Month: May 2024

7-9 p.m. EDT
2300-0100 UTC/GMT
WDCE, University of Richmond
90.1 FM
http://wdce.org

J.S. Bach: “Brandenburg” Concerto No. 4 in G major, BWV 1049
Café Zimmermann/Pablo Valetti
(Alpha)

Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 27 in B flat major, K. 595
Francesco Piemontesi, piano
Scottish Chamber Orchestra/Andrew Manze
(Linn)

Villa-Lobos: “Bachianas brasileiras” No. 5
Renée Fleming, soprano
New World Symphony/Michael Tilson Thomas
(RCA)

Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto in E minor
Joshua Bell, violin
Academy of St. Martin in the Fields/Neville Marriner
(Decca)

Dvořák: “The Golden Spinning Wheel”
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra/Nikolaus Harnoncourt
(Warner Classics)

Writing for The Guardian, the documentarian Kate Kennedy revisits the famous 1924 BBC broadcast in which cellist Beatrice Harrison played the “Londonderry Air” (“Oh, Danny Boy”) in her garden while a nightingale sang along.

Or did it? Maude Gould, a professional whistler, or siffleur, who performed as “Madame Saberon” in music halls, claimed that she had been hired by the BBC to impersonate a nightingale in case the real bird didn’t sing during the broadcast.

Kennedy, after examining the cellist’s papers and BBC archives, disputes the whistler’s story, noting that Gould, the partner of a German spy who helped him transmit military intelligence in the years before World War I, “was no stranger to adapting the truth,” and that there is no evidence of Gould being paid by the broadcaster. Harrison, meanwhile, left behind an account of the performance that “gave so much minute-by-minute detail of the broadcast that it would be impossible to conceive of it all being faked.”

http://www.theguardian.com/music/article/2024/may/22/the-nightingale-beatrice-harrison-radio-bbc-cello-duet

Kennedy’s documentary “The Cello and the Nightingale,” can be heard here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001z6yg

7-9 p.m. EDT
2300-0100 UTC/GMT
WDCE, University of Richmond
90.1 FM
http://wdce.org

Rossini: “La gazza ladra” (“The Thieving Magpie”) Overture
Royal Philharmonic/Colin Davis
(Warner Classics)

Peter Schickele: “Spring Forward”
David Shifrin, clarinet
Miró Quartet
(Delos)

Haydn: Cello Concerto No. 1 in C major
Maximilian Hornung, cello
Kammerakademie Potsdam/Antonello Manacorda
(Sony Classical)

Damien Geter: Quartet No. 1 (“Neo-Soul”)
Inés Voglar Belgique & Ruby Chen, violins
Jennifer Arnold, viola
Nancy Ives, cello
(Navona)

Brahms: Piano Quartet in G minor, Op. 25
(Arnold Schoenberg orchestration)
Chicago Symphony Orchestra/Robert Craft
(Sony Classical)

Vahn Armstrong, concertmaster of the Virginia Symphony Orchestra since 1993, will relinquish the position but continue to play in the violin section, the orchestra has announced. As concertmaster emeritus, he will continue to serve as the ensemble’s first violinist until a successor is hired.

Armstrong, a Michigan-born alumnus of the Juilliard School, where he studied with Dorothy DeLay, has played with the New World String Quartet, and the orchestra and ensembles at New York’s Chautauqua summer festival. He also is concertmaster of the Virginia Symphony contingent that performs with Virginia Opera, and has been the soloist in much of violin concerto repertory with the Norfolk-based orchestra.

In statements issued by the Virginia Symphony, JoAnn Falletta, its former music director, whose tenure largely coincided with Armstrong’s, called the violinist “an extraordinary musical partner to me throughout those years,” lauding “his subtlety, his exquisite musicianship, his sense of color, his stylistic sensitivity, and his musical imagination.”

“Any success I may have had in leading the orchestra over the years is entirely dependent upon the abundant goodwill and astonishing commitment to excellence of my colleagues, on stage and off,” Armstrong said.

The Virginia Symphony will post information on auditions for the concertmaster’s position on June 1 on its website, http://virginiasymphony.org/jobs-auditions/

The Concertgebouw, Amsterdam’s storied concert venue, has reinstated one of two scheduled recitals by the Jerusalem Quartet after canceling the group’s appearance over concerns about protests against Israel’s conduct in its offensive against the Hamas terrorist group in Gaza.

The Jerusalem, one of the world’s pre-eminent string quartets, was to have performed on May 16 and 18 at the Concertgebouw; but the hall’s management canceled the dates after violent protests at the University of Amsterdam and fears that pro-Palestinian demonstrators might disrupt the performances or endanger the safety of the artists, audience and hall staff.

The cancellations prompted a petition signed by more than 13,000 artists and critics – among them, stellar figures such as Martha Argerich, Evgeny Kissin, Simon Rattle and Anne-Sophie Mutter. A subsequent statement from signatories reads, in part, “Surrendering to those threats is not only an act of weakness, but a clear signal that we are not willing or prepared to defend our democratic values and our way of life. This is not acceptable and is highly dangerous for it undermines the very foundations of our society.”

The Concertgebouw, after arranging for “tightened security measures,” will go ahead with the Jerusalem’s May 18 performance, The Strad reports:

http://www.thestrad.com/news/jerusalem-quartet-performance-reinstated-at-the-concertgebouw/18047.article

7-9 p.m. EDT
2300-0100 UTC/GMT
WDCE, University of Richmond
90.1 FM
http://wdce.org

Mozart: Symphony No. 23 in D major, K. 181
L’Orchestre de Chambre de Genève/David Greilsammer
(Sony Classical)

Respighi: “Gli uccelli” (“The Birds”)
Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra/Hugh Wolff
(Apex)

Bohuslav Martinů: Symphony No. 6 (“Fantaisies symphoniques”)
BBC Symphony Orchestra/Jiří Bělohlávek
(Onyx)

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor: “Fantasiestücke,” Op. 5
Takács Quartet
(Hyperion)

Max Bruch: Serenade in A minor, Op. 75
Antje Weithaas, violin
NDR Radiophilharmonie/Hermann Bäumer
(cpo)

Apple is apologizing for its advertisement showing a hydraulic press crushing musical instruments, art supplies and other culturally symbolic objects, then opening to reveal its latest gizmo. Message: All creative endeavor can be compacted into our amazing little product.

The ad, aired only on its YouTube channel, has been seen more than 1 million times.

People who create things other than electronic devices were not amused, a problematic reaction in that creative types are among the prime potential purchasers of the product. A corporate officer admitted that the ad “missed the mark.”

This is hardly the first time a new product has been promoted by showing the destruction of old things. The template, to my eyes, was an ad showing a motorcyclist crashing through a wall onto the stage of a chamber-music recital – leather-clad young hipster scattering tuxedoed old guys. This aired, what, 20 years ago? I’ve forgotten what product was being touted, but I’ll bet you can find it now at thrift stores and yard sales.

The Apples of this world should know this, seeing as how they render their own new stuff obsolete every year or two.

I am medically advised to be cautious about attending crowded public events, including Richmond Symphony concerts. The orchestra is making video streams of its Symphony Series performances available to ticket-holders. The stream of this program was posted on May 8.

Anthony Parnther conducting
with Dominic Rotella, French horn
May 4-5, Carpenter Theatre, Dominion Energy Center

Anthony Parnther contrasted two modes of classical expression in a guest-conducting date with the Richmond Symphony, leading the Symphony No. 3 in C minor of the long-overlooked composer Florence Price, then turning to the cheerful classicism of Mozart and Beethoven.

Parnther, the Virginia-born music director of California’s San Bernardino Symphony, proved to be a rare bird among musicians of his generation (he’s 43), in being a fine conductor who’s also a good talker. His verbal introductions of the three pieces gave useful musical perspective in vernacular language, garnished with bursts of humor. (Virginia place names, such as Tappahannock and Fluvanna, sound to him like “Lord of the Rings” destinations.)

In the Price, which opened the program, Parnther and the symphony players nicely balanced weightiness – her Third Symphony is one of this pioneering Black female composer’s largest-scaled and most ambitious works – with animated and well-accented handling of dance rhythms.

The performance sounded a bit too straightforward in its treatment of lyrical themes. Price’s music, for all its folkloric references and semi-modernist employment of percussion, celesta and harp, is very much in the romantic tradition. Brass often outweighed strings (at least in the audio of the online stream), which tended to nudge melodies out of the sonic foreground.

The symphony strings sounded warmer and weightier alongside the more limited wind and percussive forces of Mozart’s Horn Concerto No. 4 in E flat major, K. 495, featuring Dominic Rotella as the soloist, and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 8 in F major.

Rotella, the orchestra’s principal French horn player, delivered a solidly sonorous account of the Mozart, with a suitably vocal sense of phrasing in the central romanza, and followed the concerto with an encore of Zsolt Nagy’s “Happy Blues,” a jocular piece full of challenging technical twists.

Parnther gave the Beethoven Eighth “big-band” treatment, reminding the listener that light Beethoven is still Beethoven, but lightened the tonal mass with brisk tempos and sharp accents. It was serious fun.

The stream of this program remains accessible until June 30. Access: $30. Details: (800) 514-3849 (ETIX); http://richmondsymphony.com

As the world marks today’s 200th anniversary of the premiere of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, tests of samples of the composer’s hair suggest that the deafness and other ailments that plagued Beethoven may have been the result of lead poisoning, The New York Times’ Gina Kolata reports.

Laboratory analysis at that Mayo Clinic found that “[o]ne of Beethoven’s locks had 258 micrograms of lead per gram of hair and the other had 380 micrograms. A normal level in hair is less than 4 micrograms of lead per gram.”

“These are the highest values in hair I’ve ever seen,” Mayo lab director Paul Jannetto told Kolata.

The high lead levels may be attributed to Beethoven’s heavy consumption of poor-quality wine, which was often sweetened with “lead sugar.” The toxic metal also was used in fermentation and in the corks of wine bottles. Lead also may have been present in medications that Beethoven was taking, Kolata reports:

7-9 p.m. EDT
2300-0100 UTC/GMT
WDCE, University of Richmond
90.1 FM
http://wdce.org

Josef Suk: “Fantastiké Scherzo”
Buffalo Philharmonic/JoAnn Falletta
(Naxos)

Rodrigo: “Concierto de Aranjuez”
Miloš Karadaglić, guitar
London Philharmonic/Yannick Nézet-Séguin
(Deutsche Grammophon)

Milhaud: “La création du monde”
Eduardo Hubert, piano
Dora Schwarzberg & Michael Guttman, violins
Nora Romanoff, viola
Mark Drobinsky, cello
(Warner Classics)

Lili Boulanger: “D’un matin de printemps”
Orchestre national de Lyon/Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider
(Bru Zane)

Delius: “Brigg Fair”
Welsh National Opera Orchestra/Charles Mackerras
(Decca)

Copland: “Appalachian Spring”
(original version for 13 instruments)
Columbia Chamber Ensemble/Aaron Copland
(Sony Classical)