Tag: Kurt Weill

April 15th. Hopefully you aren’t feeling too overtaxed.

Whether you are daydreaming about a fat return or speculating about which ledge you should leap from, I hope you’ll join me this afternoon on The Classical Network for music about found and lost money, precious metals, careless spending, currency and coins, treasures sought, penury, and good old fashioned tax protest.

Lady Godiva rode naked through the streets of Coventry in protest of exorbitant taxation. On the other side of the coin, when told that her subjects had no bread, Marie-Antoinette is alleged to have responded, “Let them eat cake!” Both will be represented musically, in works by Vítězslav Novák and Franz Joseph Haydn.

We’ll seek treasure with Franz Schreker. We’ll look with sardonic befuddlement upon “The Age of Gold” with Dmitri Shostakovich. Antonio Salieri will show us what it is like to be rich for a day. Beethoven will rage over a lost penny. Franz Lehár will shower us with gold and silver. And we’ll gaze with envy upon Kurt Atterberg’s “Dollar” Symphony.

Of course, there will be music from “The Threepenny Opera,” by Kurt Weill. We’ll also hear Weill sing “Very, Very, Very,” from “One Touch of Venus,” which begins, “One way to be very wealthy is to be very, very, very rich…” You can’t argue with that.

Feeling a little depleted? Great music is always a sound investment, from 4 to 7 p.m. EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.