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SUNDAY NOVEMBER 5TH
This will be the first time I have ever broadcast the music
of not one but two composers from the Basque region, which straddles
the border between Spain and France. Francisco Escudero (1913 -
2002) was one of the single most important cultural figures among
the Basque people in the twentieth century. His oratorio Illeta
("The Funera," 1953) is a setting of a poem in the Basque language
by Xabier Lizardi (1896 - 1933). Escudero's musical style employs
traditional Basque melodies. Baritone Riccardo Salaberria sings
Lizardi's verse in the first person, his voice juxtaposed to the
voices of the Coral Andra Mari representing the townspeople who
take part in the wake, funeral, and burial of a loved one. Juan
José Mena conducts the Mari chorale and the Bilbao Symphony Orchestra.
Illeta was recorded in Bilbao, Spain in the year of the composer's
death. Of the Naxos CD release, Fanfare magazine's reviewer John
Story says, "…the music is extremely attractive and very well performed."
(Fanfare, July/August 2005). Juan Garcia de Salazar (1639 - 1710)
was born in the Basque province of Alava. He was Spain's foremost
Baroque composers of church music. For most of his career he was
the master of music at Zamora cathedral, where his manuscripts are
preserved to this day. Salazar was so influential his compositions
were still being performed in Spanish churches well into the nineteenth
century. Salazar's name headlines a 2004 Naxos CD release Complete
Vespers of Our Lady. Salazar never composed music for any complete
vespers service. He did write a sufficient number of settings of
the proper psalms and the Magnificat for the evening holy offices
around which one could reconstruct a Spanish Baroque Lady Vespers
in its entirety. Certain instrumental numbers here are transcriptions
of vocal motets by Salazar, plus some organ passages penned by composers
working the same general region in Spain during his lifetime, and
plainchant derived from a choir book dated 1692. Josep Cabré leads
the singers of the Capilla Penaflorida and the period instrumentalists
known as Ministriles de Marsias.
SUNDAY NOVEMBER 12TH
This is one of those occasions when I delve into the
musty, dusty, vaults of the WWUH classic music record library in
order to present once again an impressive "moldie-oldie" I last
broadcast on January 22, 1984. "War and Peace" (1941-43) is an opera
in thirteen tableaus based closely on Leo Tolstoy's long historical
novel. Sergei Prokoffiev set it to music during the darkest period
of World War Two. In his opera he attempted to capture as much as
he could of the vast national spectacle of Russian history. The
Soviet authorities allowed the work to be performed in hopes of
boosting morale while the Red Army struggled to expel the German
invaders. The obvious parallel lies in the successful expulsion
of Napoleonic troops on Russian soil. Columbia Records picked up
tapes of "War and Peace" from the Soviet state record label Melodiya
in 1974. Alexander Melik-Pashayev conducts the Chorus and Orchestra
of the Bodshoi Theatre, Moscow.
SUNDAY NOVEMBER 19TH
The age-old conflict between Muslims and Christians has
often been portrayed up the operatic stage. The crusader called
El Cid, "The Conqueror," is the single most dramatic figure in Spanish
history. At least twenty six operas have been based on the El Cid
legend. One of the greatest of them has got to be Jules Massenet's
Le Cid (1885). This opera, rather then Mignon, is really Massenet's
finest lyric theater work, and was probably the most popular one
for a certain period. The enthusiasm with which Le Cid was greeted
at the Paris Opera was phenomenal. It reached the Met in New York
City in 1887 and was mounted in Chicago in 1902. Shortly thereafter,
it disappeared from the international operatic repertoire. It continued
to be well thought of, but known only by reputation. In 1976 it
was at long last revived, albeit in concert performance at Carnegie
Hall. It was recorded live for Columbia Masterworks, featuring the
voices of tenor Placido Domingo as Rodrigo "The Cid" and soprano
Grace Bumbry as Chimene the Moorish princess. Eve Queler conducted
the entire ensemble. I last broadcast this opera long ago on October
11, 1987. You hear again today the same 1976 Columbia Masterworks
release, the first complete recording of this opera on three LP's.
SUNDAY NOVEMBER 26TH
George Frideric Handel's Alexander's Feast is just the
thing to listen to at Thanksgiving time since the oratorio describes
a famous feast in classical antiquity. I have programmed recordings
of it frequently on the Sunday next to Thanksgiving in years past.
There're plenty of good recorded interpretations of Handel's musical
setting of Dryden's poem in circulation. As originally given in
1736, Handel's music about the conqueror Alexander's exploits did
not quite make a full evening's entertainment, so Handel augmented
his score with an entire concerto grosso by way of an overture,
and inserted two solo concertos, for organ and harp respectively,
acting as interludes between the two long parts of the sung music,
and after all that he offered up an Italian language cantata. All
of this was performed in praise of St. Cecelia, the patron saint
of music, who in Dryden's ode pushes aside the excesses of Alexander's
pagan festivities. (In the traditional Christian calendar the Feast
of St. Cecilia falls on November 21.) In the 1991 Collins Classics
issue of Alexander's Feast conductor Harry Christophers has remained
true to the first version of the score. We get to hear the solo
instrumental works in their proper place, with the traditional closing
chorus to the words of Newburgh Hamilton, but the Italian cantata
has been omitted. Christophers leads his own choral group The Sixteen,
with an ensemble of period instrumentalists, not to mention vocal
soloists; soprano Nancy Argenta, tenor Ian Partridge and bass Michael
George. These two Collins Classics CD's were last broadcast on this
program on Sunday, November 30, 1997.
SUNDAY DECEMBER 3RD
You could call my presentation today a mini-festival
of the music of Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry (1848 - 1918)
for chorus and orchestra. In 2006 Chandos Records came out with
a two CD compilation of Parry's works culled from previous releases
of 1988, '91 and '92. Through all the recording sessions Richard
Hickox conducted either the London Philharmonic Orchestra or London
Symphony Orchestra and their respective choral organizations, plus
the best British vocal soloists of the day. (Matthias Bamert led
theses same musical forces on certain additional tracks.) Through
most of the Twentieth Century Sir Edward Elgar has overshadowed
Parry. Only now thanks to Chandos is parry's genius revealed in
the large-scale compositions presented here. In the Soul's Ransom
(1906) Parry broke free of conventional English oratorio style.
He wrote his own text for it, combined with verses from Hly Scripture.
The Lotus Eaters is his equally innovative musical setting of a
poem by Tennyson. For the two hundredth anniversary of the death
of England's greatest composer Henry Pucell he composed a celebratory
ode Invocation to Music (1895). Chandos supplements all this with
his setting of Milton's ode Blest pair of Sirens and an anthem I
Was Glad. These are surely gems of the repertoire.
SUNDAY DECEMBER 10TH
December 6th is the date in the traditional Church calendar
called the Feast of St. Nicholas of Myra, one of Christendom's most
popular saints. In Holland St. Nicholas' day is celebrated as if
it were Christmas. The Dutch Saint Nick dresses in bishop's attire
like his medieval namesake, who was bishop of Myra. For a third
time on the airwaves this Sunday we will be observing that pre-Christmas
holy day with a unique Music Masters recording: The Play of St.
Nicholas, a twelfth century liturgical drama. There are actually
four one-act playlets in Latin verse depicting dramatic incidents
in the saint's life. The plays were probably meant to be staged
on the porch of a church to encourage the common folk to come inside
and hear the festival mass. All four dramas have been strung together
and are performed musically employing reconstructed medieval plainsong.
Interpolated into the performance are vocal motets and instrumental
numbers. Frederick Renz directs the New York Ensemble for Early
Music. One of the instrumentalists is Hartt School graduate and
virtuoso bassoonist Dennis Godburn. I first broadcast the St. Nicholas
plays using the old Musicmasters LP's on Sunday, December 6, 1987.
The Musical Heritage Society's CD re-release followed on Sunday,
December 8, 1996. Today, fully a decade later, I present for a third
time this remarkable music reconstruction in its MHS reissue.
SUNDAY DECEMBER 17TH
This is the pre-Christmas Sunday that I usually devote
to a "children's opera" or some form of lyric theater that has an
appeal to the young. Shortly after Leonard Bernstein created his
incidental music and songs for Peter Pan (1950), his take on J.M.
Barrie's famous play encountered some very big competition: the
Jule Styne musical starring Mary Martin, seen by millions on television,
and the enormously popular Disney movie - both of these media marvels
possessing excellent pop tunes. They succeeded in obliterating the
memory of what had been a small-scale Bernstein Broadway hit, with
West Side Story soon to follow. Believe it or not, Bernstein wrote
some of his Peter Pan music while commuting by train around New
York City. These melodies were just sparks flying off a brain that
was at the same time concentrating on composing classical works
and conducting the New York Philharmonic. An LP cast recording of
the 1950 show exists, but it doesn't' reflect Bernstein's intentions
about his score. It leaves out several fine numbers he wrote and
substitutes others by Alec Wilder. Most of what you'll hear today
on this 2005 Koch International Classics CD has never previously
been recorded and some of it never performed on stage. For example,
Bernstein had already written a song for a production of Thornton
Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth, and planned to put it into Peter
Pan. In preparing his own restored and edited score of Peter Pan,
conductor Alexander Frey includes this number. Augmented by the
orchestral arrangements of Bernstein's friend and collaborator Sid
Ramin, all this music has the vintage sound of the Golden Age of
the American musical. Keep listening after Peter Pan for choral
favorite of the Christmas season.
SUNDAY DECEMBER 24TH
J.S. Bach's Weihnachtsoratorium (1734) is the obvious choice
for a Christmas Eve broadcast. Over the years I've aired many fine
recordings of Bach's six-cantata cycle, but I discover that I've
never drawn upon the Christmas Oratorio that's in my own collection.
This one remains my personal favorite. It has become the norm to
hear Bach's oratorio in historically-informed interpretation. The
period instrument sound was still a novelty in 1973 when German
Harmonia Mundi recorded BXV248 with the Collegium Aureum and Tolz
Cathedral Boy's Choir. The old instruments heard here were pitched
a semitone below modern concert pitch, as they would have been in
Bach's time. The arias for soprano voice were sung by a talented
boy treble: also typical of musical practice in the churches of
eighteenth century Leipzig. Choral specialist Gerhard Schmidt-Gaden
directed the singers and players. The Schmidt-Gaden interpretation
was re-released on three Deutsche HM silver discs in 1989.
SUNDAY DECEMBER 31ST
This old year 2006 finally comes to an end, and we contemplate
how the years roll along, their seasons passing one into another.
The last time I broadcast Haydyn's oratorio Die Jahreszeiten ("The
Seasons," 1801) I presented the much praised Harmonia Mundi recording
with Rene Jacobs conducting the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra and RIAS
Chamber Choir. That was on Sunday, January 2, 2004. The budget classical
label Naxos now offers us a historically-informed essay of Die Jahreszeiten
in its original German language libretto. Danish conductor Morten
Schuldt-Jensen leads the Leipzig Chamber Orchestra and Gewandhaus
Chamber Choir. In his detailed notes for this release the conductor
assures us that although modern instruments are employed, the orchestra's
performance practice is musicologically correct, and the singers
were carefully coached in eighteenth century vocal technique as
well. Rene Jacobs and his crew set a nobly elevated period instrumental
standard that would be hard to beat. As I've said before, this is
what the norm is nowadays. The forces Schuldt Jensen leads merely
imitate that antique sound. I'm sure you'll enjoy hearing the new
Naxos recording anyway. However, why not listen closely and decide
for yourself if it totally convinces and enthralls your ear. As
the year ends, I think back with gratitude to several people who
continue to help me in the preparation of every two-month period
of programming. Foremost, among them is Rob Meehan, who used to
broadcast classical music on WWUH in the late 1970's. He's a specialist
in the alternative musics of the twentieth century, and our new
century too. For years I've borrowed for broadcast recordings from
his huge private record collection. This time around I've borrowed
Bernstein's Peter Pan. The Play of St. Nicholas and Bach's "Christmas
Oratorio" come from my own collection. Everything else on CD or
LP that's featured over these nine weeks comes out of our station's
ever growing library of classical music on disc. I also remember
with thanks my colleagues Bob Walsh, Larry Bilansky, and Will Mackie
who have substituted for me on several Sundays in 2006. Lastly,
I must thank Vickie Hadge of Virtually Done by Vickie for the technical
preparation of these notes for publication.
WWUH Program Guide 2006
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