What she wore

Did you see The Enchanted Island last weekend in HD? It was a stunning performance which will be encored February 8th - a must see/hear if you didn't the first time around, or if you want to relive it again!
The all star, stellar cast included soprano Danielle de Niese, who was just on WNYC's Soundcheck yesterday.
de Niese shared her fashions today in the New York Times:
I was hugely happy with the performance and really relieved. There’s no margin of error with a live simulcast. After, I greeted friends and fans in a black one-shouldered tiered dress, also from Donna Karan. I paired it with black Sergio Rossi peep-toe pumps and a Marc Jacobs purse. Then it was off to Plácido Domingo’s reopened restaurant, Pampano, to celebrate the tenor’s birthday: 71.
We're also a huge fan of the new release Beauty of the Baroque - there's definitely a double entendre in that title! Especially gorgeous emotion and singing come back to back (Bach to Bach?! lol) in tracks 4 and 5: Handel's Air “Let the bright Seraphim” from Samson, Act III and Purcell's “Thy hand, Belinda – When I am laid in earth” (Dido’s Lament) from Dido and Aeneas, Act III. Run, don't walk, to get this recording!

Inspiration & Joy turned up to 11

Some artists are so "in the zone" that they seem unaffected by the world around them. Then there are those that feed off of life and transform it into their art. Franz Liszt and Robert Schumann were two of the later. It would seem that Alexander Scriabin's work habits were so ingrained and the world of music he inhabited so consuming that few outside influences could get at him. But one did, a beautiful young Russian girl the composer met in Paris, she stole his heart and inspired some of the composer's most lovely compositions.

It is one thing to fall in love at first sight, it is another thing to propose marriage and to be accepted; this must have driven Scriabin insane with joy. But the story doesn't end there. For a full account and all the music inspired by this painful first love, join me at the Piano this Sunday afternoon at 5 on KPAC & KTXI.

host, Randy Anderson

Tosca, An Unlikely Masterpiece

                                                         

Looking at the matter from our perspective, that is to say of over a hundred years since the premiere in 1900, it seems impossible to imagine that anyone couldn't like Tosca. In fact there was long contemplation on the "how of it " from the composer, he spent seven years just thinking about it and then four trying to finish it. Arguments between the librettist, the composer and his publisher seemed to never end. Where Giacomo Puccini was obsessed and intent, the writing team of Giacosa and Illica, were in no way in agreement. One thought it could be pulled off with the proper amount of work and radical alteration of the Sardou play written for Sarah Bernhardt. The other thought it hopeless and frankly hardly worth the bother. Shaw seemed to say it all when he dubbed it famously "an old fashioned, shiftless, clumsily constructed, empty- headed turnip ghost of a cheap shocker". Well, he hadn't heard Vissi d'arte, let alone Callas and Gobbi, so we can cut him some historical slack.

 

The magical translation from word and stage to opera house and music is an object lesson in, well, you just never know. It isn't that Shaw by modern standards is wrong, who would know of the play today without Puccini, but rather that the composer was right for his purposes. Incredibly he found the musical and architectural language, something between a wildly inventive recitative, so close to real speech and yet not. And more importantly the essential and crucial short hand that could communicate character, mood and endless forward action all at once. In the four vocal pillars of the work, Vissi d'arte (Tosca) purity and dedication in art as moral instruction to character; the Te Deum in the church, with organ no less (for Scarpia) mixing the sacred and the profane, lust and moral transgress that mocks religiosity and finally Mario Cavaradossi's two tenor home runs both romantic and idealistic. Recondita Armonia and E lucevan le Stelle are still being hummed after over a hundred years, all respect otherwise to Mr. Shaw. Then there is the quicksilver orchestration in which moods bel canto would have spun out in vast scena rendered in somersaults of emotion, like cinematic jump cuts and yet retain their lyric integrity. That the supposedly impossible is done and even has the sense of a living, breathing organism, is perhaps one hallmark of a masterwork and the talent of a great artist. Such is Puccini's Tosca; so good that it even shows up in movies!

 

Tune in this Saturday at noon for the Metropolitan Opera's production of Tosca, here on KPAC and KTXI .

 

by Ron Moore

The Legacy of Franz Schubert

To mark the birthday of Franz Schubert (1797-1828), born January 31^st, we thought we'd close our celebration of his legacy throughout this month with some representative works of his final phase.

Composer Benjamin Britten has remarked that perhaps the most productive eighteen months in the history of Western Music was the period just after the death of Beethoven, and before the appearance of Wagner, Liszt and Verdi. In this period Schubert composed his Symphony #9 in C, the Quintet in C for strings, the last three piano sonatas, and the song cycle, “Die Winterreise.” That it could be accomplished at all is astonishing enough. That he never reached his mid -thirties (dying younger than either Mozart at 35 or Mendelssohn at 48) and was both impoverished and ill--well, that's stuff for the ages.

Poet, Tomas Transtromer.

Among the works and performers we’ll hear in this finale before his birthday are Wilhelm Furtwangler’s recording of the 9th symphony, Clara Haskil in the last piano sonata, the D.960, excerpts from the oratorio “Lazarus,” music from the piano trios, and the culmination of our Winter's Journey with a haunting “Leiermann” and songs from “Schwanengesang.” We will also feature a twentieth century artifact of Schubert's inspiration, a poem by the Swedish poet and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature  2011, Tomas Transtromer, Schubertiade, read by Gemini Ink Director Rosemary Catacalos.

Please join us as we celebrate the extraordinary legacy and miraculous achievement of Franz Schubert this Sunday afternoon at 2pm on KPAC and KTXI.

--Ron Moore

Classical Spotlight: Concerts!

There are lots of Classical Music Concerts to hear and experience this weekend!

TPR Cinema: A Clockwork Orange Tonight, January 26, 2012 7:30 p.m. at Santikos Bijou (Rated R)

San Antonio Symphony
Beethoven 6 and 7 January 27 and 28, 2012 8 p.m., Majestic Theatre Sebastian Lang-Lessing, conductor Beethoven Symphony No. 6 in F major, Op.68, “Pastorale” Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op.92

Olmos Ensemble
Saturday, January 28, 2012 4:30 p.m. at the Majestic Theatre (FREE) Quintet for Piano and Winds in E-flat major, Op. 16 Septet in E-flat major, Op. 20

San Antonio Chamber Music Society 
Sunday, January 29, 2012 3:15 p.m. at Temple Beth-El Pacifica Quartet Dvořák Cypresses Shostakovich: Quartet No. 9, Op. 117 Beethoven: Quartet in F Major, Op. 59, No.1 “Razumovsky”

Musical Bridges Around the World
Beethoven Violin Sonatas 2 6:30 p.m. at San Fernando Cathedral January 29, 2012
Emanuel Borok, violin and Elena Portnaya, piano Sonatas No. 1, Op. 12, No. 1, No. 2, Op. 12, No. 2 & No. 3, Op. 12, No. 3

San Antonio International Piano Competition
Tuesday, January 31, 2012 7:30 p.m. at Christ Episcopal Church Audrey Andrist, piano Sonata No. 22 in F, Op. 54 Sonata No. 31 in A-flat, Op. 110 Sonata No. 18 in E-flat, Op. 31, No. 3, “The Hunt” Sonata No. 15 in D, Op. 28, “Pastorale”

SAC Guest Recital
Bulgarian pianist Ina Selvelieva playing Beethoven Piano Sonata Op. 110, Muczynki Desperate Measures(Paganini Variations), Three Pieces by Bulgarian composer Vesseline Stoyanov and the 2nd Sonata of Rachmaninoff. Thursday, Feb 2, 7:30 MacAllister auditorium

The fest continues

We're looking forward to more Beethoven this weekend, from the SA Symphony, SA Chamber Music Society, Musical Bridges Around the World, SA International Piano Competition and the Olmos Ensemble.

Tomorrow night, TPR Cinema presents A Clockwork Orange! We thought we'd share part of Fantasia as the SA Symphony plays Beethoven's 6th and 7th symphonies on Friday and Saturday night.

Myer plays Beethoven's Theresa

From SAIPC, Spencer Myer plays the Sonata #24 by Beethoven


There's more tonight and this weekend with the SA Symphony, YOSA, Musical Bridges Around the World and SOLI Chamber Ensemble!

Two geniuses - one program…

Nikolai Medtner had it all, winning the Great Gold medal for piano performance at the Moscow Conservatory and a talented composer who had the respect of his peers. So why don't we music lovers hear more about him?

The answer is a combination of events not all under the composer's control. The Russian revolution and flight to the west for safety, added to this was Medtner's determination to promote his own music rather than give concerts of the classics. His friend Rachmaninoff secured a tour of America and here "Medtner Evenings" didn't go over too well. Record companies were interested in the pianist but Medtner wanted to record his own music and not what the A&R men thought would sell. Enter World War II and the composer, living in England, was separated from his royalties from his German publishers forcing Medtner into poverty. Even in our own time Medtner's bad luck continues with his greatest and most fluent of his advocates, the Australian pianist Geoffrey Tozer, dying far too young at the age of 55. Although he is gone, his recordings remain and on the Piano this Sunday you can hear Medtner's Fairy Tales and Second Piano Concerto performed by the man Tatiana Nikolayeva said "plays like a Russian".

Hear music for the brain as well as the heart on the Piano this Sunday afternoon at 5 on KPAC & KTXI.

host, Randy Anderson

Submitted for your approval...

To anyone lucky enough to be in or passing through New York City in the early nineties it was a scene worthy of Rod Sterling: Tout Manhattan, dressed nattily or casually and counting such luminaries as Charles Rosen and Susan Sontag (and my modest self) were crowded into subway trains filled to the breaking point on a Sunday afternoon and emptying in of all places, Brooklyn. People who probably rarely ventured south of Tribeca were rushing to the Brooklyn Academy of Music, a space about the size of the Houston Grand Opera. The hottest ticket in the operatic western hemisphere was to be the revelation of a series of baroque operas, heretofore heard only on records. William Christie and his Les Arts Florissants had come to uncover a musical revelation, so successful and memorable were these performances that an anniversary performance of Atys was repeated decades later.

Decades before the musically precocious and Francophile Christie had left Yale and headed for France and more specifically Versailles.There he had access to ensembles and libraries of scores and all the early instruments a man could dream of. Recordings began to appear of Handel, Rameau, Lully, Charpentier, Campra and others.The problem then was, despite all these preparations, was where in New York could you put on these works? The Met, glorious though it is ... well, a barn - historically speaking. It is a product of democratic-aristocratic intentions circa 1880's and then 1960's: we Americans missed the Versailles part. The dream of a piccolo-Met, discussed for over thirty years has as far as I know never come to light. Works like Strauss' Capriccio and the whole world of chamber and baroque opera are almost impossible in such a space.These operas with nuanced and subtle instrumental sound was dwarfed in the Mets vast space and all those theorbos and harpsichords lines and melodies dying long before they reach the high seats. I know, having over about thirty years sat all over the Met from nose bleed section to the exalted orchestra seats. Once as a gift from a singer I was so close to the orchestra for the Ring that I could see the beads of sweat on Maestro Levine's brow. 

Christie's grounding breaking, exquisite and critically acclaimed presentations had to be put on at alternate venues. In the early years we were treated to Lully's Atys (perhaps the greatest operatic- ballet performance I have ever seen) Purcell's King Arthur and Rameau's Castor et Pollux. Some of these were stage versions put on in Lincoln Center spaces. To cap it all off we were offered as a finale an evening of all Charpentier (Marc Antoine,1643-1704) and his ravishing motets and cantatas.

The fanfare for the upcoming "pastiche", The Enchanted Isle, must be a kind of solution to the baroque opera in the Met problem. I keep hearing the terms like extravaganza and grand. Perhaps this combination of baroque masters in the aggregate, Handel, Rameau and Lully, let alone the Shakespeare plot might have ramped up the scale. Either way, the music will be glorious. Please tune in to the Met this Saturday at noon and hear what William Christie and his magicians have in store for us all. 

by Ron Moore

 

SAIPC shines with Myer

From SAIPC last night, Spencer Myer plays part of the Waldstein Sonata by Beethoven:


Next Tuesday, January 24th, Christopher Guzman plays more of the sonatas, and talks with host John Clare about the concert on this week's Classical Spotlight, Thursday afternoon at 1pm on KPAC & KTXI.