Who wants to work today? You, you, and you!
Climb aboard this morning and earn your keep, as we listen to music about labor and for the worker in anticipation of Labor Day. This will be an international affair, with Prokofiev’s “Le pas d’acier” (“The Steel Step”), a love story set in a factory, Manuel Rosenthal’s “Les petits métiers” (“The Small Trades”), and Nikolai Medtner’s “Three Hymns in Praise of Toil.”
There will also be two Danish symphonies: Rued Laangaard’s Symphony No. 14, “The Morning,” which culminates in the start of the work day, and Carl Nielsen’s Symphony No. 3, “Sinfonia espansiva,” concluding with “a hymn to work and the healthy activity of living.”
Naturally, it being an American holiday, we’ll have plenty of music by our native composers, as well, including the construction worker ballet “Skyscrapers” by John Alden Carpenter, Frederick Shepherd Converse’s tone poem about automobile manufacturing, “Flivver Ten Million,” and a suite from that quintessential film about violent longshoremen, “On the Waterfront,” by Leonard Bernstein.
We’ll be busting our hump for the man, from 6 to 11 EDT on WPRB 103.3 FM and at wprb.com. I coulda been somebody; I coulda been a contender, on Classic Ross Amico.