Bernstein on skis (left).
Category: Daily Dispatch
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Dawn Upshaw Song Cycles on The Lost Chord
Tonight, after you’ve put away the snow shovel, popped some Advil, and finished slathering on the Bengay, consider tuning in for a couple of contemporary song cycles performed by Dawn Upshaw.
Upshaw will be my guest this week on “The Lost Chord.” She will talk about her working relationship with composer Osvaldo Golijov, whose “Three Songs” she will sing on an upcoming concert of the Princeton Symphony Orchestra. We’ll also hear her astonishing recording of Golijov’s “Ayre,” a hypnotic synthesis of folk, pop and classical-inflected music on texts from Arabic, Hebrew, Sardinian and Sephardic sources.
Then she’ll melt our hearts by applying her distinctive timbre to selections from Maria Schneider’s “Winter Morning Walks.” Schneider is best known as a jazz artist, but, as is evident from her album “The Thompson Fields,” she possesses an extraordinarily ambitious compositional sense.
“Winter Morning Walks” was the recipient of three Grammy Awards in 2014, in the categories of Best Classical Contemporary Composition, Best Vocal Performance (for Dawn Upshaw), and Best Engineered Album, Classical. It was Upshaw’s fifth Grammy.
And lest you forget, Upshaw’s was the voice heard in the very moving recording of Henryk Gorecki’s Symphony No. 3, issued by Nonesuch Records in 1992, which sold over a million copies and became one of the best-selling classical music albums of all time.
Upshaw will appear at Princeton University’s Richardson Auditorium on January 31 at 4 p.m. Also on the program, PSO music director Rossen Milanov will conduct works by Mozart, Kodály, and Jing Jing Luo, the orchestra’s current composer-in-residence. For more information, visit princetonsymphony.org.
I hope you’ll join me for “The Knack of Dawn” – new music performed by Dawn Upshaw – this Sunday night at 10 ET, with a repeat Wednesday evening at 6; or that you’ll listen to it later as a webcast at wwfm.org.
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Snowed In? Enjoy a One-Minute Sleigh Ride!
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:
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Beethoven’s Fidelio US Premiere Moved Due to Snow
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
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Soviet Cinema Soundtracks Russian Winter
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.
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