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Category: Daily Dispatch

Pianist Poizat on The Classical Network Today

When you tune in to The Classical Network this afternoon at 4:00 EST, you’ll be able to enjoy a conversation with François-Xavier Poizat, pianist. Poizat will perform a recital of works by Liszt and Ravel at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall this Sunday at 7:30 p.m. We’ll also hear selections from his new album, “PianOrchestra 2,” on the ARS Produktion label.

Then I hope you’ll stick around, as we’ll celebrate the birthdays today of composers Jean-Baptiste Lully and Ferdinand Ries (a Beethoven pupil); pianist, composer, and one time director of the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, Anton Rubinstein; guitarist Celin Romero (of Los Romeros fame); and Spanish polymath and movie star José Iturbi.

At 6:00, it will be a special “Music from Marlboro,” as musicians from the famed chamber music retreat band together under legendary artists Leon Fleisher and Pablo Casals for performances of orchestral works by Hindemith and Beethoven.

There will be much versatility in evidence, between 4 and 7 p.m. EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

November 28, 2018
Marlboro Festival: Hindemith & Beethoven Unleashed

A chamber music festival takes a break from chamber music this week, as musicians from Marlboro band together under two legendary artists.

Paul Hindemith was evidently feeling his oats when he launched into his series of Kammermusiken, 20th century analogues to the Bach Brandenburg Concertos, only with a little more vinegar. Hindemith was about 26 when he wrote his exuberant Kammermusik No. 1 in 1922, the piece sounding like a post-modern mash-up of “Petrushka,” the Rondo-Burleske from Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, and hot jazz. Watch out for that siren! The performance, from 2016, will feature an ensemble of 12 Marlboro musicians under the direction of a figure better known as a pianist, Leon Fleisher.

Then Pablo Casals will preside over a makeshift orchestra at the 1969 Marlboro Music Festival for a spiritually potent performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7. Casals’ loving, humanistic interpretations of the orchestral works of Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann, and of course Bach form a remarkable capstone to an enviable career. The legendary cellist was affiliated with Marlboro for the last 13 years of his life, from 1960 to 1973.

Wagner characterized Beethoven’s Seventh as “the apotheosis of the dance,” but not even he could have foreseen Hindemith’s foxtrot. We’ll be dancing up a storm on the next “Music from Marlboro,” this Wednesday evening at 6:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

Marlboro School of Music and Festival: Official Page

November 28, 2018
Local Nonprofits Making a Difference

I was joined in the studio at WWFM – The Classical Network by some most articulate guests on this Giving Tuesday – Susan Hoskins of Princeton Senior Resource Center – PSRC (bottom left photo) and Joyce Campbell of Trenton Area Soup Kitchen – representatives of organizations that make important differences in our community. Food, fellowship, self-confidence, and hope. The world would be a bleaker place for many without the heroic efforts of non-profits like these. They should not be taken for granted!

November 27, 2018
Giving Tuesday on The Classical Network

To mark Giving Tuesday, The Classical Network will salute a number of non-profit organizations that continue to make a difference in our community. WWFM hosts will conduct brief interviews throughout the day, from 10:30 a.m. to 6 p.m., with representatives of the following: SAVE, A Friend to Homeless Animals (10:30 a.m.), Joan Dancy & PALS – People with ALS Foundation (11:30 a.m.), TASK – Trenton Area Soup Kitchen (2:15 p.m.), Princeton Senior Resource Center – PSRC (3:15 p.m.), HomeFront – Helping Families Break the Cycle of Poverty (4 p.m.), Trenton Music Makers (5 p.m.), and Good Grief, Inc. – Putting the GOOD in GRIEF (6 p.m.). Tune in to learn more and to see how you, too, can lend a hand.

Of course, we’ll also enjoy ample helpings of great music along the way, including a Noontime Concert from Concerts on the Slope. “Voices of Latin America” will feature “Á Tres Voces” by Cuban-born composer Tania León (who is Slopes’ composer-in-residence) and “Fuego de ángel” by Puerto Rican-born composer Roberto Sierra. Also on the program will be the Symphony No. 2 by Ludwig van Beethoven – a composer who had very strong notions about the brotherhood of man – in a rarely-heard version for piano trio. Concerts on the Slope is a chamber music series presented at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Brooklyn.

Following the broadcast concert and between interviews, I’ll be peppering my playlist with music of love, thanks, and concern for our fellow human beings, including Beethoven’s “Bundeslied,” Peter Ilych Tchaikovsky’s “Ode to Joy” (yes, you read that correctly), Aaron Copland’s “The Promise of Living,” and Alan Hovhaness’ Symphony No. 11 “All Men Are Brothers.”

Music is the gift that keeps on giving, from 12 to 4 p.m. EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

November 27, 2018
Joshua Roman on The Classical Network

This afternoon on The Classical Network, it’s a Roman holiday, albeit it a whirlwind one.

Cellist Joshua Roman will join me by telephone to talk a little bit about his upcoming recital, with pianist Gilles Vonsattel, which will take place at New York’s Baruch Performing Arts Center tomorrow at 7:30 p.m. On the program will be works by Beethoven, Brahms, Janáček, Arvo Pärt, and Amy Williams. Our conversation will take place at 5:00 p.m. EST.

I’ll also celebrate the birthdays of two enormously talented pianists, Earl Wild and Eugene Istomin, and remember the late Harold Farberman. The revered conducting pedagogue died on Saturday at the age of 89.

Say ‘cello to Roman. Go wild for Wild. It will be more thrilling than a Colosseum full of lions, from 4 to 7 p.m. EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

November 26, 2018

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