This weekend’s installments of “Picture Perfect” (“Vikings!”) and “The Lost Chord” (“And God Created Great Wales”) are now posted as webcasts.
Click here for mead and horned helmets:
https://www.wwfm.org/post/picture-perfect-february-28-vikings
Click here for St. David, harps, and daffodils:
https://www.wwfm.org/post/lost-chord-march-1-and-god-created-great-wales
That about covers it, I should think.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Webcast.
Last weekend’s specialty shows have now been posted. These include “Silk Road Adventures” (on “Picture Perfect”) and “Didya Hear the One About the Didjeridoo” (on “The Lost Chord”).
Apologies for the delay. After my resolution to have both shows up on the station website (wwfm.org) by Monday mid-afternoon, with all the Mozart membership business earlier in the week, it completely escaped my mind.
Here again are the links:
https://www.wwfm.org/programs/picture-perfect-ross-amico
https://www.wwfm.org/programs/lost-chord-ross-amico
Select the show of your choice and click on the “Listen” button.
A Norse is a Norse, of course, or course…
This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll make hay with music by a couple of Norwegian composers.
Halfdan Cleve (1879-1951) received unusually strict musical training. His father was an organist, who saddled his son with nothing but Bach until he was 16! The young Cleve then cantered to Germany, where he plowed through studies with the Scharwenka brothers, Philipp and Franz Xaver. The latter, a pupil of Franz Liszt, was regarded as one of the great thoroughbred keyboard virtuosos of his day.
Cleve became widely recognized as a composer and pianist, but his own popularity flagged after World War I. He reacted against the rise of modernism by doubling down, in the mane, on his pedigree, celebrating the Norwegian countryside and its folk idioms in his music. His Violin Sonata of 1919 was foaled of this approach.
Eyvind Alnaes (1872-1932), however, was a horse of a different color. Known, if at all, for his art songs – some of which were recorded by Kirsten Flagstad and Feodor Chaliapin – Alnaes’ musical language is less overtly “Norwegian” and more reactive to sugar cubes. His Piano Concerto of 1919 shadows Brahms and Tchaikovsky, and overtakes Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 4, not completed until seven years later. Could Alnaes have been the rock in Rach’s shoe?
Ladies and gentlemen, place your bets! The garland goes to “Dark Horse Norsemen” – works by neglected Norwegian composers – this Sunday night at 10:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
Flagstad sings Alnaes:
Chaliapin:
This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll have contrasting works for the New Year by two English composers whose surnames begin with “T.”
Sir Michael Tippett’s fifth and final opera is an especially abstruse one, even by Tippett standards. Composed on his own libretto, “New Year” is set in Terror Town, an imaginary city that exists “somewhere today.” The dramatis personae includes such diverse characters as a child psychiatrist, her Rastafarian foster brother, a shaman, and three time-travelers from the future – or, as Tippett specifies, “nowhere tomorrow.”
The orchestral suite opens and closes with music for the arrival and departure of a spaceship, represented electronically, on New Year’s Eve. Other striking touches include the use of saxophones, and, at the work’s climax, a quotation of “Auld Lang Syne,” pitted against a rather turbulent backdrop.
“New Year” was first performed at Houston Grand Opera in 1989, with the British premiere taking place at Glyndebourne the following year. The opera was not well received. The wholly reimagined suite was commissioned by the San Francisco Symphony in 1990. Tippett noted that the primary metaphor of the opera is dance. Hey, man, whatever.
The balance of the program will be devoted to works by a composer of a very different sensibility – master of British Light Music, Ernest Tomlinson. It is Tomlinson’s tongue-in-cheek assertion that the melody of “Auld Lang Syne” underlies most of the world’s great masterpieces. He goes on to support his thesis with no less than 152 examples in his dizzyingly clever “Fantasia on ‘Auld Lang Syne.’”
We’ll conclude with a waltz from Tomlinson’s “Cinderella,” someone else who clearly understands the transformative power of 12.
The kettle is on. Turn over a new leaf and join me for a cuppa, with “’T’ Time” – welcoming the New Year with music by Tippett and Tomlinson – this Sunday night at 10:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
Looking to kill time until tonight’s episode of “The Lost Chord?” Why not gather the family for a rollicking game of Sibelius? I’m not kidding, there really is a Sibelius board game (see below).
Then join me for “Sibelius, Incidentally” – an hour of incidental music by Finland’s most famous composer – this Sunday night at 10:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
Is this a drinking game?
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