WWUH Classical Programming – March 2022
Sunday Afternoon at the Opera… Sundays 1:00 – 4:30 pm
Evening Classics… Weekdays 4:00 to 7:00/ 8:00 pm
Drake’s Village Brass Band… Mondays 7:00-8:00 pm
(Opera Highlights Below)
Tuesday 1st
Cherubini: StringQuartet No. 2; Respighi: Trittico Botticelliano; R. Strauss: Tod und Verklarung; Chopin: Piano Concerto No. 2
Wednesday 2d
Louise Farrenc: Violin Sonata No. 2 in A Major, Op. 39; Dora Pejacevic: Piano Quartet in D Minor, Op. 25; J. S. Bach: Cantata for Quinquagesima Sunday [Estomihi, Sunday before Lent] "Herr Jesu Christ, wahr' Mensch und Gott", BWV 127; Elisabeth-Claude Jacquet de la Guerre: Cephale et Procris; Sofia Gubaidulina: Der Zorn Gottes (The Wrath of God)
Thursday 3d
Bruneau: L'attaque du moulin-Le jour tombe; Friskin: Piano Quintet in c; Moreno Torroba: Suite Castellana; Voormolen: Baron Hop Suite No. 2; Bonds: Troubled Water; Wigglesworth: Short Mass
Friday 4th
Arise, Sir Charlie Chaplin
Sunday 6th
Meehan: Abraham's Way; Fairouz: Poems and Prayers
Monday 7th
Roussel: Symphony #2; Prokofiev: Symphony-Concerto for Cello and Orchestra; Respighi: Concerto Gregoriano for Violin and Orchestra
Drake’s Village Brass Band…English Trumpet Virtuosi – Sound the Trumpets - From Shore to Shore
Tuesday 8th
Vivaldi: Concerto from La Stravaganza collection; MacDowell: Piano Concerto No. 2; Hovhaness: Symphony No. 1 “Exile”; Johann Quantz: Horn Concerto; Vieuxtemps: Cello Concerto No. 1
Wednesday 9th
Host’s choice
Thursday 10th
Buck: Festival Overture on the "Star Spangled Banner", Arise Shine for Thy Light is Come, Hymn to Music; Sarasate: Carmen Fantasy Op. 25, Danza Española No. 6: Zapateado Op. 23 No. 2; Honegger: Concerto da camera for Flute, Cor Anglais and String Orchestra
Friday 11th
Trios and Threes
Sunday 13th
Bach: St. Matthew Passion
Monday 14th
John Adams – 75th Birthday Tribute – Hallelujah Junction, Slonimsky’s Earbox, My Father Knew Charles Ives, Harmonielehre, Must the Devil Have All the Good Tune
Drake’s Village Brass Band…Tokyo Kosei Wind Orchestra, Frederick Fennell – Symphonic Songs for Band
Tuesday 15th
Haydn: Symphony No. 6; Robert Fuchs: Piano Concerto; Jean-Marie LeClair: Sonata for Violin & Piano; Halvorsan: Symphony No. 2; Christoph Forster: Horn Concerto
Wednesday 16th
Host’s choice
Thursday 17th
Arbeau: Belle que tiens ma vie, Ding! Dong! Merrily on High; Jacquet de la Guerre: Violin Sonata #2 in D; Zollner: Das Wandern ist des Mullers Lust; Rheinberger: Piano Trio No. 2 in A Op. 112; Newman: How the West Was Won (selections); Dodgson: Promenade II
Friday 18th
Music of the Emerald Isle
Sunday 20th
Dello Joio: The Trial at Rouen; Goossens: The Apocalypse
Monday 21st
Shostakovich: String Quartets #11and #12; Concerto for Orchestra of Bartok, Lutoslawski, Piston; Mussorgsky/Stokowski: Pictures at and Exhibition
Drake’s Village Brass Band…Los Angeles Philharmonic Trombone Ensemble
Tuesday 22d
Haydn: Symphony No. 7; Stamitz: Orchestral Quartet No. 2; Scriabin: Piano Concerto ; Vorisek: Symphony in D; Reger: Variations & Fugue for Orchestra on a Theme from Mozart; Gade: Sonata for Violin & Piano No. 2
Wednesday 23d
Host’s choice
Thursday 24th
Antes: Loveliest Immanuel; Maillart: Les Dragons de Villars Overture; Kaufman: Clarinet Concerto
Friday 25th
Composer new to me: Yasushi Akutagawa
Sunday 27th
Parry: Judith
Monday 28th
Prokofiev: Violin Concerto #2; Slatkin Conducts Slatkin and Cindy McTee
Drake’s Village Brass Band… Mark Nelson Tuba- New England Reveries
Tuesday 29th
Sir William Walton: Selections from his music for films; Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. “6”; Graun: Horn Concerto; F. X. Gebel: String Quartet in D; R. Schumann: Konzertstucke for 4 Horns; Atterberg: Symphony No. 2
Wednesday 30th
Elizabeth Maconchy: String Quartet No. 5; Anton Reicha: Wind Quintet in F Major, Op. 88, No. 6; J. S. Bach: Cantata for the Feast of Annunciation of Mary [Annunciation] "Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern", BWV 1; Ethel Smyth: Double Concerto for Horn and Violin in A Major; Jean-Baptiste Lully: La naissance de Venus, LWV 27; William Walton: Facade: An Entertainment by Edith Sitwell
Thursday 31st
Durante: Concerto No. 2 in g; Haydn: Piano Trio No. 39 in G 'Gypsy', String Quartet No. 62 in C "Emperor" Op. 76 No. 3, Symphony No. 94 in G "Surprise"; Schulz: Trio Sonata in a; Marteau: Clarinet Quintet in c Op. 13
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SUNDAY AFTERNOON AT THE OPERA
your "lyric theater" program
with Keith Brown
Programming for the month of March, 2022
SUNDAY MARCH 6th
Meehan,Abraham's Way, Fairouz, Poems and Prayers Ash Wednesday, March 2nd marks the beginning of the forty day penitential period of Lent in the traditional Christian calendar. In oldtime Catholic Europe (and in Protestant lands,too) the opera houses closed for the duration, and unstaged sacred oratorio replaced opera until after Easter. Following that tradition, lyric theater programming for this month switches over to oratorio and other sacred vocal music drawn mostly from Judeo-Christian classical music culture. On this first Lenten Sunday I feature an absolutely unique recording of a contemporary oratorio and give it its world premiere broadcast on WWUH. Rob Meehan (b. 1951) was a classical music broadcaster on WWUH back in the 1970's. This local guy has gone on to compose electronic music. For several years he has been perfecting his magnum opus, an electronic oratorio Abraham's Way (2017-21). It is entirely possible in electronic music technique to generate human singing voices and program them to sing in whatever language is required, both in chorus or solo capacity, and recreate the sounds of acoustic instruments,too. Rob Meehan prepared his own libretto for Abraham's Way, drawing upon ancient holy texts in Latin and Arabic, with English language quotations from the Bible and the verse of various modern poets, among them William Wordsworth. The conclusion of this musical meditation on the old religions, so says Rob Meehan: "Love is all there is." Rob Meehan's Abraham's Way is broadcast on compact discs I obtained from the composer himself. The oratorio will soon be available for audition on YouTube.
There's time remaining for more contemporary vocal music sung in Arabic and Hebrew. New York City-based composer Mohammed Fairouz (b. 1985) has Arabic roots. He has composed an oratorio Zabur ("Book of Psalms," 2013), which received its world premiere recording through the Naxos record label. You'll get to hear his Symphony No.3 ("Poems and Prayers," 2013), which is also oratorio-like and is scored for orchestra and chorus, with mezzo and baritone soloists. "Poems and Prayers" could be considered a "Symphony of Psalms," like the famous Stravinsky work. With its bilingual text it is overall a prayer for Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation. The world premiere recording of "Poems and Prayers" was made in Royce Hall, Los Angeles, with Neal Stulberg conducting the UCLA Philharmonia, the UCLA Chorale and UCLA University Chorus. The West Coast premiere of this work was recorded live in performance. A 2014 Sono Luminus
compact disc release.
SUNDAY MARCH 13th
TO BE ANNOUNCED
SUNDAY MARCH 20th
Dello Joio, The Trial at Rouen, Goossens, The Apocalypse Heresy, martyrdom and the Beast with Seven Heads and Ten Horns: all this is in store for your Lenten listening this Sunday, as I present two mid twentieth century works- the first an actual opera, the second an oratorio. Norman Dello Joio (1913-2008) wrote both music and libretto for The Trial at Rouen (1956), which was intended for television broadcast by the NBC Opera Theatre. The Italian-American composer came from a deeply Catholic background. His father was both a church organist and piano accompanist at the Met. As a boy he read of the lives of the Saints, so the story of the martyr Joan of Arc was familiar to him. Young Joan, the Maid of Orleans, in gender-bending military garb, rallied the French forces in the war against the English invaders. At Rouen the English had her put on trial for heresy by the Church's holy court of Inquisition. She was burned at the stake in 1431. Eventually, however, the Church had her canonized in 1920. The Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) and Odyssey Opera revived The Trial at Rouen in concert performance, as recorded at Mechanics Hall, Worcester, Mass. in 2017. Gil Rose directs the musical forces. Soprano Heather Buck stars as Joan. She does a great job in the role, in the opinion of Fanfare magazine's reviewer Michael DeSapio. He praises Dello Joio's music, too. He concludes his review: "Thank you, Gil Rose, the BMOP and Odyssey Opera, for giving us back this masterpiece..." (Fanfare, Mar/Apr,2021). The Trial at Rouen was released in 2020 on two compact discs through the proprietary BMOP Sound label.
Sir Eugene Goossens (1893-1962) came from a distinguished English musical family. Although he was primarily a conductor, like his father and grandfather, he was a considerable composer,too. He wrote music for his brother Leon, a virtuoso oboist. He also ghost-wrote a modernized arrangement of the music of Handel's Messiah for his colleague Sir Thomas Beecham. Goossens conducted orchestras here in America and in Australia. The Sydney Symphony Orchestra premiered his oratorio The Apocalypse in 1954. The composition of this work dates at least as far back as 1949. Because of the enormous performing forces required the Goossens Apocalypse has rarely been presented to the public. The Sydney Symphony gave it the world premiere recording it deserved, made live in performance in the Concert Hall of the Sydney Opera House in 1982. The concert was carried on radio by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Myer Fredman conducted the orchestra and the Sydney Philharmonic Choir, with six vocal soloists. The sonically stunning recording finally made it onto compact disc courtesy of the UK label Lyrita in 2018. The style of the Goossens oratorio was conservative for the 1950's. It seems to take up where Holst's The Planets leaves off. The Book of Revelation provided Goossens with scene after scene of visionary bliss or horror. This will not be the first time I have programmed a work with this title. An "electronic opera" called Apocalypse (1993) by Alice Shields went over the air on Sunday, October 2, 1994 on a silver disc issued by the American CRI record label.
SUNDAY MARCH 27th
Parry, Judith It has been a long time since I last featured the music of Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry (1848-1918), who was the most important composer in late Victorian England next to the most famous musical figure of the era, Sir Arthur Sullivan. I devoted the entire afternoon of Sunday, December 3, 2006 to the then brand new Chandos CD release of Parry's big choral compositions: The Soul's Ransom (1906), Blest Pair of Sirens (1887) and The Lotus Eaters (1892), etc. The only choral work for which Parry is still known today is his hymn Jerusalem, to William Blake's verse. British Labourites made this hymn into a workingman's anthem, sung at many public events. Any Victorian composer worth his salt was expected to try his hand at oratorio. To the genre Parry contributed his splendid Judith, or The Regeneration of Manasseh (1888). It was a rousing success when first heard at the annual Birmingham choral festival. Parry prepared his own libretto from the Apocryphal Old Testament Book of Judith, augmented by verses from the prophet Isaiah and the Psalms. So much of this rich Victorian musical heritage long ago passed out of the repertoire. The world premiere recording of Parry's Judith was made in 2019, again for release through the Chandos label of the UK. William Vann directs the London Mozart Players and Crouch End Festival Chorus. There's also a children's chorus and five vocal soloists. Soprano Sarah Fox is heard as the heroine of the Israelites, Judith, who saves the city of Jerusalem from the besieging Assyrian army and cuts off the head of their general Holofernes. She consoles the people upon the sacrifice of the Hebrew children to the monstrous idol Moloch: a sacrifice for which Manasseh, King of Judah, was held responsible.
