Free Trade Baroque

We guarantee the Coffee Cantata is free trade! (and so is the concert!)
Cellist Frederick Edelen and harpsichordist Christina Edelen will present a concert of music of the French Baroque on Thursday evening, February 24, at 7:00 p.m. at St. Luke's Episcopal Church (11 St. Luke's Lane, San Antonio). Special guests include tenor Tony Boutte´ and baroque flutist Colin St. Martin. The concert will feature music by Rameau, Monteclair, and Boismortier and the Coffee Cantata of Nicolas Bernier.
This program is free and open to the public. For more info: 210-828-6425

Thanks to our host Gerald Self for the heads up! Listen to his show, Musica Antiqua Wednesday nights at 9pm (CST) on KPAC & KTXI!

Life before purists...

There was a time when the name of Bach was hyphenated. No, he didn't take his wife's name, but Bach's music was arranged for us so we could hear it on the instruments we are used to; big orchestras and concert grand pianos. Those interested in playing Bach only on organs he would be familiar with moved on to the rest of the instrumental families and soon there was a new reason to record all of Bach, Haydn and Mozart again, this time with authentic instruments. I'm lucky, I like it all. Falling in love with the harpsichord was easy with Paul Mauriat's Love is Blue back in the 1960's. I wanted to learn to play on such an instrument, but that was a real challenge to a broke thirteen year old living in a small town in Texas, so I had to make do with pictures in reference books.

Now in an age with historic instruments rebuilt to play and the thousands of new harpsichords that are assembled as if it was 1640, we listeners and performers have a choice. KPAC's own Gerald Self makes the most beautiful sounding and looking harpsichords I know of and if I had the room I'd have one in my house. It's funny, but when you are young it is the lack of money holding you back and when you have the money well, it's something else.

On the Piano this Sunday, baroque music on a concert grand and I'm not thinking about Bach's music here, but from the golden age of French music at of Couperin and Rameau. Does this music so closely associated with the dynamics and timbre of the harpsichord even work on a piano?

Find out this Sunday afternoon at 5 on the Piano @ KPAC & KTXI.

host, Randy Anderson

Big, Bigger, Baddest? Pianos through Time

Pianos are the bane of moving men everywhere. Moving is enough of a chore without the look on the guy's face when you tell him you have a piano. After a few close calls, I started using piano movers, but that can get expensive. Once I paid $80 to move my piano seventy feet! Later I switched from a grand to a studio upright only to settle down and stay put!

What if I tell you that one can have a grand piano and when it comes time to move it, two or three people just pick it up and walk it to the new location? It used to happen. On the Piano this Sunday host Randy Anderson talks to harpsichord builder Gerald Self about the small and lightweight pianos of the past. We trace the evolution of the instruments of Cristofori and his gravicembalo col piano e forte to the mighty and mighty heavy Steinways of today. Pianos have changed through the centuries and there role in music has changed with them.
Find out more and hear examples of these "improvements" on the Piano, this Sunday afternoon on KPAC and KTXI

host, Randy Anderson