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WWUH Classical Programming
September 2025
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… Tuesdays 7:00-8:00 pm
Monday 1st
Jules Mouquet La Flûte de Pan, Op. 15; Johann Nepomuk Hummel Concerto for Trumpet and Orchestra in E Major Johann; Johannes Brahms Concerto in D, Op. 77: II: Adagio
Tuesday 2d
Grainger: In a Nutshell Suite; Glass Etudes 13-16; Anna Lapwood selections from FireDove; Rorem: End of Summer
Drake’s Village Brass Band Onyx Brass – Transatlantic
Wednesday 3rd
Host's Choice
Thursday 4th
Milhaud: Le boeuf sur le toit, Op. 58; Cabanilles: Diferencias de Folias; Mosonyi: Piano Concerto in e minor; Bruckner: Symphony No. 7 in E Major; Curzon: Dance of an Ostracised Imp.
Friday 5th
The Asylum Saxophone Quartet begins a romantic trip on the 20th Century Limited this special day
Sunday 7th
Prestini, Silec & Vavrek, The Old Man and the Sea, Lang, Eighth Blackbird
Monday 8th
4 Pieces from Wilhelm Peterson-Berger; Johannes Matthias Sperger Symphony in F Major: I. Allegro moderato ; Anton Arensky Variations on a Theme of Tchaikovsky, Op. 35a: Theme: Moderato; Anatole Fistoulari Ballet egyptien Op. 12 - Suite No.
Tuesday 9th
Glass: Etudes 17-20; Joplin: Piano Music; Peterson-Berger: Symphony #3; Villa-Lobos: String Quartet #2
Drake’s Village Brass Band Saito Kinen Orchestra Brass Ensemble – Live in Matsumoto 2025
Wednesday 10th
Etienne-Nicolas Mehul: Le tresor suppose: Overture; Vincenzo Righini: Il natal d'Apollo: Ove son? Qual'aure io spiro; Vincenzo Righini: Il natal d'Apollo: Ombra dolente; Luigi Cherubini: Sonata for Horn and Orchestra No. 1 (version for horn and string quartet); Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Sinfonia concertante in E-Flat Major, K. 364; Richard Wagner: Die Feen: Overture; Richard Wagner: Die Feen, Act I: Wo find' ich dich, wo wird mir Trost?; Henry Charles Litolff: Serenade, Op. 91 (version for violin and piano); Florent Schmitt: A tour d'anches, Op. 97; Sergei Prokofiev: Symphony No. 1 in D Major, Op. 25, "Classical"; Antonin Dvorak: 2 Pieces for Solo Piano, Op. posth., B. 188; Paolo Tosti: Melodies (Complete); Joachim Raff: Trovatore et Traviata, 2 salon paraphrases after Verdi for Solo Piano, Op. 70; Gabriel Faure: Piano Trio in D Minor, Op. 120; Arthur Sullivan: Overture di ballo; Charles Villiers Stanford: Irish Rhapsody No. 3 in D Major for Cello and Orchestra, Op. 137; Samuel Coleridge-Taylor: Romance of the Prairie Lilies (arr. P.E. Fletcher for orchestra); Edward German:
Thursday 11th
Lachner: Septet in E-Flat Major; Barber: Adagio for Strings, Op. 10; Boyce: Symphony No. 4 in F Major; Kuhlau: Flute Quintet No. 3 in A Major Op. 51; Buchner: Sonata No. 21 in G Major, Sonata No. 22 in c minor; Part: Spiegel im Spiegel; Secret Scherzos by Shostakovich, Rachmaninoff, Suk, Brahms, Stravinsky, Freitas Branco, Bazzini, Bloch.
Friday 12th
Music of Dmitri Shostakovitch
Sunday 14th
Blamont, Le Retour des Dieux...
Monday 15th
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 6 Minuets, K599 I C Major ; Alexandre Luigini Royal Philharmonic Orchestra/Anatole Fistoulari Ballet egyptien Op. 12 - Suite No.1; Horn Concerto No. 6 in E flat (1996 Digital Remaster): I. Allegro moderato
Tuesday 16th
Beach: Canticle of the Sun; Carpenter: Violin Sonata; Lloyd: Symphony #7 “Proserpine”; Glass: Violin Concerto #1
Drake’s Village Brass Band Elgar Howarth Tribute #1 – Howarth and the Grimethorpe Colliery Band Music of W. Hogarth Lear and others
Wednesday17th
Host's Choice
Thursday 18th
Strauss, Jr: Die Fledermaus Overture; Bach: Concerto for Two Violins in d minor BWV1043; Beethoven: String Quartet No. 4 in c minor Op. 18 No. 4; Scarlatti: Keyboard Sonata in E Major K. 380; Chopin: Scherzo No. 3 in c-sharp minor Op. 39; Haydn: Symphony No. 39 in g minor; Shostakovich: Suite for Variety Orchestra ‘Jazz Suite No. 2’; Sibelius: Valse triste Op. 44 No. 1; Wagner: Der Fliegende Holländer Overture; Mozart: Variations on ‘Ah, vous dirai-je, Maman' in C Major K. 265; Tchaikovsky: The Nutcracker Suite Op. 71a; Handel: Solomon Sinfonia The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba; Paderewski: Polish Fantasy in g-sharp minor Op. 19.
Friday 19th
What’s new in the library?
Sunday 21st
Verdi, Ernani, Callas sings Ponchielli
Monday 22d
Giovanni Punto Punto: Horn Concerto No. 6 in E-Flat Major: II. Adagio cantabile; Igor Stravinsky Le Sacre du Printemps: Tableau I: L'Adoration de la terre ;Johann Sebastian Bach Suite for Solo Cello No. 3 in C Major, BWV 1009; Artificii Musicali 6 Sonate a Tre, Op. 2, No. 5 in E Major: I. Adagio; Hasse: 6 Sonate a Tre, Op. 2 EG
Tuesday 23rd
Drake’s Favs – Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique; Adams: Grand Pianola Music; Herrmann: The Ghost and Mrs. Muir
Drake Village Brass Band Elgar Howarth Tribute #2 – Philip Jones Brass Ensemble Just Brass
Wednesday 24th
Host's Choice
Thursday 25th
Rameau: Dardanus Suite; Shostakovich: Piano Concerto No. 1 in c minor for piano, trumpet & strings Op. 35; Pinto: 2 Rondos; Pichl: Symphony in D Major Z. 16, 'Diana'; Suchon: Fantasy for Violin & Orchestra; Guridi Bidaola: Ten Basque Melodies.
Friday 26th
Celebrating World’s Biggest Coffee Morning Day
Sunday 28th
Massenet, Thais
Monday 29th
Artificii Musicali 6 Sonate a Tre, Op. 2, No. 5 in E Major: I. Adagio; Hasse: 6 Sonate a Tre, Op. 2 EG; Horn Concerto No. 6 in E flat Allegro moderato
Tuesday 30th
Shostakovich: Violin Concerto #1 in A Minor, Op. 99; Price: Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight; Reich: Jacob’ Ladder
Drake’s Village Brass Band Elgar Howarth Tribute #3 -Howarth Music for Brass Band
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SUNDAY AFTERNOON AT THE OPERA
your "lyric theater" program
with Keith Brown
Programming for September 2025
SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 7th
Prestini, Silec and Vavrek, The Old Man and the Sea,Lang/Eighth Blackbird, Composition as Explanation The first Sunday in September I normally reserve for an American opera that deals with the working people of the country. I try to program it on the Sunday before the Monday Labor Day holiday. This year, however, that holiday immediately followed my designated Delius Sunday, the last one in August, with its special programming, so I have bumped forward to this Sunday two vocal works by twenty first century American composers who have set to music the words of two American literary greats of the twentieth century. The Old Man and the Sea is a chamber opera adapted from the famous 1952 book by Ernest Hemingway, and it's the perfect thing to listen to by the seaside at the end of Summertime. It's the first-ever approved operatic treatment of Hemingway's last literary creation. Paola Prestini (b. 1975) is credited as composer of the music, with a libretto prepared by Karmina Silec and Royce Vavrek. The intimate scoring is for cello, percussion and electronics. The principal vocal parts go to two baritones: one as author doubling as narrator, and the other portraying Santiago the aged Cuban fisherman. Subsidiary roles are taken by a female alto, a male countertenor and a coloratura soprano, augmented at certain moments by a mixed chorus, the Phoenix Chorale. Paola Prestini's The Old Man and the Sea was released to the public through VIA Records at the end of the Summer of 2024. Thanks to Rob Meehan, former classics deejay here at WWUH, for a download of this recording onto compact disc. Rob Meehan is a local record collector specializing in the alternative musical stylings of the twentieth and twenty first centuries. He also supplied me with the 2024 Cedille Records CD release of David Lang's Composition as Explanation (2023), his setting of a text by Gertrude Stein. Hemingway attended Stein's salon for artists in Paris in the 1920's. Composer David Lang (b. 1957) conceived a theatrical performance piece for six performers, who are both vocalists and instrumentalists. Together they form Eighth Blackbird, a chamber ensemble similar to what's required in the Prestini composition, only without the electronics. The world premiere recording of Composition as Explanation was made onstage at the Court Theatre of the University of Chicago.
SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 14th
Blamont, Le Retour des Dieux sur la Terre, Le Caprice d'Erato Now that the students have returned to campus, it's high time for the Olympian gods to return to earth! At least, that's the premise for a splendid musical divertissement presented before the French king Louis XV for his marriage celebrations at Fountainebleau palace on September 5, 1725. It's one of two such works offered up in a new Chateau de Versailles Spectacles CD release. The other one, Le Caprice d'Erato, was presented to celebrate the birth of Louis' son the Dauphin at the palace of Versailles in 1729. The music for both works was provided by court composer Colin de Blamont (1690-1760). Blamont was one of a cluster of composers in the employ of the royal Bourbons in the later baroque era in the eighteenth century. Both of his divertissements went on to public performances before Parisian audiences on later dates, at either the Concert Spirituel or the Academie Royale de Musique, now known as the Paris Opera. The two world premiere recordings of these works were issued as number 26 in the Collection Opera Francoise through Chateau de Versailles. They were recorded in November of 2021 in Helsinki, Finland. Alexis Kossenko directs the Helsinki Baroque Orchestra, a period instrument ensemble, and the chorus Les Chantres du Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles, plus an international cast of vocal soloists.
SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 21st
Verdi, Ernani, Callas sings Ponchielli Giuseppe Verdi's fifth opera Ernani (1844) sets forth a tale of political intrigue in the Spain of the Conquistadors. The story centers upon a nobleman of Aragon, one Don Juan, called Ernani, who has been forced to turn outlaw. Amidst the struggle between rivals for the crown of the Holy Roman Emperor Ernani is also a rival for the hand of Donna Elvira. The bandit/nobleman becomes entangled in an assination plot. In the end a fateful oath binds him to commit suicide. Ernani is as bombastic as nineteenth century romantic opera can be. Its improbable sequence of twists and turns was derived from a play by the French author Victor Hugo. Another playwright and music critic George Bernard Shaw had a special affection for this opera. He recognised that in Ernani the young Verdi had created a score full of passionate melody. Way back on Sunday, March 10,1985 I presented a now historic EMI/Angel LP release of Ernani made live in performance in 1982 at Milan's famous La Scala opera house, where Verdi's early operas had all been premiered. Riccardo Muti conducted the La Scala orchestra and chorus. Cast in the title role was the superstar Mexican tenor Placido Domingo. Then came another, even older recording of Ernani broadcast on Sunday, November 9, 2014, with Carlo Bergonzi as the heroic bandit. This was a 2012 Sony CD release of an archival broadcast airtape dating from December 1, 1962. Thomas Schippers directed the musical resources of the Metropolitan Opera of New York. Today listen for a studio recording of Ernani, also now historic, from 1987, preserving for posterity the final recorded collaboration between the Italian superstar tenor Luciano Pavarotti and that diva of divas the Australian soprano Joan Sutherland as the love interest Elvira. Sutherland's husband Richard Bonynge conducts the Orchestra and Chorus of the Welsh National Opera. This Ernani comes to us on two Decca/London compact discs, released in 1998. Keep listening for the voice of yet another revered operatic diva of the mid twentieth century, the American soprano Maria Callas, singing selections from the operas of Verdi's younger contemporary Amilcare Ponchielli.
SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 28st
Massenet, Thais Among the thirty-or-so operas of Jules Massenet , his Thais was the one that excited a scandal, when the the soprano for whom Massenet had written the title role, the American diva Sybil Sanderson, exposed her breasts to the audience during the opening night performance in 1894- this, eleven years before the similarly scandalous premiere of Richard Strauss' Salome. Massenet's opera is based on a novel by Anatole France about religious hypocrisy. The Alexandrine courtesan Thais, born and baptized a Christian, has lapsed into paganism. The young monk Athanael redeems her and she dies in a convent while he is confessing how all along he was mad with desire for her. Massenet's music so well depicts Alexandria as "Sin City," the Hellenic New York City of the fourth century AD. The orchestration is colorful and lush. Even the vocal lines are luscious to listen to. Athanael is one of opera's finest roles for baritone, and many divas have taken up Thais to acclaim. The American soprano Anna Moffo sang it opposite French baritone Gabriel Bacquier, as heard in a 1975 RCA Red Seal release on LP. Julius Rudel led the New Philharmonia and Ambrosian Opera Chorus. That was the recording I broadcast on Sunday, March 3, 2013. There's a year 2000 release on Decca CD's starring Renee Fleming, with Thomas Hampson as Athanael. The actual studio recording sessions date from 1997 and '98 in Bordeaux, France. It would be "difficult to surpass" this recording, so says reviewer Joel Kasov of Fanfare magazine (Jan/Feb, 2000 issue). All previous recordings of Thais are incomplete and inadequate by comparison.
keithsbrown1948@gmail.com
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