In just one half hour, get ready for LEOPOLD!
It’s all-Stokowski between 2 & 4 p.m. EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
Tag: Leopold Stokowski
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Good Friday Music on The Classical Network
Good Friday will be full of great music on The Classical Network.
At 12:00 EDT, we’ll hear a performance of Johann Sebastian Bach’s “St. John Passion,” live from Trinity Wall Street in New York City. The Choir of Trinity Wall Street will be joined by New York Baroque Incorporated, Wen Yang artistic director. David Osenberg will be your host for this special three-hour broadcast.
I’ll be along at 4:00 to share a glorious recording of Leopold Stokowski conducting the “Good Friday Spell” from Wagner’s “Parsifal.” We’ll also hear symphonies for Passion Week by Haydn and Paul Creston. Adolphus Hailstork’s “Sonata da Chiesa,” inspired by his fascination with cathedrals, will span a variety of moods, from mystery to exultation.
At 6:00, “Picture Perfect” will focus on “Lives of the Saints,” with selections from “The Song of Bernadette” (by Alfred Newman), “Saint Joan” (Mischa Spoliansky), “A Man for All Seasons” (Georges Delerue), and “Quo Vadis?” (Miklos Rozsa).
We’ll get a start on the Easter weekend with intimations of hope and renewal on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
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Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 4 Debut
It was on this date 90 years ago that the Sergei Rachmaninoff gave the debut of his Piano Concerto No. 4, from the keyboard, with Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra. It had been 18 years since his previous concerto (which he had unveiled in New York). In the meantime, he had weathered the Russian Revolution and the personal, perpetual obligation of earning a living as a concert pianist.
The original version of the Fourth Concerto was much longer than the one heard at the 1927 premiere. Even so, the work failed to engage either critics or audience. The composer, ever sensitive to criticism (the failure of his Symphony No. 1 plunged him into a depression so profound that it could only be alleviated through hypnotherapy, from which he emerged to write his Piano Concerto No. 2, ecstatically received), prepared a final, authoritative version of the Concerto No. 4 for performance with the Philadelphia Orchestra, this time under Eugene Ormandy, in 1941. The work has never caught the imagination of concert-goers to anywhere near the same extent as the Concertos Nos. 2 & 3.
The original version was released by the Rachmaninoff Estate only in the year 2000. It has since been recorded in this form several times. It’s a very interesting piece. One wonders if the work would have fared better had Rachmaninoff simply stuck to his guns?
The original version of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 4:
PLEASE NOTE: Eric Lu will perform Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3, with the Bravura Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Chiu-Tze Lin, at Rutgers University’s Nicholas Music Center in New Brunswick, tonight at 7:30 p.m.
PHOTO: Rachmaninoff and Ormandy in 1938
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Jerome Lowenthal Celebrates 85 Years
Today is the 85th birthday of Philadelphia-born pianist Jerome Lowenthal. Now chair of the piano department at the Juilliard School, here he is in 1968 with Leopold Stokowski, rehearsing Rachmaninoff’s “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.”
And in a more recent interview:
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Khachaturian’s Lost Symphony Rediscovered
You know Aram Khachaturian, right? The guy who wrote that frenetic tune that makes you want to spin plates on the tops of sticks? The one that is used to usher in the elephants at the circus?
This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll be listening to Leopold Stokowski’s rarely-heard recording of Khachaturian’s Symphony No. 2, sometimes called “The Bell.”
Khachaturian wrote the work in 1943, the height of World War II, while he was holed up at a Composers Union retreat with Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Miaskovsky and Gliere. He said of the piece, “The Second Symphony is a requiem of wrath, a requiem of protest against war and violence.”
The symphony’s nickname alludes to a kind of alarm that opens and closes the work. Overall, the tone is one of resolve in the face of tragedy.
Stokowski’s recording, long unavailable, was originally issued on United Artists Records in the late 1950s. It reappeared briefly on compact disc, on the EMI label, in 1994, and again in 2009, as part of a 10-disc box set of entrancing Stokowski performances.
The master tapes have not weathered the years well, alas, so there are moments of distortion, but the power of the piece transcends any technical limitations. There is certainly nothing wanting in the performance.
To round out the hour, we’ll hear the Russian-born pianist, Nadia Reisenberg, in a selection from her 1947 Carnegie Hall recital, Khachaturian’s most famous piano work, the “Toccata.” Reisenberg studied at Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music under Josef Hoffman.
Join me for these Khachaturian rarities, “Khach as Catch Can,” tonight at 10 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and at wwfm.org.
Here’s the composer, highly-decorated, conducting his “Concerto-Rhapsody,” with Mstislav Rostropovich:
Music for spinning plates, Liberace style:
A rare document of Khachaturian singing about the glories of Armenian wine!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtKHrg7w3_o
PHOTO: The composer getting ready for his big day
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