Beginning Oct. 5, Letter V Classical Radio moves to Sundays from 11 p.m. to 1 a.m. (2300-0100 UTC) on the University of Richmond’s WDCE, 90.1 FM, https://wdce.net
The Sept. 28 show will air from 1 to 3 p.m. (1700-1900 UTC).
1-3 p.m. EDT 1700-1900 UTC WDCE, University of Richmond 90.1 FM http://wdce.net
Jan Dismas Zelenka: Capriccio No. 3 in F major Bernhard Forck & Raimar Orlovsky, violins Radek Baborák, horn & direction Berlin Baroque Soloists (PhilHarmonie)
Haydn: Symphony No. 60 in C major (“Il distratto”) Mozarteumorchester Salzburg/Ivor Bolton (Oehms Classics)
Erwin Schulhoff: “Five Pieces for String Quartet” (Manfred Honeck & Tomáš Ille orchestration) Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra/Manfred Honeck (Reference Recordings)
Beethoven: Quartet in C minor, Op. 18, No. 4 Quartetto di Cremona (Audite)
Nielsen: Symphony No. 4 (“Inextinguishable”) Chicago Symphony Orchestra/Jean Martinon (RCA)
The Flemish region of Belgium is not known as a hotbed of anti-Semitism. Far from it: The largest city in Flanders, Antwerp, was a refuge for Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal in the 16th century, and today is a center of Haredi Orthodox Judaism in Europe.
Given that history, the decision by a music festival in Ghent, a city that prides itself on being a major Flemish cultural center, to disinvite the Munich Philharmonic and its Israeli conductor, Lahav Shani, was a shock, both artistically and politically.
The Flanders Festival Ghent stated: “Lahav Shani has spoken out several times in the past in favor of peace and reconciliation, but in light of his position as chief conductor of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, we cannot provide sufficient clarity regarding his stance on the genocidal regime in Tel Aviv. In line with the call from the [Flemish] Minister of Culture, the Ghent city council, and the Ghent cultural sector, we choose not to enter into collaborations with partners who do not unequivocally distance themselves from these principles.”
That Shani works with both the Israel Philharmonic and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, founded by the Israeli pianist-conductor Daniel Barenboim and the late Edward Said, a Palestinian academic and activist, to bring together Israeli and Arab musicians, evidently did not factor in Ghent’s calculation. (Naming the seat of the Israeli government as Tel Aviv, not Jerusalem, Israel’s capital, is a telling detail in the festival’s statement.)
Reaction has been swift, and not just from cultural and political figures in Munich. Among others denouncing the Ghent ban are the Rotterdam Philharmonic, where Shani is completing an eight-year tenure as chief conductor this season; the Berlin Philharmonic and Berlin State Opera (the city’s Konzerthaus will stage the concert that Ghent canceled); the European Commission, based in Brussels; pianists Martha Argerich and András Schiff, harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani, violinist Renaud Capuçon, cellist Steven Isserlis and more than 100 other musicians who have added their names to a statement of protest.
The most potentially potent statements of disapproval have come from Belgium’s prime minister, Bart De Wever. His initial reaction: “Imposing a professional ban on someone solely because of their background is reckless and irresponsible, to say the least.” Subsequently visiting Shani and the orchestra in Essen, Germany, to apologize for their cancellation, De Wever said, “There is no place for anti-Semitism or racism in Belgium. Never.”
Those quotes via Norman Lebrecht’s Slipped Disc blog, where coverage of the uproar is ongoing:
UPDATE (Sept. 15): Reporting for Canada’s CBC network, Abby Hughes writes that the musicians’ protest statement has garnered more than 11,000 signatures.
Remembering Christoph von Dohnányi, the German maestro who restored the Cleveland Orchestra to greatness in the 1980s and ’90s. As you’ll hear, Dohnányi’s mastery, from European classics to American moderns, was matched by few conductors of his generation.
1-3 p.m. EDT 1700-1900 UTC WDCE, University of Richmond 90.1 FM http://wdce.net
Smetana: “The Bartered Bride” – “Dance of the Comedians” Cleveland Orchestra/Christoph von Dohnányi (Decca)
Carl Ruggles: “Sun-treader” Cleveland Orchestra/Christoph von Dohnányi (Decca)
Mozart: Symphony No. 39 in E flat major, K. 543 Cleveland Orchestra/Christoph von Dohnányi (Decca)
Charles Ives: “The Unanswered Question” Cleveland Orchestra/Christoph von Dohnányi Michael Sachs, solo trumpet (Decca)
Weber: “Invitation to the Dance” (Hector Berlioz orchestration) Cleveland Orchestra/Christoph von Dohnányi Stephen Geber, solo cello (Decca)
Webern: Passacaglia, Op. 1 Cleveland Orchestra/Christoph von Dohnányi (Decca)
Bartók: Concerto for Orchestra Cleveland Orchestra/Christoph von Dohnányi (Decca)
Mason Bates, the Richmond-bred composer known for his incorporation of electronica in orchestrations, is readying his latest opera, “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay,” for New York’s Metropolitan Opera.
The work, with a libretto by Gene Scheer, was introduced last year at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music. It was to be a co-production of the Met and Los Angeles Opera, “but Los Angeles backed out, citing the cost and complexity of the work as it was struggling to recover from the financial setbacks from the pandemic,” Adam Nagourney writes in The New York Times.
“Kavalier & Clay,” based on Michael Chabon’s novel, is the story of an American and his cousin, a refugee from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia, who create a fantasy hero fighting oppression.
“[A]dapting a novel with this many story zigs and character zags was daunting,” Nagourney writes. ‘It’s a huge lift, to be frank,’ Scheer said. ‘We had to cut an enormous amount and reimagine it in a way that would invite music in. That’s the trick to this: to find a way for the music to distill the story.’ ”
Bates’ employment of electronic sounds and electronically driven rhythms – a technique he honed as DJ Masonic, his club performance persona, and has used in many of his scores – is challenging, even for a company that in recent years has staged a number of contemporary operas, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Met’s music director, told Nagourney.
“There have been a lot of attempts in music to try and mix electronica with acoustic instruments,” Nézet-Séguin said. “Most of it feels interesting and experimental but not really successful. In the case of Mason, it’s just perfectly integrated. He knows how to make it so it’s not constricting for a conductor and orchestra – and brings something to the texture that is complementary and does not overpower the acoustic instruments.”
Electronica seems a natural for an opera that “moves like ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark,’ ” Bates said. “It’s like, boom, boom, boom. Nazis. Superheroes.”
“The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay” opens the Met’s 2025-26 season on Sept. 21 and runs for six more performances through Oct. 11.
Christoph von Dohnányi, the longtime music director of the Cleveland Orchestra and one of the most versatile conductors of his generation, has died, two days before he would have celebrated his 96th birthday.
Dohnányi, grandson of the Hungarian composer Ernst von Dohnányi, was reared in a cultured German family, two of whose members, his father, Hans, a prominent lawyer, and his uncle, the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, were prominent anti-Nazi figures, executed in the purge that followed the 1944 plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler.
After World War II, Dohnányi graduated from the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Munich and studied with his grandfather, a refugee from communist-ruled Hungary, at Florida State University. His first appointment was as a vocal coach and assistant to Georg Solti at the Frankfurt Opera, a company he returned to as music director from 1968 to 1977, after leading the Lübeck Opera, Kassel State Orchestra and WDR (West German Radio) Symphony Orchestra of Cologne. From 1977 to 1984 he was intendant and chief conductor of the Hamburg State Opera, vacating the post after his brother became the city’s mayor.
In 1984, he began his 18-year tenure as music director of the Cleveland Orchestra, which had been artistically adrift since the death of George Szell in 1970. Dohnányi soon restored the virtuosity and chamber-like clarity and transparency that had distinguished the orchestra in the Szell years. (“We give a great concert and George Szell gets a great review,” Dohnányi ruefully remarked.)
Throughout his career, Dohnányi ventured far beyond the standard Austro-German classical-romantic repertory, performing and recording American maverick composers such as Charles Ives and Carl Ruggles, music of the Second Vienna School, and modern and contemporary European works by Hans Werner Henze, Witold Lutoslawski, Harrison Birtwistle and Alfred Schnittke.
That catholicity was reflected in his recordings, which ranged from the symphonies of Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Brahms and Dvořák to the concertos for orchestra of Bartók and Lutoslawski, Berg’s “Wozzeck,” Schoenberg’s “Erwartung,” Edgard Varèse’s “Amériques” and Philip Glass’ Violin Concerto No. 1. One collection from Cleveland juxtaposed Mozart’s late symphonies with works by Anton Webern.
Dohnányi also served as principal conductor of London’s Philharmonia Orchestra (1997-2008) and chief conductor of the NDR (North German Radio) Symphony Orchestra of Hamburg (2004-10), and was a frequent guest of leading European and US orchestras and opera companies.
In a 2005 interview with Chicago broadcaster Bruce Duffie, Dohnányi recalled his career in operatic and orchestral conducting, and commented on the challenge of presenting great art to today’s audiences: “Entertainment is everything, and if you read ‘Don Juan in Hell,’ Bernard Shaw uses the expression, ‘Hell is where there is only entertainment.’ That’s about where we are at the moment, but it’s fun.”
POSTCRIPT: Among the younger conductors who worked with and were mentored by Dohnányi, one whose name will ring a bell with music lovers in this part of the world: Steven Smith, who was assistant conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra (1997-2003) and went on to become music director of the Richmond Symphony (2010-19) and conductor of productions by Virginia Opera, the Richmond Ballet and the Brevard Music Center Festival in North Carolina.
Question: What’s the No. 1 ear-worm in the history of Western music?
Answer: “Folia.”
Never heard of it? You’ve probably heard it, or at least some echo of it.
Early music mavens will recognize the name from its use in, and resulting nickname for, Arcangelo Corelli’s Violin Sonata in D minor, Op. 5, No. 12, published in 1700. Ultra-mavens will point to Jean-Baptiste Lully’s “Les folies d’Espagne” from 1672.
The tune – more a chord progression, really – is by that most prolific of composers, “anon.” It dates from the late 1400s, first played in Portugal or a neighboring region of Spain. It first circulated as a written score in Spain, titled “La Folía.”
In a literal English translation, its name would be “Follies,” but in most treatments it doesn’t sound frivolous. Originally an upbeat peasant dance tune, it slowed and often took on a moody cast as composers adopted and adapted it over the centuries.
Which composers? To Lully and Corelli, add Marin Marais, Francesco Geminiani, Johann Sebastian Bach, George Frideric Handel, Antonio Salieri, Franz Liszt, Sergei Rachmaninoff and, according to an online list I once perused, some 600 others. And they’re just the ones who’ve quoted “Folia” more or less directly. Some sonic sleuths hear intimations of the tune in a lot more music, classical and otherwise.
Andrea Valentino, writing for the BBC, explores the long and winding history of “Folia:”
My favorite “Folia” recording is “Teatro Lirico,” an album by guitarist-lutenist Stephen Stubbs and friends. The set ranges from Corelli and his Italian contemporaries to a suite from Slovakia by an unknown composer/arranger to Stubbs’ improvisations on the tune.
Here’s a taste:
And here’s the friskier 15th-century version, as recorded by an ensemble led by Jordi Savall:
From folk roots, classics grow: Corelli, Beethoven, Kodály, Alexander Reinagle, Florence Price and Carl Orff reimagine old songs and dance tunes of Iberia, Germany, Hungary, Slovakia, England, Scotland and early America.
1-3 p.m. EDT 1700-1900 UTC WDCE, University of Richmond 90.1 FM http://wdce.net
Corelli: Violin Sonata in D minor, Op. 5, No. 12 (“Follia”) Andrew Manze, violin Richard Egarr, harpsichord (Harmonia Mundi)
traditional (English, 16th century): “Greensleeves” The Broadside Band/Jeremy Barlow (Harmonia Mundi)
traditional (Anglo-American, 17th-19th centuries): “Barbara Allen” Custer LaRue, soprano (Dorian)
Alexander Reinagle: “Lee Rigg, a Scots Tune with Three Variations” Olivier Baumont, harpsichord (Erato)
Florence Price: “Five Folksongs in Counterpoint” Avalon String Quartet (Naxos)
Carl Orff & Gunnild Keetman: “Gassenhauer” (“Street Song”) (after Hans Neusiedler [Slovak/German, 16th century]) percussion ensemble/Carl Orff (RCA)
Beethoven: Clarinet Trio in B flat major, Op. 11 (“Gassenhauer”) Berkeley Ensemble (Resonus Classics)
traditional (Hungarian, medieval): “Fölszállott a páva” (“A peacock takes its perch”) (Zoltán Kodály arrangement) London Symphony Chorus/István Kertész (Decca Eloquence)
Kodály: “Variations on a Hungarian Folk Song” (“The Peacock”) London Symphony Orchestra/István Kertész (Decca Eloquence)
Samuel Huss, the Richmond Symphony’s principal trumpeter since 2018, has joined the Philadelphia Orchestra.
A graduate of the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, and Shepherd School of Music at Rice University in Houston, Huss also has performed with the orchestras of St. Louis, Detroit, Pittsburgh and Charlotte, Washington’s National Symphony Orchestra and Houston Grand Opera. In the 2024-25 school year, he taught at Virginia Commonwealth University.
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