You don’t really hear too many sparkling curtain-raisers by Auber or Suppé or Offenbach, to open concerts anymore, which is a pity. But the music still lives on, at least on drive-time classical radio and during fundraising campaigns. And a little bit this morning, anyway, on “Sweetness and Light.”
I thought for the first show of the new year, it might be fun to listen to an hour of overtures. A good overture always whets the appetite and fills one with anticipation of exciting things to come.
Of course, nostalgic soul that I am, I’ll also be looking back and sharing a few fond recollections. One of the selections I’ve programmed will be from one of the very earliest classical records I ever owned – a spontaneous gift from the collection of a favorite uncle, who noted the enjoyment I received from it while listening to it on his state-of-the-art stereo system, on a Saturday afternoon, probably in the late 1970s. It’s the classic album of Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic in “William Tell” and other favorite overtures.
Hard to believe in this post-CD era that there was actually a time when music-lovers – in the case of my uncle, a classic rocker (before there was such a category) and an audiophile with a soft spot for Richard Rodgers, “Rhapsody in Blue,” and the Moog – would actually listen to an entire album of overtures in a sitting. The practice seems hopelessly antiquated in this era of attention-deficit clicks.
Of course, I can’t go all froth, so in addition to audience favorites by Ambroise Thomas and Gioachino Rossini and crowd-pleasers by Mikhail Glinka and Emil Nikolaus von Reznicek, we’ll experience the full power of the fin de siècle orchestra in works by Carl Nielsen and Edward Elgar.
Think of it collectively as a preamble to your weekend, with hopes for more smiles than tears in 2025, this Saturday morning at 11:00 EST/8:00 PST, exclusively on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!
Stream it wherever you are at the link:
