen” by Paul Hindemith and Constant Lambert’s “Les Patineurs” (“The Skaters”) after Meyerbeer.
Where do I start? How much do I play? These are but some of the decisions that weigh on the conscience of the classical music programmer. In the full knowledge that I can’t please everyone, I will rouse my slumbering inner elf and gradually crank up the volume of egg nog and mistletoe.
It won’t be all glitter and ho ho ho. There may be a few more cantatas and oratorios than some would like. Then again, how many brass arrangements of “The Twelve Days of Christmas” can one take?
Wish me luck. We’ll also have music by Swedish composer Kurt Atterberg on the anniversary of his birth, this afternoon from 4 to 7 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and at wwfm.org.
IMAGE: Peace and goodwill – or else!
The classical music world has had its share of dynasties. There are the Bachs. There are the Bendas. There are the Strausses.
This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll have examples of music from a comparatively recent line of musicians, that can be traced to the 1870s and the birth of Nikolai Tcherepnin. Tcherepnin, whose father was a strict disciplinarian who demanded he study law, became a pupil of Rimsky-Korsakov. He himself became a teacher, took a position at the St. Petersburg Conservatory (later becoming its principal), conducted at the Russian Musical Society, the Moscow Philharmonic, and the Mariinsky Theatre, and led the debut performance of Serge Diaghilev’s famed Ballets Russes, beginning a five year association with the company.
In 1918, he took up over the directorship of the National Conservatory of Tbilisi, the capitol of the Democratic Republic of Georgia. With the Bolshevik takeover of Georgia in 1921, Tcherepnin moved to Paris, where he lived the remainder of his life. There, he conducted, performed as pianist, and founded the Russian Conservatory. He became president of the Belyayev publishing house, a position he maintained until his death in 1945.
In 1909, he wrote a symphonic poem, “The Enchanted Kingdom,” a work based upon the same fairy tale that inspired the ballet “The Firebird.” (Tcherepnin is said to have been an early contender to write the music for “The Firebird,” after Anatoly Liadov bowed out and before Igor Stravinsky was granted the commission.)
On top of his artistic achievements, Tcherepnin was the progenitor of a line of musicians that extends down to the present day.
We’ll hear the Symphony No. 3 by his son, Alexander Tcherepnin, whose own path led him from Russia to Paris to China (his wife was the Chinese pianist Lee Hsien Ming) to DePaul University in Chicago.
Alexander’s sons, Serge and Ivan, became fascinated with electronics. Ivan studied with Leon Kirchner, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Pierre Boulez. In 1972, he became director of the Harvard University Electronic Music Studio, where he remained until his death in 1998.
Ivan’s early music was experimental in nature. He gradually developed a tendency toward modernism and postmodernism. We’ll listen to his “Concerto for Two Continents” – the continents in question being North America and Asia, lands with which Ivan, born to Russian and Chinese parents and raised in the United States, felt a deeply personal connection. The concerto alludes to a number of familiar Russian and American folk and popular melodies. It also employs a judicious amount of electronics, making for some otherworldly effects.
In case you’re curious, the Tcherepnin dynasty continues to flourish with its fourth generation of composers – Nikolai’s great grandsons, Sergei and Stefan – but tonight we only have time for three! Join me for “Tcherepnin Troika,” this Sunday night at 10:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and at wwfm.org.
PHOTOS: (top) Alexander Tcherepnin and Lee Hsien Ming with their sons, Ivan and Serge; (bottom left) paterfamilias Nikolai Tcherepnin; and Ivan and Alexander at the piano
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