Musica della sera

Pro Pacem

This week’s show was quite a mixed bag: keyboard music of Scarlatti and romantic variations thereof by Walter Gieseking, a sonata by post-Baroque Blasco de Nebra, Bach’s Cantata 140, Wachet auf!, Italian and Italian-style Dutch baroque concertos, Greensleeves, Pachelbel’s celebrated Canon in D, European and Middle Eastern music on the theme of peace and finishing with 20th Century Spanish art song.

Stream on demand by hitting the play button on the KUSP Music Player just to the right of this post.  (Show is available till 6/20/2013).

─NM

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Schubert Soiré: “Ein Schubert-Abend in einem Wiener Bürgerhause” by Julius Schmid

─NM

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Opinion expressed there and here is our own and doesn’t reflect that of the station.

Flash Mob – Ode an die Freude ( Ode to Joy ) Beethoven Symphony No.9

In a streetside reversal of Haydn’s Farewell Symphony, the musicians gradually appear to perform Beethoven’s triumphal symphonic affirmation of humanity.

─N.M.

Composers Johannes Brahms and Clara Schumann maintained a close friendship over many years

Romantics

by Lisel Mueller

Johannes Brahms and Clara Schumann
The modern biographers worry
“how far it went,” their tender friendship.
They wonder just what it means
when he writes he thinks of her constantly,
his guardian angel, beloved friend.
The modern biographers ask
the rude, irrelevant question
of our age, as if the event
of two bodies meshing together
establishes the degree of love,
forgetting how softly Eros walked
in the nineteenth century, how a hand
held overlong or a gaze anchored
in someone’s eyes could unseat a heart,
and nuances of address, not known
in our egalitarian language
could make the redolent air
tremble and shimmer with the heat
of possibility. Each time I hear
the Intermezzi, sad
and lavish in their tenderness,
I imagine the two of them
sitting in a garden
among late-blooming roses
and dark cascades of leaves,
letting the landscape speak for them,
leaving nothing to overhear.

“Romantics” by Lisel Mueller, from Alive Together: New and Selected Poems. © Louisiana State University, 1995, a poem for May 21, 2013, from The Writer’s Almanac.

─N.M.

This evening’s Musica della sera featured an interview with Niel Warren and Jean Laroche, members of the Santa Cruz Chorale, about their concert this weekend, highlighting the music of Ralph Vaughan Williams and the music that inspired him.

Click here to hear the interview (without the accompanying music)!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

The Brooklyn-based string quartet sat down with an enthusiastic Tom Ashbrook for On Point radio a couple weeks ago to talk about their music and perform in studio.

The host tells how when he first heard their music by chance it was a sudden revelation; he saw the group blazing new paths for the age-old classical tradition, with a fresh, energetic, eclectic drive for discovery and wonder. Nonplused, impatient to understand, he pressed this idea on them, asking what they were trying to say with this approach to music, but they just seem to be having fun, expressing themselves, exploring their common interests in a variety of cultural traditions, playing the classics, accepting commissions, and composing their own music; i.e., driven by wide-ranging global interests, blazing their own personal trails to the next gratifying new performance opportunity.

Listen to the show online here, or subscribe to it on iTunes.

Brooklyn Rider (photo: Sarah Small)

Say string quartet and you’ll think classical. Say classical and you may think old. Over. But in the right hands, everything old is new again, and then some.

Take two violins, a viola, a cello. Add the world. Persian, Silk Road, Bartok, Beethoven, Roma, klezmer, Minnesota, Brooklyn, Philip Glass – and you’ve got Brooklyn Rider. The spell-casting, trail-blazing string quartet out of Brooklyn and all over.

This hour, On Point: they’re with us live. Brooklyn Rider and their latest album – “A Walking Fire.”

–Tom Ashbrook

The four members of Brooklyn Rider, the Brooklyn-based string quartet. Their new album, out this week, is “A Walking Fire.”

Nicholas Cords, violist.

Johnny Gandelsman, violinist.

Colin Jacobsen, violinist.

Eric Jacobsen, cellist.

Brooklyn Rider (Photo: Sarah Small)

Read more about the show and comment at On Point’s blog entry: Classical Music’s Future Sound: From Brooklyn to Persia and Beyond

─NM

The Sequence “Dies Irae” in the Liber Usualis

The Liber Usualis is a book of commonly used Gregorian chants in the Catholic tradition, compiled by the monks of the Abbey of Solesmes in France.

This week offers a healthy dose of Gregorian Chant sung by a variety of groups, as well as the sublime a capella music of French Renaissance composer Antoine Busnoys. Also, a fair amount of Debussy, and a sprinkling of Elgar and Domenico Scarlatti.

You can stream this program at your convenience through June 6, 2013 using the KUSP Music Show Player there to the right →

─NM

Creative staging of Handel’s Messiah, “O Death, Where is Thy Sting”

A Sacred Oratorio in three parts by
Georg Friedrich Händel.

Libretto by Charles Jennens

Staged version by Claus Guth

Susan Gritton, Soprano
Cornelia Horak, Soprano
Martin Pöllmann, Knabensopran
Bejun Mehta, Countertenor
Richard Croft, Tenor
Florian Boesch, Bass

Arnold Schönberg Chor
Ensemble Matheus
Dir. Jean-Christophe Spinosi

Wien, Theater an der Wien
April 2009

─NM

Featured here is a brief excerpt from a documentary about British trumpet virtuoso Alison Balsom by Richard Dunkley . What follows are several (thirteen!) stills from the film that also serve as links to music videos of some her outstanding performances from a variety of sources (only the Thalben-Ball elegy is audio only).

Video: We did a short variation of the film which was filed away and literally forgotten until editor Simon Sharp showed it to me recently. It is a beautiful cut, concentrating on Alison’s creative process rather than celebrity, with different music from the main film. Since then Alison has won the Classical BRITS again. ─Richard Dunkley

12th Century English Church where Alison Balsom practices on her trumpet.

Video: In concert, Alison Balsom performs a capella Claude Debussy’s Syrinx.

Trudging through the snow Alison Balsom brings her trumpet and her cup of coffee to practice in a Medieval stone church..

Video: Here Alison performs on the valveless natural trumpet, the brief overture from Händel’s: Atalanta

Entering the church.

Video: Handel – Birthday Ode for Queen Anne: Eternal source of light divine, Trevor Pinnock and the English Concert. Alison Balsom on natural trumpet with countertenor Iestyn Davies

Practicing inside the church in stained glass light.

Video: In concert, performing Haydn’s trumpet concerto in E-flat major.

In this profile Alison Balsom looks a little like Julie Christie in Dr. Zhivago.

Video: In Concert in Germany: Alison Balsom performs the Queen of the Night aria from Mozart’s the Magic Flute, receives a heavy award, and gives thanks in German.

Stretching after a long practice session.

Video: Beautiful baroque ornamentation in this Presto from a Vivaldi concerto.

Working out phrasing, etc., at the piano.

Video: Alison Balsom demonstrates triple-tonguing and discusses other technical demands of Enesco’s remarkable “Legend” before performing it.

Alison writes performance notes on her score.

Video: Alison Balsom talks a little about preparations for an album of Italian concertos.

Performing outside with dancers.

Video: In Concert, Ástor Piazzolla’s Libertango

The glam side of being a beautiful blond trumpet virtuoso.

Video: Rodion Shchedrin’s composition “A la Albeniz”.

Sashaying playfully before an appearance.

Video: Sweet melancholy in this Elegy by George Thalben-Ball, with Quentin Thomas on organ.

The remarkable dress Alison Balsom wore at the 2009 Classical Brits Awards where she won Female Artist of the Year

Video: Alison Balsom’s American television debut on The David Letterman Show. Hard to play trumpet when you’re smiling, but she manages. Dave was demonstrably wowed by this performance of the finale of Alessandro Marcello’s celebrated concerto.

Ta da!

Video: Alison, trumpet in hand, walks up through the middle of the audience to the stage and performs the lively rondo from Johann Nepomuk Hummel’s trumpet concerto.

─Nicholas Mitchell

UPDATE:

And! She tweets!

Thanks – was v fun “@puxxled: Dave Letterman truly wowed by Alison Balsom’s performance. http://youtu.be/IQF19eNf8OI  #classical @AliBalsom”

3:26 PM – 17 May 13

Jack Cushman, Flickr Collage

By offspring request (Gabriel Mitchell, age 10), this week’s Musica della sera features quite a bit of flute music at the end of the show, but not before quite a bit of trumpet music, piano music, and organ music: playlist.  Stream on demand with the KUSP Music Show Player, just to the right of these words.  (Available till 5/23/2013)

Watch this music blog space, because I will be showcasing the art of trumpet virtuoso Alison Balsom before the day is out.

─NM

Follow us on Twitter: Meera and Nicholas and on Facebook: Meera and Nicholas
Opinion expressed there and here is our own and doesn’t reflect that of the station.