Day: July 23, 2023

A second sampler of the season’s new classical recordings, with standards of Bach, Mendelssohn and Rachmaninoff, discoveries from William Grant Still and Radames Gnattali, and violinist Joshua Bell playing a novel arrangement of Saint-Saëns’ “Introduction and rondo capriccioso.”

1-3 p.m. EDT
1700-1900 UTC/GMT
WDCE, University of Richmond
90.1 FM
http://wdce.org

J.S. Bach: “Brandenburg” Concerto No. 5 in D major, BWV 1050
Elbipolis Barockorchester Hamburg/Jürgen Gross
(Challenge Classics)

William Grant Still: “Ennanga”
(Ashley Jackson arrangement)
Ashley Jackson, harp
Harlem Chamber Players
(Bright Shiny Things)

Mendelssohn: Fantasie in F sharp minor, Op. 28 (“Sonate écossaise”)
Maximilian Schairer, piano
(Hänssler Classic)

Saint-Saëns: Introduction and rondo capriccioso in A minor, Op. 28
(Phoon Yew Tien arrangement)
Joshua Bell, violin
Singapore Chinese Orchestra/Tsung Yeh
(Sony Classical)

Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor
Kirill Gerstein, piano
Berlin Philharmonic/Kirill Petrenko
(Berliner Philharmoniker)

Radames Gnattali: Sonatina No. 2 for guitar & piano
Fabio Zanon, guitar
Clelia Iruzun, piano
(Somm)

Writing for The Observer, Ed Vulliamy writes about the response of Ukrainian musicians to the Russian invasion of their country, from the opera house in Lviv to a nightspot in Kyiv.

“Music is a universal language. But music also comes from where you come from; it reflects the feeling of home, and what home means – and on the obligation to protect your family, your neighbour,” says Andriy Khlyvnyuk, the singer-songwriter of the Ukrainian pop band Boom Box who has spent the war in a police combat unit. “Anyone who grew up learning their language, and their poets and music by heart knows to say to the empire, any empire: ‘You will not do this to us.’ ”

Yevhen Stankovych, the Ukrainian composer of “The Terrible Revenge,” a new opera based on the Nikolai Gogol story, writes of his work and that of the country’s other artists, “All of this resonates with our reality, and what is happening.”

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/23/ukraine-musicians-fighting-frontline-pop-classical-music-boombox