If you’re snowed in today, why not take a moment to enjoy this one-minute sleigh-ride, courtesy of Jacques Ibert?
I always love hearing Ibert’s name said, because it sounds like “Jackie Bear.”
Be safe, everyone!
Irresistibly cute, yet wondrous and somehow poignant – facts and footage about polar bears:
At the heart of Beethoven’s opera “Fidelio” is the struggle against tyranny and the triumph of liberty and justice. However, lofty ideals mean little in the face of an impending blizzard.
With the threat of perhaps a foot and a half of snow falling over the weekend, the period instrument orchestra Grand Harmonie made a prudent decision late last night to move their Saturday performance to this evening. So the U.S. premiere of “Fidelio” on authentic instruments will take place TONIGHT at 7:30 p.m. at Princeton University’s Richardson Auditorium.
One additional tidbit which may be of interest – the performance will be streamed live over YouTube. You can enjoy it in real time here:
Everything else remains as stated in my article in today’s Trenton Times:
http://www.nj.com/times-entertainment/index.ssf/2016/01/classical_music_grand_harmonie.html
More about Grand Harmonie at http://www.grandharmonie.org/.
“…the
Rain is no respecter of persons
the snow doesn’t give a soft white
damn Whom it touches”
e.e. cummings
With Winter Storm Jonas shaking out his big white beard all up the East Coast, we turn our thoughts to someplace you really don’t want to be in the winter – Russia.
This week on “Picture Perfect,” we’ll have an hour of music from classic Soviet cinema. Alfred Schnittke, a name usually associated with the avant-garde, actually composed over 60 film scores. One of these was for “Agony” (1974) about Rasputin, his influence over the Tsar, and the conspiracy to murder him.
Georgy Sviridov, a pupil of Shostakovich, wrote the music for “Time, Forward!” (1962), based on the novel of Valentin Kataev. Set in the 1930s, the film describes a day in the construction work of Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works. Some of the music was used during the opening ceremonies of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.
Shostakovich, of course, is celebrated for his symphonies and string quartets, which are regarded as some of the most important of the 20th century. He also happened to write some 30 film scores, beginning all the way back in the silent era. Far and away his “greatest hit” composed for film, at least in the West, is the romance from “The Gadfly” (1955), based on the novel of Ethel Lillian Voynich.
Sergei Eisenstein’s “Alexander Nevsky” (1938) invariably turns up on lists of the greatest films ever made. Nevsky, the 13th century Russian prince, military leader and saint, thwarts the attempted invasion of Novgorod by Teutonic Knights of the Holy Roman Empire.
Sergei Prokofiev arranged his masterful score into a concert piece, a cantata. However, these days, orchestras seem to be performing it more and more as it was originally heard, with the film. It’s a powerful piece of work. The marriage of music and visuals for the famous Battle on the Ice is one of the film’s great highlights.
If you think you’ve got it bad, try facing down a patriotic Nevsky on a frozen lake! I hope you’ll join me for music from these classics of Soviet cinema, tonight at 6 ET, or tomorrow morning at 6; or that you’ll listen to it later as a webcast at wwfm.org.
Happy 75th birthday, Placido Domingo!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxdiJ74AL5Y
Here’s a salute from Deutsche Welle:
http://www.dw.com/en/the-durable-tenor-pl%C3%A1cido-domingo-at-75/a-18993974
PHOTOS: Domingo (left), doing his best Puccini impression
On a morning devoted to wintry topics, we’re currently listening to George Lloyd’s epic Symphony No. 4, subtitled the “Arctic.” Lloyd wrote the piece while recovering from injuries sustained in naval combat during World War II, when his ship was torpedoed, killing 17 of his crewmates and nearly drowning him in machine oil. Lloyd couldn’t speak afterward for nearly a year. The symphony reflects none of the horrors of war, but rather, as Lloyd put it, “a world of darkness, storms, strange colors, and a far away peacefulness.”
A little after 9:00, I will be joined by Jing Jing Luo, composer-in-residence with the Princeton Symphony Orchestra. Luo’s “Tsao Shu” (“Grass Scripts”), inspired by her fascination with Chinese calligraphy, will be performed by the PSO at Richardson Auditorium on January 31 at 4 p.m., on a program which will also feature works by Mozart, Kodaly and Osvaldo Golijov. (Dawn Upshaw will be the soloist in Golijov’s “Three Songs.”)
Later on, around 10:00, representatives of the orchestra Grand Harmonie will pay a visit, to talk about the U.S. authentic instrument premiere of Beethoven’s “Fidelio,” which the group will present, in a semi-staged performance at Richardson, this Saturday at 7:30 p.m.
Before the morning is out, we’ll hear either the Symphony No. 7, the “Sinfonia Antartica,” by Ralph Vaughan Williams, or selections from the film score that inspired it, RVW’s music for “Scott of the Antarctic.”
One way or another, the snow’s a-comin’, this morning until 11 ET, here on WPRB 103.3 FM and at wprb.com.
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