Kick off your weekend with Romanian music, as we mark the anniversary of the birth of composer George Enescu. You can also expect a fair amount of American music, as we celebrate the birthday today of conductor Gerard Schwarz. Tune in also to hear Antonin Dvořák’s “Czech Suite.” You can Czech it out from 4 to 7 p.m. EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and at wwfm.org.
PHOTOS: Conductor Gerard Schwarz and Romanian master George Enescu
On this date in 1928, Swedish composer Kurt Atterberg entered his Symphony No. 6 into a contest held by the Columbia Record Company in honor of the 100th anniversary of the death of Franz Schubert. For his effort, he was awarded the first prize of $10,000. The work became known as Atterberg’s “Dollar Symphony.” It remains the composer’s most-recorded piece, starting all the way back with Sir Thomas Beecham and a recorded broadcast with Arturo Toscanini.
Though Atterberg was the winner of the international competition, divisional winners (by “zone”) included the now-forgotten English composer John St. Anthony Johnson, for his work, “Pax Vobiscum,” and the equally-forgotten American Charles Haubiel, for a piece called “Karma.”
Franz Schmidt was recognized in Austria, for his Symphony No. 3. Havergal Brian won second prize in England, for the first three movements of his “Gothic Symphony.”
You can find all the details here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1928_International_Columbia_Graphophone_Competition
Atterberg’s “Dollar Symphony” is one of the darlings of Classical 24, but they only ever play one movement. You’ll have a chance to hear the entire thing this afternoon, sometime between 4:00 and 7:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and at wwfm.org.
Enough already! With another “excessive heat warning” in effect this afternoon and heat index values expected to hit 106, let’s seek some musical relief, shall we, with works evocative of water, of winter, of cooler climes, and of simply kicking back and taking it easy. So far we’ve had refreshment from the likes of Jacques Ibert, Ottorino Respighi, Charles Tomlinson Griffes, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Joan Tower and Peter Ilych Tchaikovsky. Tune in and chill out until 4:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and at wwfm.org.
You all know the sound. That crazy, trilling electronic whistle that dips into a whoop. Or it starts in a trough and shoots up into the super stratosphere. It’s the sound of UFOs and mad science. It’s the sound of the theremin.
The electronic instrument, invented by Léon Theremin in 1928, is played without physical contact. The proximity of the hands to two antennae determines volume and pitch.
We’ll experience the instrument’s distinctive, extraterrestrial timbre, as we celebrate the birthday anniversary of Theremin today, by listening to performances by Clara Rockmore and to Bernard Herrmann’s suite from his influential film score for “The Day the Earth Stood Still” (which basically defined the sound of ‘50s science fiction).
The instrument will be featured as part of a program that will also include birthday celebrations for eclectic Frenchman Jacques Ibert and Afro-English composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.
Continuing with our ongoing salute to Brazil, to tie in with the Olympic Games in Rio, we’ll also hear Herrmann’s recording of Darius Milhaud’s “Saudades do Brasil.” The twelve dances that make up the suite are named for neighborhoods in Rio de Janeiro, where Milhaud lived for nearly two years as attaché to the French ambassador Paul Claudel.
I hope you’ll join me today, from 4 to 7 p.m. EDT, when we’ll be mad for science and samba on WWFM – The Classical Network and at wwfm.org.
More about Theremin and Rockmore here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/network-awesome/from-russia-with-love-the_1_b_1384444.html
Boa tarde!
As we have for the past several weekdays, we’ll be interspersing into our playlist a few works by Brazilian composers and on Brazilian themes, the better to satisfy your musical curiosity, since television coverage of the Olympic Games in Rio cleaves pretty closely to the arenas.
We’ll also observe the birthday anniversary of Reynaldo Hahn, a figure whose origins were in Venezuela, though he spent much of his creative life in Paris, where he became an exquisite composer of art songs (and the longtime companion of Marcel Proust). Sure, his songs turn up in recitals from time to time, and once in a while you’ll hear his delightful work for winds, harp and piano, “The Ball of Beatrice d’Este,” but we’ll actually get to enjoy his Piano Concerto.
It’s also the anniversary of the first performance in Leningrad, in 1942, of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7, the so-called “Leningrad Symphony,” a work that so embodied the plight of a city under foreign siege that its citizens were both moved to tears and inspired to battle on. The Soviets blared the performance over loud speakers pointed away from the city and toward the German lines, knocking out the Nazi artillery beforehand to ensure the enemy could absorb the defiant work in all its bombastic glory.
I hope you’ll join me this afternoon on WWFM – The Classical Network and at wwfm.org. I’ll be here in all my bombastic glory until 4:00 EDT.
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