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Here is a link to CT Blues Society with events and venues.

For April Fools: The Unbegun Symphony and The Unfinished Symphony (finished)

Dvorak, Saint Ludmila, Stabat Mater  

Drake’s Village Brass Band – Annapolis Brass Quintet – 1^st album Eponymously named.s

Keiser, Der blutige und sterbende Jesus Stolzel, Ein Lammlein geht und tragt die Schuld

Happy Passover! It’s Hosts choice as I celebrate with a Seder in the dining car

Richter, La deposizione della Croce, Holst, The Hymn of Jesus

Dyson, The Canterbury Pilgrims

SUNDAY AFTERNOON AT THE OPERA

SUNDAY APRIL 3RD Dvorak, Saint Ludmila,Stabat Mater Lyric theater programming for this fifth Sunday in Lent remains in oratorio mode, since by tradition the opera houses in old Catholic Europe (and in Protestant lands, too) remained closed until after Easter. One of my favorite sacred choral works is Antonin Dvorak's Svata Ludmila ("Saint Ludmila," 1885-86). Since I first presented it on Sunday, April 6,1986 I have made use of the same old Supraphon LP set in our station's classical music record library. It preserves a now historic and thoroughly Czech interpretation of the work, recorded in 1965. Vaclav Smetacek led the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus, with native Czech speaking vocal soloists. I drew upon the same Supraphon vinyl discs for Lenten/Holy Week broadcasts in 2007, 2013 and 2019. For my own personal record collection I have acquired the 2017 Naxos release of Saint Ludmila. Recorded in 2015 in Bratislava, in what is now the independent Slovakian state (no longer part of former communist Czechoslovakia), this new version of Dvorak's oratorio has a few cuts to the score. Leos Svarovsky directs the Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir. Again, the vocal soloists are native Slovak or Czech speaking. Eleven hundred years ago the pagan Czechs received Christian missionaries. A Bohemian princess converted to Catholicism. In a power struggle within the royal family of Bohemia she was assassinated and soon came to be revered as a martyr, and Bohemia's patron saint. Dvorak's Saint Ludmila premiered at the Leeds Festival in England in 1886. The English public had welcomed new oratorios since the time of Handel, and the Victorians also very much liked Dvorak's musical style.

   Dvorak's musical treatment of the Latin devotional poem Stabat Mater (1877) established his international reputation as a composer. After its premiere in Prague in 1880 it quickly became his most popular choral work. The Stabat Mater has been set to music by so many composers going at least as far back as Josquin des Prez. The poem describes the emotional torment of the Virgin Mary as she beholds her crucified Son. The Dvorak Stabat Mater op. 58 has been frequently recorded, making it easy for me to give it an airing at least four times in my timeslot between 1991 and 2003, with a recording of the earlier 1876 version with piano accompaniment coming on Sunday, March 29,2009. Hear it once again this Sunday in full orchestral scoring as taped in monaural sound in a 1953 radio broadcast from Berlin. The Hungarian conductor Ferenc Fricsay directed the RIAS Symphony Orchestra and the Choir of St. Hedwig's Cathedral of Berlin with four vocal soloists. The German Relief label has issued a series of airtapes like this one from the 1950's on silver disc.

SUNDAY APRIL 10TH Keiser, Der blutige und sterbende Jesus, Stolzel, Ein Lammlein geht und tragt die Schuld Palm Sunday begins Holy Week, and in that week the Lenten penitential period comes to an end. On Good Friday the Passion of Christ is traditionally recounted to the faithful as given in one of the four Gospel accounts. The most famous of all the musical settings of the Passion is undoubtedly Bach's St. Matthew Passion (1728), which you've already heard on this program in Steve Petke's prerecorded presentation on Sunday, March 13th. Listen this Palm Sunday for not one but two baroque Passiontide oratorios by two different contemporaries of J. S. Bach. Neither of these are settings of New Testament scripture; rather, they are pious meditations upon the Passion by eighteenth century German literati. Reinhard Keiser (1674-1739) was primarily an opera composer. He wrote German language works for Hamburg's prestigious Goose Market opera house. In addition, like Bach in Leipzig, he had been appointed Kantor at the most important Lutheran church in town, the Hamburg Kathedral. Keiser's St. Mark Passion (1707) was published and subsequently performed all over Lutheran Germany. I broadcast a recording of it on Palm Sunday of 1997. His Passion Oratorio Der blutige und sterbende Jesus ("The Bloodied and Dying Jesus," 1705, rev. 1729) premiered not at the Kathedral but in a chapel nearby and employed opera singers and musicians from the Goose Market Theater. Keiser's music for this oratorio is more operatic than what he wrote for his St. Mark Passion. The poetic text for "The Bloodied Jesus" leans heavily upon the Gospel of Matthew. Hear it this Palm Sunday in its presumed world premiere recording for the German cpo label (2 CD package). It was made in 2018 with the singers of Cantus Thuringia and period instrument players of Capella Thuringia, Bernhard Klapprott conducting. Fanfare magazine's reviewer James A. Altena says it is well recorded, expertly sung and played, and constitutes "...an unexpectedly treasurable find..." (Fanfare,Nov/Dec, 2019 issue).

   Gottfried Heinrich Stolzel (1690-1749) wrote some opera but was primarily a composer for the church. He held a post at Gotha. Bach thought very highly of him and performed Stolzel's numerous sacred cantatas in Leipzig. Bach also saw to it that Stolzel's Passion oratorio Ein Lammlein geht und tragt die Schuld ("A Little Lamb goes forth and bears the Guilt of the World," 1720?,1731) was performed on Good Friday of 1734 at Leipzig's Thomaskirche. Stolzel's "Lamb" oratorio was not published, but its score circulated in manuscript copies outside of Gotha. Two such manuscripts have survived and served as the basis for the world premiere recording of this long neglected masterwork. Hungarian conductor Gyorgy Vashegyi directs the Purcell Choir and Orfeo Orchestra, with four Hungarian vocal soloists. Recorded in Budapest in 2018, the "Little Lamb" comes to us on a single Glossa compact disc. Writing for Fanfare (Jan/Feb,2020) reviewer David Reznick gave it his highest possible recommendation. Stolzel's Christmas oratorio from 1728 has also been recorded and is available on disc courtesy of the German MDG label. You'll get to hear it on this program as performed by Handel's Company come December.

SUNDAY APRIL 17TH Richter, La deposizione della Croce, Holst, The Hymn of Jesus Easter programming this year picks up right where the two Palm Sunday Passion oratorios leave off. Immediately following the suffering and death of Jesus Christ comes the deposition from the Cross, His interment in the tomb and ultimately the Resurrection. La deposizione della Croce (1748) is also a Passion oratorio, but it focuses on the taking down of Christ's body and the emotional reactions to His demise from close witnesses. The composer Franz Xaver Richter (1709-89) was Bohemian by birth and Catholic by religion. He was a member of the Mannheim School of composers associated with the founder of the famed Mannheim Orchestra, his Bohemian colleague Johann Stamitz. Richter's style merges the Baroque with the progressive "gallant" style of early Classicism looking toward Gluck. Richter wrote many symphonies; he helped to develop the symphonic form. Later in life he wrote sacred music for Strasbourg cathedral. His Deposition oratorio dates from his earlier Mannheim period. With its Italian language libretto it is like the Lenten oratorios then performed in Vienna, which were essentially Italian opere serie. Richter's La deposizione received its world premiere recording in 2016 for the Czech label Supraphon. Roman Valek directs the Czech Ensemble Baroque Orchestra and Choir and the five vocal soloists'

   For an Easter Resurrectional exultation listen next to The Hymn of Jesus (1920) by Gustav Holst. Holst wrote this brief choral work immediately after finishing his famous orchestral suite The Planets. The dreamy sound seems to pick up where the concluding movement "Neptune,The Mystic" trails off into the Cosmos, so you can imagine The Hymn of Jesus is way out there in Gnostic outer space. Holst himself translated into English verse a second century AD Greek hymn found in the apocryphal Acts of St. John. That great interpreter of English music, Sir Adrian Boult recorded it in 1962 for Decca with the BBC Chorus and BBC Symphony Orchestra. I last broadcast The Hymn of Jesus from a 1989 London CD reissue on Sunday, March 10, 1991.

SUNDAY APRIL 24TH Dyson, The Canterbury Pilgrims "When that April with his showers sweet/ The drought of March hath pierced to the root." So begins the Prologue to Geoffrey Chaucer's immortal Canterbury Tales. George Dyson (1893-1964) set the Prologue to music in 1931 as a kind of secular oratorio he called The Canterbury Pilgrims. Dyson's music is very much in the line of Elgar, only perhaps even more vigorous and coloristic. Martin Anderson, in writing about the world premiere recording of Dyson's work, says it's like "The Dream of Gerontius without the mysticism." (Fanfare, Sept/Oct '97 issue) Anderson praises conductor Richard Hickox (now deceased) in his equally vigorous interpretation of this onetime favorite of English choral societies. Dyson's oratorio fell out of favor as the twentieth century proceeded. So the 1996 Chandos studio recording, the world premiere recording, was something of an attempt at revival, to reacquaint the public with the worthiness of Dyson's music. Hickox directed the London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. Piggybacked on the two-CD Chandos issue is a short choral ode to the city of London' In Honour of the City (1928), which is Dyson's setting of the Scots poet William Dunbar's poem of praise. The old Scots dialect of Dunbar's verse is close to Chaucer's Middle English. As you might expect, Dyson's music employs the Westminster chimes as a kind of leitmotif. I last presented  The Canterbury Pilgrims on this program on Sunday, April 19, 1998.

http://thevirtuosi.org/

The Hartford Choralehttp://www.hartfordchorale.org/The Hartford Chorale is a volunteer not-for-profit organization that presents, on a symphonic scale, masterpieces of great choral art throughout southern New England and beyond, serving as the primary symphonic chorus for the Greater Hartford community. Through its concerts and collaborations with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra and other organizations, the Hartford Chorale engages the widest possible audiences with exceptional performances of a broad range of choral literature, providing talented singers with the opportunity to study and perform at a professional level.

The 70+ year old New Britain Symphony Orchestra is a professional orchestra which presents several concerts each season in the Greater New Britain area, performing works from all periods in a wide range of musical styles. In addition to its full orchestra concerts under the direction of Music Director and Conductor, Toshiyuki Shimada, including a free concert for children, members of the orchestra perform in various free chamber music concerts during the concert season.