The Bard ain’t all brooding and codpieces. But even if he were, what’s not to like?
It’s certainly difficult to dislike the music of Gerald Finzi. Enjoy his incidental music written for a production of “Love’s Labour’s Lost,” around 6:30 this morning.
FUN FACT: If you find Shakespeare’s language a challenge to absorb, just try to wrap your head (and tongue) around “honorificabilitudinitatibus.” It is the longest word to appear in any of the Shakespeare plays – spoken by Costard in Act V, scene 1 – and can be defined as “the state of being able to achieve honors.” You won’t catch me trying to pronounce it at 6:30 in the morning.
In the 7:00 hour, it’s the tragedy of “King Lear,” with incidental music by Mily Balakirev, played with gusto by the forces of the Russian State Academic Symphony Orchestra. Tchaikovsky’s “Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture” would not exist without Balakirev, certainly not in the form we know it today. The older composer suggested the subject to Tchaikovsky and shepherded him through a series of revisions, in fact rather immodestly offering his own “King Lear” Overture as a model.
The 8:00 hour brings the symphonic study “Falstaff,” by Sir Edward Elgar, which the composer regarded as his finest piece (though it failed to catch on with the public); and then starting in the 9:00 hour, we’ll enjoy the dramatic symphony “Romeo and Juliet” by Hector Berlioz, a work seldom heard in its entirety due to its extraordinary length (about an hour and 40 minutes).
These are merely highlights, as we continue with our observation of the quadricentennial of the death of William Shakespeare (on April 23, 1616), on WPRB 103.3 FM and at wprb.com. We thrill to the quill, every Thursday morning in April from 6 to 11 EDT, on Classic Ross Amico.
