Check out Charles

You might have heard him on From the Top (or seen him on the first TV show of FTT!) or heard Charles Yang last year play the Four Seasons with the Mid Texas Symphony.

He's recently recorded a video of Queen:

and previously covered Michael Jackson:


Now see CHARLES YANG - “classical violinist with the charisma of a rock star” - playing in a unique, one-time performance, at KIDS' CLUB – New Braunfels, Tuesday, November 22, from 3:30 – 4:30.
The Kids' Club is located at 169 South Hickory in New Braunfels. Thanks to our friends at Mid Texas Symphony for making this performance possible!

Cello remains

Music is magical. Besides artists studying music, scientists actually study how music changes the world. There are accounts of it making us smarter, healing and then there are mysteries:

But when it came to playing previous concertos, and learning new pieces of music, he had such no problem leaving doctors stunned.
Discussed at the Society for Neuroscience conference for the first time this past weekend, scientists say this case study suggests memory is more complex and autonomous than previously thought and that music could be the key to helping people with memory problems learn new skills in life.

How does music affect you? Are there memories you have with musical performances or performing? What music are you looking forward to over the holidays?

What Mahler was that?

Our friends at Tone Deaf Comics have done it again, this time with a funny but accurate Mahler Map!

Éljen a Magyar!

It is hard to believe that Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, long associated with lighthearted entertainment like children's cartoons could be thought of as an act of defiance.

Franz Liszt lost touch with his homeland in his youth, but when he heard of the disastrous floods of 1838 he made sure to help as best as he could and in doing so he reestablished a connection to Hungary that would last the rest of his life.

To explore this transformation from Lion of the Parisian salons to Hungarian Hero tune in to the Piano this Sunday afternoon at 5 on KPAC and KTXI.

host, Randy Anderson

Verdi's Don Carlo , Power and Passion

There are essentially two Don Carlo's (if you'll allow me) of Giuseppe Verdi. I don't mean that one is in French and the other Italian. Historians and musicologist are manic about the fact that this is untrue, there is a work," Don Carlos " (francophone's are insistent on this) originally written in French for the Paris Opera that was so vast (5hrs and change, they say) it's richness so prodigal it obscured the works greatness. It was then" translated into Italian " and cut to various shapes and sizes, depending on opera house, singers available and appreciation of or boredom with ballet. It was a Behemoth, a lumbering monster. Variant openings, duets and trios and choruses to burn, ballet music that was insisted on at the time and now exist largely as a separate concert work and most importantly a great psychological/ musical narrative frame, the reason for all this elaboration and development. History, written very large indeed, and turned into gorgeous music. A combination of Schiller's stage drama and European history in the Spanish Golden Age. What most of us know runs between two and a half to three hours, does not have a ballet, does not start in a forest in France but a tomb in Spain. In the background to all this is a subtext at once old and new of European history, the battle of reactionary politics and the spirit of the Reformation, this background then weaves this ideological struggle into a love story of great power and the reason for the courageousness of the speeches of Posa and Carlo/Carlos.

In all the combinations that followed (between 1867 and 1884) in whatever language, what remained and the reason for the operas growing fame, long or short, was that the passion and power of the essential human drama shone through. Hypocrisy, jealousy, reaction and revolutions of thought; the inevitable wars of generations, court intrigue, threats of murder and blackmail - the human condition and music of breathtaking scale and inspiration.It is the longest and most ambitious music that Verdi would ever write.

Join us this Saturday Afternoon at the Opera presentation of a new and very special interpretation of Don Carlo, live from the Met with Franco Corelli and Leone Rysanek this Saturday at noon on KPAC and KTXI.

host, Ron Moore

Ft Worth Taxi Drivers take note!

Another Stradivari violin is in Fort Worth, to be played by the Associate Concertmaster of the Ft. Worth Symphony - read more here. Here's to it not being left in a cab, smashed by accident or left outside to be made into a cd cabinet!

Twelve tone commercial

There's nothing to be afraid of this weekend at the San Antonio Symphony...don't be frightened by the name Alban Berg. Here's a video to watch about the Second Viennese School to set your mind at ease:


Just a few years ago, Hilary Hahn recorded Schoenberg's Violin Concerto, that really did become an iTunes hit. She made this video:

She also did a whole series on Schoenberg: http://www.youtube.com/user/hilaryhahnvideos

The Worst News Imaginable…

What would that be for you? For Ludwig van Beethoven it was confirmation that his hearing, "the one sense which should have been more perfect in me than in others, a sense which I once possessed in highest perfection" was now eroding. How could this supreme master of sound be reduced to shouting "speak louder for I am deaf" and still have the respect of those around him?

In his Heiligenstadt Testament, Beethoven agonized about his self-exile from humanity and the misunderstandings of those who perceive him as stubborn, haughty or misanthropic. The searing nature of this confession is so personal and discouraging that some experts thought of it as a first draft of a suicide note to those that would have found him. As reduced as Beethoven was by his illness he did find a way out that was more positive for humanity, music.

Could Beethoven compose with such weighty matters depressing him? The answer is yes, his dear art and its alchemy turned base anger and frustration into art. Hear Beethoven's unique piano sonata in d minor "the Tempest" this Sunday afternoon at 5 on the Piano. Along with a sterling performance, we will give a listen to several musicians and their approach to this masterwork.

host, Randy Anderson

Classical Spotlight: Peter Lieuwen

This next week SOLI Chamber Ensemble presents Quantum Change at Gallery Nord and Trinity University. On the program is Peter Lieuwen's Overland Dream.

John Clare had a chance to speak with Peter about the new work in his studio outside College Station:

Clare was also on hand this summer at the world premiere this summer in Arlington:

The Perils of Young Goethe

--- the Story ---
The German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe had recently finished his law studies and was committed to visit a relative in the small town of Wetzlar. Previous to his travels he fell in with a circle of like minded young men of great promise, but no particular direction, among them a K.W. Jerusalem, destined to be for a while,secretary to a nobleman. Arriving in the town Goethe was invited to a ball at which he met and fell desperately in love with Charlotte Buff, only to discover that she was already promised to another. This commenced a long and desperate agony of youthful introspection, brooding,communions with nature, a deluge of letters and thoughts of suicide. Goethe at intervals fled the city fearful that he would do harm to himself if he were too long near the young Charlotte.

From what would for endless generations of young lovers be no more a rite of passage in their sentimental education for the poet became emblematic of the travails, confusions and 'sorrows' of an entire generation of romantics. While considering these thoughts Goethe is informed that his one time dinner companion Jerusalem, like himself, had suffered just such a loss of love. But, Jerusalem found no outlet for his despair and committed suicide. Combining his own romantic failure, Jerusalem's fatal end and the psychological/ romantic trials of his own life, Goethe fashioned one of the greatest romantic novels ever written. In doing so (as he wrote) "saved" his own life, exorcised his obsession, discovered his vocation and won a world wide reputation with the publication of The Sorrows of Young Werther.

---the Music---
In 1886 Jules Massenet went to Bayreuth to see a performance of Parsifal and there was a stopover in the town of Wetzler. Massenet's publisher was accompanying on the return to Paris and on the stopover purchased and presented him with a copy of the novel by Goethe. The result was one of his most passionate, lyrical and popular creations for the theatre. Please tune in to this Saturday Afternoon at the Opera presentation of Massenet's Werther, featuring Jose Carreras and Frederica von Stade as the doomed lovers,this Saturday at noon on KPAC and KTXI.

host, Ron Moore