Day: November 7, 2017

Soprano Audrey Luna hits A above high C, believed to be the highest note ever sung onstage at the Metropolitan Opera, in Thomas Adès’ “The Exterminating Angel.”

“It lasts just a split second. It’s over too quickly to summon the dogs of the Upper West Side or to break any nearby windows,” The New York Times’ Zachary Woolfe writes of Luna cracking a “stave-ceiling”:

Following the link, you can hear (or perhaps feel in the fillings of your teeth) Luna hitting the new high, as well as several other singers aloft in the coloratura stratosphere.

Registration is open through Nov. 13 for the Richmond Symphony’s Come and Play concert, in which symphony players and community musicians will perform on Nov. 19 at Virginia Commonwealth University’s Verizon Wireless Stuart C. Siegel Center, Broad and Harrison streets.

Some instrumental sections will be full prior to the deadline.

Chia-Hsuan Lin, the orchestra’s associate conductor, will lead a rehearsal from 2:30 to 5 p.m. and the concert, beginning at 6 p.m. The program includes works by Grieg, Bizet, Tchaikovsky, Saint-Saëns, Andrew Lloyd Webber and others.

The concert is open to the public at no charge.

For more information, call the symphony at (804) 788-4717, ext. 144, or visit http://rsocomeandplay.weebly.com/schedule.html

Five hundred years ago this month, Martin Luther’s Ninety-five Theses began to circulate across central Europe, launching the Protestant Reformation. In the second hour of the program, we’ll mark the anniversary with three works – two famous, one obscure – built on Luther’s best-known hymn, “Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott” (“A Mighty Fortress Is Our God”).

noon-3 p.m. EST
1500-1800 UTC/GMT
WDCE, University of Richmond
90.1 FM
http://wdce.net

Past Masters:
J.S. Bach: Prelude and Fugue in A minor, BWV 543
Michel Chapuis, organ
(United Archives)
(recorded 1968)

Beethoven: Quartet in A minor, Op. 132
Takács Quartet
(Decca)

Otto Nicolai: “Church Festival Overture,” Op. 31
Kartauser Kantorei
WDR Symphony Orchestra, Cologne/Michail Jurowski
(Capriccio)

J.S. Bach: Cantata, “Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott,” BWV 80
Barbara Schlick, soprano
Gérard Lesne, alto
Howard Crook, tenor
Peter Kooy, bass
Collegium Vocale, Ghent
La Chapelle Royale/Philippe Herreweghe
(Harmonia Mundi)

Mendelssohn: Symphony No. 5 in D major (“Reformation”)
Freiburg Baroque Orchestra/Pablo Heras-Casado
(Harmonia Mundi)

Past Masters:
Wagner: “Tannhäuser” Overture
Cleveland Orchestra/George Szell
(Sony Classical)
(recorded 1962)

Brahms: Symphony No. 1 in C minor
Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique/John Eliot Gardiner
(Soli Deo Gloria)