Two new DVD releases are a perfect pair

A painter may paint a picture, a composer may write a beautiful melody for solo piano, but in the world of the theater (and here I count motion pictures as well), one person may have a vision, but production is a collaborative art. W. S. Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan worked together on a total of 14 comic operas, of which “The Mikado” is far and away the most popular, and arguably the best. Two new releases from the Criterion Collection highlight the work of Gilbert and Sullivan in different ways. The 1939 screen adaptation of “The Mikado” is now on DVD and new to Blu-ray, and British director Mike Leigh’s “Topsy-Turvy” (1999) also gets a deluxe DVD and Blu-ray treatment. That film dramatizes the writing, production, and premiere of “The Mikado.”

It’s hard to explain the hold "The Mikado" had on popular culture at one point, but Gilbert and Sullivan tapped into a fascination for all things Eastern when they wrote the work. “The Mikado” was used to sell everything from lampshades to soap in the 1880s, and even into the late ‘30s, when the feature film of the opera was produced, "The Mikado" was being interpreted on stage in a myriad of different ways.

The DVD/Blu-ray release of “The Mikado” from Criterion includes several special features that enrich one’s experience of the film and the opera. Mike Leigh, whose film “Topsy-Turvy” recounts the original D’Oyly Carte production, offers his thoughts on the opera. And scholars Josephine Lee and Ralph MacPhail Jr. speak at length on the film, the history of “The Mikado,” and its comparison to what Japan was really like (answer: not much).

British director Mike Leigh, known for contemporary chamber dramas, was looking for a way to tell a story about “what we do,” he says, referring to the world of film and the theater. To do so, he turned to the famous partnership between lyricist W. S. Gilbert and composer Sir Arthur Sullivan. Leigh says on the commentary track that accompanies “Topsy-Turvy” on DVD and Blu-ray that he was amazed by how much blood and sweat they poured in to something that was so trivial as their 14 operettas, that were among the most popular works of their day. But of course they’re not entirely trivial; Gilbert and Sullivan used their fanciful settings to satirize and mock the establishment.

François Truffaut once said that movies should express either the joy of making cinema or the agony of it. In the case of “Topsy-Turvy,” agony may be too strong a word. An artist's life can be a lonely and melancholy one, even as in the midst of public adulation. And it's hard work. Agony or joy? Perhaps it’s a little of both at the same time.

Read the full reviews of "Topsy-Turvy" and "The Mikado" online here: http://www.tpr.org/articles/2011/03/cinema-mikado.html

[Still from "Topsy-Turvy" courtesty of The Criterion Collection]

--Nathan Cone

Masterclass from Master Teacher

This Saturday, enjoy the talents of area violinists as they learn from San Antonio Symphony guest artist Robert McDuffie.
McDuffie heads the McDuffie Center for Strings in Georgia as well as the Rome Chamber Music Festival.
A Grammy nominated artist, McDuffie has appeared as soloist with most of the major orchestras of the world, including the New York and Los Angeles Philharmonics, the Chicago, San Francisco, National, Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, St. Louis, Montreal, and Toronto Symphonies, the Philadelphia, Cleveland, Minnesota Orchestras, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the North German Radio Orchestra, the Düsseldorf Symphony, the Frankfurt Radio Orchestra, the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, the Hamburg Symphony, Orchestra del Teatro alla Scala, Santa Cecilia Orchestra of Rome, Venice Baroque Orchestra, Jerusalem Symphony, Orquesta Sinfonica Nacional de Mexico, Orquesta Sinfónica de Mineria, and all of the major orchestras of Australia.

Russell Hill Rogers String Residency Master Class
2010-11 Guest Artist: Robert McDuffie, violin
Saturday, April 2, 2011
11 a.m. Majestic Theatre

Out of this world Debussy

NASA is exploring Mercury and images are coming back like this one:

How does this relate to a classical music blog? The large crater is named Debussy, as craters on Mercury are named after artists, musicians and writers. We also thought you might enjoy this movement from Gustav Holst's The Planets:

Ein Hundeleben

Do you have a pet who keeps you company? Here is a pooch that entertains as well!


When will we see him on David Letterman's Stupid Pet Tricks?

Music to their ears

San Antonio area music students will receive a chance to make music that they might not have had otherwise. Local non-profit organization Music In The Schools is donating 35 musical instruments this week to local band, orchestra and Mariachi school programs.

Schools receiving donated instruments are:
McNair Middle School (South West ISD) – 2 Flutes, 1 Trumpet, 1 Xylophone
Jackson Middle School (Northeast ISD) – 1 French Horn
Stahl Elementary School (Northeast ISD) – 5 Guitars, 1 Percussion Kit
Foster Elementary School (San Antonio ISD) – 5 Keyboards
Boerne Middle School (Boerne ISD) – 1 Cello, 1 Violin
Wrenn Middle School (Edgewood ISD) – 2 Trombones, 1 Alto Saxophone
Harlandale Middle School (Harlandale ISD) – 1 Flute, 2 Trumpets
Harris Academy (San Antonio ISD) – 1 Trumpet, 3 Clarinets
Ed White Middle School (Northeast ISD) – 2 Trumpets
D’Hanis High School (D’Hanis ISD) – 2 Clarinets
Irving Academy (San Antonio ISD) – 3 Trumpets

Area public school music teachers have requested over 480 musical instruments for their music programs. Music In The Schools is working to collect new and used instruments from the community and distribute to young musicians. All instrument repairs are courtesy of Alamo Music Center.
Contact Music In The Schools at 210-386-8065 or info@musicintheschools.com.

Classical Green Thumb?

Keeping KPAC & KTXI on for your pets is a great idea, but it might be just the extra something your plants will enjoy!

Check out this unusual concert:

The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra performed a three-hour recital in Cadogan Hall in London last week, with 33 musicians playing pieces including Mozart's Symphony Number 40, it announced Thursday.

In front of them were more than 100 different varieties of plants and bulbs including geraniums, fuschias and perennials.

Mapping out a Strategy

Serious Music got big and very philosophical at the end of the 19th century. Mahler's Symphonies are just one example. A friend of Gustav, the piano virtuoso Ferruccio Busoni also wanted to try the waters of big, serious minded compositions with his Concerto in C Op. 39. This massive work stretches more than an hour and has the pianist work hard just about all the time. The music starts before one's birth and takes us through head strong youth, a growing maturity and success, to finally old age and the recognition of the infinite and a dream of existence in the afterlife. To help explain the path of the concerto Busoni sketched out an architectural drawing that shows us a symbolic map of this musical journey.

On the Piano this Sunday hear the second part of this amazing work, with one of the great performances of this highly challenging work when John Ogden takes on one of the supreme high water marks of Romanticism this Sunday afternoon at 5 on KPAC & KTXI.

host, Randy Anderson

March: Composer Ellen Taaffe Zwilich

"There are not many composers in the modern world who possess the lucky combination of writing music of substance and at the same time exercising an immediate appeal to mixed audiences. Zwilich offers this happy combination of purely technical excellence and a distinct power of communication."

Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, is widely considered to be one of America's leading composers. She studied at the Florida State University and the Juilliard School, where her major teachers were Roger Sessions and Elliott Carter. She also studied violin with Richard Burgin and Ivan Galamian and was a member of the American Symphony Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski.

Zwilich is the recipient of numerous prizes and honors, including the 1983 Pulitzer Prize in Music (the first woman ever to receive this coveted award). She was elected to the Florida Artists Hall of Fame and the American Academy of Arts and Letters and, in 1995, was named to the first Composer's Chair in the history of Carnegie Hall. Musical America designated her the 1999 Composer of the Year. A prolific composer in all media except opera, Zwilich has produced four symphonies and other orchestral essays, numerous concertos for a wide variety of solo instruments, and a sizable canon of chamber and recital pieces. Her works are commissioned and played regularly by the leading orchestras and ensembles throughout the world.

Zwilich marked the beginning of her 70th birthday season – featuring two major premieres, recordings, and performances of her work across the country – with the world premiere of Symphony No. 5, commissioned by the Juilliard School, and performed October 27, 2008, by the Juilliard Orchestra conducted by James Conlon at Carnegie Hall, New York, NY. The new symphony’s premiere launched a season that concluded with the world premiere of another major work, the Septet for Piano Trio and String Quartet, performed by the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio and the Miami String Quartet. In addition, a disc of three of Zwilich’s works performed by artists from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center was released by Koch Records, the Claremont Trio is released a new disc titled American Trios which will include Zwilich’s Piano Trio, and a half-hour television program of her work Peanuts Gallery, which has been broadcast over local PBS stations nationwide almost 700 times, recently received an award from the National Educational Telecommunications Association.

Host John Clare spoke to Zwilich at her home in Riverdale, NY about composition, awards and creativity.

Listen to the interview in two parts:

Part 1 [mp3 file]

Part 2 [mp3 file]

You might also enjoy this selection of the Boston Trio:

The Mahler Piano concerto?

Gustav Mahler didn't compose a piano concerto, but his friend, Ferruccio Busoni, who often joked about Mahler's gigantic Symphonies, created a heaven storming work of his own, the Concerto in C. Spanning 70 minutes Busoni explores the human experience from before birth to our dying wish. A musical conception even Gustav Mahler would proud of.

Hear the first half of this mind expanding musical experience this Sunday at 5 on KPAC & KTXI.

host, Randy Anderson

St Patrick's Day

On this seventeenth of March, we wanted to share an interview with John O'Conor about his album of Irish music: http://audio.tpr.org/cs10031104.mp3 [mp3 file] (Originally recorded and aired in March 2010)
Happy St. Patrick's Day!