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Tag: Mozart

Celebrate Mozart’s Birthday with Classical Music

There’s no art quite like MozArt.

Reacquaint yourself with the astonishing facility and pervasive humanity of Mozart’s music, as we observe his birthday today (he was born on January 27, 1756) with a full playlist of his symphonies, concertos, chamber and choral works, and selections from his music for the stage.

Yes, Mozart is good for you. Whether or not exposure to his output improves the development of babies’ brains, it has undoubtedly contributed to the world’s sentimental education. Mozart’s music is just plain good for the soul. It reassures and it keeps us in touch with the larger truths of what it means to be human. Was Mozart’s life a bed of roses? No. But he knew where to find beauty, and he devoted a substantial portion of his brief existence to shepherding it into the world.

We at The Classical Network understand the significance of keeping great music in our lives and in our community. But we can only do it with your help and with the help of listeners just like you. If you haven’t contributed to The Classical Network, or if you haven’t contributed recently – or if you HAVE contributed, but now feel you are in a position to bestow an additional gift – please consider joining us in membership today. We have four brand new Mozart-oriented thank you gifts to hopefully entice you and certainly to demonstrate our gratitude to you for doing your part to keep classical music on the airwaves and in continued good health.

There’s more to life than acquiring things, struggling to survive, or shouting down those who happen to disagree with us. The greatest truths and consolations are to be found in the finest music. You don’t have to “know” anything about it. All you to do is open yourself up to it and support it.

Please call us today (between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. EST) at 1-888-232-1212, or donate online (anytime) at wwfm.org. Then enjoy the music of Mozart right along with us, your friends, at WWFM – The Classical Network. Thank you for ALL that you do.

January 25, 2019
Victor Borge Birthday Comedy Classic Routines

On New Year’s Eve, I aired some selections from music-oriented comedy albums that seemed to be well-received by listeners. After all, who can’t use a good laugh on New Year’s? A hearty laugh is a kind of consolation and always good luck.

For Victor Borge’s birthday (Borge was born on this date in 1909), here’s “the unmelancholy Dane” with some of his classic routines.

A Mozart opera:

With Lauritz Melchior:

From an appearance on “The Dean Martin Show:”

Playing the Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2:

Laughter must really be the best medicine. Borge lived until just a few days shy of his 91st birthday.

January 3, 2019
Berg, Mozart & Marlboro Zigzags on WWFM

There are times when I suspect Alban Berg felt he zigged when he should have zagged.

Berg, a pupil of Arnold Schoenberg, was always the Romantic among serialists – one critic described him as “the Puccini of twelve-tone music” – so it’s not difficult to divine a shimmering, unresolved longing common to the works of his Viennese contemporaries.

On this week’s “Music from Marlboro,” we’ll hear Berg’s two-movement String Quartet of 1910. Like much of Berg’s music, the quartet is not really a strict adherent to any system. The music wafts spectrally, sharing tonal and atonal characteristics, a kind of fever dream of uncertainty.

There will be no lack of commitment in the performance, which dates from 1984. We’ll experience Marlboro excellence in the form of Ida Levin and Felix Galimir, violins; Benjamin Simon, viola; and Sara Sant’Ambrogio, cello.

Then we’ll emerge from the fin de siècle fog to find enlightenment with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Mozart’s String Quintet No. 5 in D Major, K. 593, composed in 1790, adds a second viola to the mix. The work was recollected by the composer’s widow, Constanze, to have been written for a musical amateur, often speculated to be Johann Trost. Trost must have been quite the gifted dilettante. He also knew Haydn from Esterhaza, and Haydn dedicated some of his quartets to him.

When Haydn and Mozart played through the D Major Quintet together before Haydn’s first visit to London, the two men took turns indulging in the first viola part. The work was known for centuries as the “Zigzag” because of an alteration to the original manuscript that modified what had been a descending chromatic figure in the final movement into something decidedly more humorous.

We’ll hear a Marlboro performance from 2005, with Sarah Kapustin and Diana Cohen, violins; Mark Holloway and Sebastian Krunnies, violas; and David Soyer, cello.

The music may be jagged, but the path to enjoyment is always straight. It’s another hour of superb chamber music making from the legendary Marlboro Music Festival, this Wednesday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

Marlboro School of Music and Festival: Official Page

October 3, 2018
Salieri: More Than Mozart’s Rival?

He was a generous teacher, who fostered Beethoven, Schubert, Liszt, and even the son of the genius he was rumored to have poisoned.

His first act, when he was appointed Austrian Imperial Kapellmeister in 1788, was to revive Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro.” He was responsible for arranging first performances of his alleged nemesis’ Piano Concerto No. 22, the Clarinet Quintet, and the Symphony No. 40, and he had nothing but praise for “The Magic Flute.” He even took it upon himself to educate Franz Xaver Mozart, the composer’s son, who was born four months after his father’s alleged murder.

Already during the latter years of his life, Antonio Salieri’s enormous compositional output (37 operas, in addition to orchestral works, concertos, chamber music, and sacred pieces) gradually faded from public memory. Ironically, it is the scandalmongers who kept his name alive.

Rumors of Salieri’s involvement in Mozart’s death were codified by Alexander Pushkin in 1831 in the tragedy “Mozart and Salieri,” which appeared a few years after Salieri himself had passed. This was later set as an opera in 1898 by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.

Was this any way to treat such a generous, hard-working composer? While he was certainly no Mozart – who was? – his music is finely crafted and often quite enjoyable, certainly no worse than that of a majority of his contemporaries.

But, as the saying goes, there’s no such thing as bad publicity. In a way, Peter Schaffer’s “Amadeus” was the best thing to happen to Salieri in nearly 200 years. How many people remember Mozart’s quartet partners (with Haydn), Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf and Jan Křtitel Vaňhal, both also talented and prolific composers?

By coincidence (?), Rimsky-Korsakov’s chamber opera is being performed today at Bard College, on the second half of a 1:30 p.m. program titled “Domestic Music Making in Russia,” as part of the 29th Annual Bard Music Festival: Rimsky-Korsakov and His World.

In another context, it would be a peculiar way to mark a composer’s birthday – but as I’m sure Dittersdorf and Vaňhal would agree, the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.

Happy birthday, Antonio Salieri, Patron Saint of Mediocrity!

Russian film version of Rimsky’s “Mozart and Salieri” (without subtitles): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilw7oIkrDj4

In English, if a bit fuzzy:

Salieri’s Concerto for Flute, Oboe and Orchestra:

“I absolve you.”

August 18, 2018
Sara Buechner Plays Mozart & More on The Classical Network

Sara Davis Buechner offers 88 keys to enjoyment on today’s Noontime Concert on The Classical Network.

On the program will be Mozart’s Fantasy in C minor, K.475, and Sonata No. 14 in C minor, K. 457; Chopin’s Introduction and Rondo in E flat major, Op. 16; Anton Arensky’s “Four Salon Pieces,” and Gershwin’s “Second Rhapsody,” in Davis’ own arrangement for solo piano.

Buechner, a top prize winner at the Queen Elisabeth (Brussels), Leeds, Mozart (Salzburg), Beethoven (Vienna), and Sydney International Piano Competitions, is currently on the faculty of Temple University’s Boyer College of Music and Dance. She was a Bronze Medalist at the 1986 Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow and a Gold Medalist at the 1984 Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition.

Among her recordings are rarely-heard works of Rudolf Friml, Joseph Lamb, Joaquin Turina, Miklós Rózsa, and Ferruccio Busoni, including the world premiere recording of Busoni’s arrangement of Bach’s “Goldberg Variations.” Stereophile magazine selected her Gershwin CD as “Recording of the Month.” Her album of Hollywood piano concertos was the recipient of Germany’s Deutsches Schauplatten Preis.

The concert was originally presented as part of last season’s Silberman Recital Series at New York’s Baruch Performing Arts Center. Ted Altschuler, the center’s director, will offer an overview of the upcoming season’s offerings at the conclusion of today’s program.

Then stay tuned for the complete ballet “The Arabian Nights” by Azerbaijani composer Fikret Amirov. The ballet, given its premiere in 1979, is one of the rare adaptations to emerge from a region which gave us the original stories that make up “A Thousand and One Nights.” The world famous adventures of Sinbad, Ali Baba and Aladdin are enshrined in these tales, and each of them make an appearance in the ballet’s second act. Scheherazade will captivate with 90 minutes of her storytelling genius, beginning around 2:00.

You’ll discover days and nights of musical enchantments, from 12 to 4 p.m. EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

July 31, 2018

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