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WWUH Classical Programming
June 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
Sunday 1st
Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
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Monday 2nd
Wagner Tristan end Isolde; Bedřich Smetana Czech Dances II, JB 1:114: No. 7; Carlos Salzedo Tango Carlos Salzedo; Gould : Boogie-Woogie Etude; Will Duchon Prelude In D Major, Op. 23, No. 4
Tuesday 3d
Bloch Concerto Grosso #1; Williams: Sea Sketches for String Orchestra; Kapustin: Piano Sonata #2; Bernstein: The Age of Anxiety (Symphony #2 for Piano and Orchestra); Gregg Smith Singers-The Great Sentimental Age Part 2
Drake’s Village Brass Band: The ABA Commemorative Recording Series – John R. Bourgeois and the United States Marine Band
Wednesday 4th
Franz Liszt, The Mephisto Waltzes; J.S. Bach, Brandenburg Concert #1; J.S. Bach, Cantata #131, “Aus der Tiefe”; W.A. Mozart, Piano Concerto #17; W.A. Mozart, Missa Brevis in F Major; Christopher Tin, The Lost Birds; Joel Puckett, Concert Duo
Thursday 5th
Benatzky: The White Horse Inn: It Must Be Wonderful Indeed; Tubin: Estonian Dance Suite; Lvov: Violin Concerto; Sainton: The Island, Moby Dick: Sea Music; Somervell: Piano Concerto in a minor 'Highland'.
Friday 6th
Visiting Connecticut Summerfest past – 2025 concerts begin a week from tonight
Sunday 8th
Donizetti, La Favorite (original French version)
Monday 9th
Johannes Brahms Hungarian Dances Nos. 1 - 21: No. 1 in G minor, No. 3 in F and No. 6 in D flat; Yo-Yo Ma Arabian Waltz Rabih Abou-Khalil;
Samuel Zyman Flute Concerto: I. Allegro assai Samuel Zyman
Tuesday 10th
Honegger: Judith – A Biblical Music Drama; Gregg Smith Singers – The Great Sentimental Age Part 3; Price: Piano Quintet; Prokofiev: Symphony #3
Drake’s Village Brass Band: Slide Action – Rebuild
Wednesday 11th
Rossini: L'ingannofelice: Overture; John Field: Piano Concerto No. 5 in C Major, H. 39, "L'incendie par l'Orage"; Carl Maria von Weber: Symphony No. 1 in C Major, Op. 19, J. 50; Mena, Juanjo; Daniel Francois Esprit Auber: Fra Diavolo, S. 18: Overture; Daniel Francois Esprit Auber: Fra Diavolo, S. 18: Or son sola; Camille Saint-Saëns: Oboe Sonata in D Major, Op. 166; Vincent d’Indy: Lied, Op. 19 (version for cello and piano); Jules Massenet: Suite No. 1, Op. 13; Henri Herz: 3 Nocturnes caractéristiques, Op. 45: No. 1. La dolcezza; Ottorino Respighi: 5 Canti all'antica, P. 71: No. 5. Canzone di Re Enzo; Franz Liszt: Spirto gentil from Donizetti's La Favorite, S400a; Emilie Mayer: Piano Quartet in E-Flat Major; John Knowles Paine: As You Like It Overture, Op. 28; Edward MacDowell: Romance for Cello and Orchestra, Op. 35; Henry Kimball Hadley: Symphony No. 4 in D Minor, Op. 64, "North, East, South, and West";
Thursday 12th
Nordraak: Maria Stuart: Purpose, Valse Caprice; Grieg: Funeral March for Rikard Nordraak; Tansman: Suite for Bassoon and Piano; Strauss: Der Rosenkavalier: Suite; Strauss: Roses from the South.
Friday 13th
“The Future Is Now” - Music from my my set-asides for the future
Sunday 15th
“The Future Is Now” - Music from my my set-asides for the future
Monday 16th
Heitor Villa-Lobos Harmonica Concerto, Op. 86, W524: I. Allegro moderato; Michel Colombier: Piano Concerto: Fast-Vigorous
Tuesday 17th
Coleridge-Taylor: Hiawatha’s Departure; Wallen: Dances for Orchestra; Copland: Violin Sonata, Duo for Flute and Piano, Nonet for Strings; Grainger: Music for Pianos
Drake’s Village Brass Band: The Royal Band of the Belgian Air Force – The Synthesists Revisited
Wednesday 18th
Henry Eccles, Double Bass Sonata; Johann Baptist Vanhal, Double Bass ; Concerto in E-Flat Major; Eric Whitacre, Alleluia; Dominick Argento, Walden Pond; Aaron Jay Kernis, Ecstatic Meditations; Jean Yves Daniel-Lesur, Le Cantique des Cantiques
Thursday 19th
Janitsch: Sonata da camera in g minor 'O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden'; Catalani: La Wally: Ebben? Ne andrò lontana, Andantino in A Major, Contemplazione; Zeller: Der Vogelhändler Concert Overture, Der Obersteiger Overture; Lefebvre: Caprice for Viola & Piano Op. 106bis; David: Violin Concerto No. 4 in E Major Op. 23; Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto in e minor Op. 64; Stamitz: Clarinet Concerto in B Flat Major.
Friday 20th
Music from the movie “Can Can” and other musicals”
Sunday 22d
Verdi, I Masnadieri
Monday 23d
Zoltán Kodály Dances of Galánta; Bremen/Daniel Harding Leonore Overture No. 3 Op. 72; Manuel Barruerco Sierra: Folias
Tuesday 24th
Tuesday Night at the Movies - Copland: Of Mice and Men; Williams: Jaws; Bernstein: True Grit
Drake’s Village Brass Band: Tempo Di Bourgeois – Col. John Bourgeois and the Keystone Wind Ensemble
Wednesday 25th
Host's Choice
Thursday 26th
Kozeluch: Symphony in D Major, Clarinet Concerto No. 1 in E-Flat Major; Cardonne: La Dauphine; New Additions to the WWUH Library.
Friday 27th
Listener’s Choice – a program of music chosen by you. Please email your requests to The20thCenturyLimited@aol.com no later than June 21st.
Sunday 29th
Ricky Ian Gordon, 27
Monday 30th
Otto Nicolai Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor (The Merry Wives of Windsor): Overture; Albéniz Iberia, Book 3: I. El Albaicin (arr. L. Brouwer)
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SUNDAY AFTERNOON AT THE OPERA
your "lyric theater" program
with Keith Brown
Programming for June 2025
SUNDAY JUNE 1ST
Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet Spoken word presentations have always been part of my broad spectrum concept of lyric theater programming. I have broadcast recordings of many of William Shakespeare's plays. Often these were on early stereo Decca/Argo LP's These studio recordings, made between 1957 and 1964, were part of Decca's series of the complete recorded works of Shakespeare issued in commemoration of the four hundredth anniversary of his birth. It was an audio project of historic significance equal to Decca's recorded series of Wagner's Ring cycle of operas made during the same period with Georg Solti conducting the Vienna Philharmonic and a singing cast of some of the greatest operatic voices of the mid twentieth century. Decca's Shakespeare project engaged distinguished director George Rylands and the Marlowe Dramatic Society of Cambridge University, plus other "professional players," who included some of the finest Shakespeareans that Britain possessed at the time. Some of them remain famous names even now in the twenty first century. In 2016 the entire Decca Shakespeare series- all thirty seven plays, the sonnets and narrative poems- was reissued on one hundred discs to mark the four hundredth anniversary of the Bard's death. I last drew upon the CD reissue for the broadcast of Shakespeare's late tragicomedy Cymbeline (1610) on Sunday, November 4, 2024. Spring is the season for lovers, and June is the month traditionally associated with weddings, when lovers bond for life, so I figured now is the perfect moment for Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (1595), his first great tragedy and perhaps the single alltime greatest story of tragic love ever set forth upon the stage, also successfully rendered into operatic form. I'm surprised to note that, over decades of those Shakespeare broadcasts that I have never previously broadcast a recording of the complete play, although on the opera show for Sunday, June 19, 2005 I presented audio scenes from the play performed live in the WWUH air studio, when members of the local Capitol Classics company of actors came on the air to promote their upcoming production. In Decca's old recording of the play Richard Marquand is heard as Romeo opposite Janette Richer as Juliet.
SUNDAY JUNE 8TH
Donizetti, La Favorite This opera is now better known to the world in its later Italian language remake, but it started out as a French grand opera, more along the lines of Meyerbeer, intended for the Parisian stage. It was in 1839 after the success of the French language Lucie de Lammermoor in Paris that Donizetti decided to take a commission to set a new opera to a French libretto. He pieced together a new score drawn mostly from his own L'Ange de Nisida (1838), plus some other newly composed or recycled parts. La Favorite was a triumph at the Paris Opera in 1840, and for generations thereafter it was the single one of his many lyric stageworks that remained in the international repertoire. I have never previously broadcast a recording of the French or Italian versions of this work, but I have presented the Opera Rara release of L'Ange (Sunday, June 2, 2019). La Favorite the French opera was recorded live in concert hall performance in Munich in 1999. Marcello Viotti conducts the Munich Radio Orchestra and Chorus of Radio Bavaria with a lineup of seven vocal soloists.
SUNDAY JUNE 15TH Charpentier, Le Malade Imaginaire, Boismortier, Don Quichotte When it comes to opera of the French baroque, one might immediately think of the long series of lyric tragedies of Jean Baptiste Lully (1632-87). True, Lully provided incidental music for Moliere's satirical comedy Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (1670), but that was a sideline in his musical output. Listen today for two comic works of the French baroque, first one from the late seventeenth century, then another from the end of the era in the mid eighteenth. Lully's younger colleague Marc Antoine Charpentier (1643-1704) also collaborated with the illustrious playwright and provided vocal airs and dances for Moliere's Le Malade Imaginaire (1673). The American conductor William Christie is a specialist in the historically accurate recreation of the theater music of this period. He recorded the music for Moliere's spoken word hypochondriac comedy in 1990. In the staged revival of this work, not only were the stage performers in costume of the period, the "period" orchestra was costumed appropriately and even conductor Christie himself wore a curly wig-a peruke. Another work by Charpentier Les Arts Florissants (1686) gave the name to Christie's period instrumental ensemble. Le Malade Imaginaire was reissued on two compact discs in 2023 through the French Harmonia Mundi record label. The CD reissue includes a bonus track: Charpentier's incidental music for yet another Moliere comedy Le Marriage Force (1664). The HM France reissue celebrates the four hundredth anniversary of Moliere's birth.
Yes, comic opera of the French baroque can be satirical. It can also, strangely enough, be crazy in a very modern way. Consider the musical treatment of the famous old Spanish picaresque novel to be encountered in Don Quichotte chez la Duchesse (1743) by a composer from the late baroque, Joseph Bodin de Boismortier (1689-1755). The libretto for this ballet comique is a French sendup of the original Spanish sendup of chivalry, sending Cervantes to a new fantastical level. Don Quichotte was Boismortier's first success in music for the stage. The librettist Favart was bold in the way he surprised and amused his Parisian audience. His collaborator Boismortier charmed them with his lovely vocal numbers and sprightly dance sequences. Boismortier's Don Quichotte has been twice recorded by the same conductor and his period instrumental ensemble: Herve Niquet and Le Concert Spirituel. The earlier 1996 recording I broadcast on Sunday, July 21, 2024. I would not normally put the same opera again over the air eleven months later, but the new recording may be slightly better and bears a close comparison in audition. The new one was made in December of 2020 in the opera house of the royal palace of Versailles and was released in 2022 on silver disc courtesy of Chateau de Versailles Spectacles.
SUNDAY JUNE 22ND
Verdi, I Masnadieri This was the opera Verdi wrote immediately after Macbeth (1846), the first of his early masterworks to be revived in the twentieth century. I Masnadieri had a fairly strong premiere in London in 1847 at Her Majesty's Theatre, the Haymarket- the venue of Italian opera in England going back to the days of Handel. Soprano Jenny Lind, the famous "Swedish Nightingale," was in the original cast. Verdi's music for "The Brigands" is on a par with his truly masterful Macbeth. As a piece of singing it imposes heavy demands upon the vocal principals. The acknowledged diva Spanish soprano Monserrat Caballe was up to the challenge, topping the bill in the PHILIPS studio recording sessions in 1974, but she's the only female voice in the cast. Tenor Carlo Bergonzi and baritone Ruggero Raimondi took the leading male roles. Lamberto Gardelli directed the chorus of Ambrosian Singers and the New Philharmonia Orchestra. I have presented that PHILIPS recording twice before on Sunday, June 5, 1988 and again on Sunday, October 12, 2008. It was not so long after the esteemed Madame Caballe essayed the role of Amalia that the Australian soprano Joan Sutherland, that prima donna assoluta took her own try at it, with splendid results. I Masnadieri was recorded in London's Kingsway Hall in 1982 for release through the Decca/London label of the UK, Also in the cast was baritone Samuel Ramey in the role of Count Moor. Sutherland's husband Richard Bonynge led the Orchestra and Chorus of the Welsh National Opera. I Masnadieri was re-released on two London compact discs in digitally upgraded sound in 1992.
SUNDAY JUNE 29TH
Gordon, 27 I like to designate the last Sunday in June as "Stonewall Sunday," referring to the Stonewall Inn gay bar and the riot that took place in Greenwich Village on the last weekend in June, 1969. The Stonewall Rebellion in New York City gave birth to the gay liberation movement in the United States and worldwide, and to so much of the history of the struggle for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights that would follow. On Stonewall Sunday I program lyric theater music by LGBT of queer composers or performers or on some gay-related theme. This Sunday we focus on an iconic American lesbian of the earlier twentieth century, the writer Gertrude Stein (1874-1946). Stein and her life partner Alice B. Toklas maintained a salon for fellow American expats and European artists alike at their longtime residence in Paris at number 27 Rue de Fleurus. Picasso was in their circle of friends! An American composer of the twenty first century, Ricky Ian Gordon (b. 1952) captured the very spirit of the eccentric lesbian poet in his opera 27, first staged by Opera Theatre of Saint Louis in 2014. Contralto Stephanie Blythe portrays-you might say is spiritually channeling- the larger-than-life persona of Stein, opposite soprano Elizabeth Futral as Alice B. David Robertson directs the St. Louis Symphony. Gertrude Stein as a writer became an opera librettist for the twentieth century American composer Virgil Thomson (1896-1989). She collaborated with Thomson on two of his operas: Four Saints in Three Acts (1924), which premiered here in Hartford, and The Mother of Us All (1947) about the iconic figure of feminist Susan B. Anthony. I have aired recordings of both works. Before 27 the opera Ricky Ian Gordon wrote a ballad opera dealing with the American Civil War Rappahannock County (2011) and an operatic treatment of The Grapes of Wrath (2007) after John Steinbeck's famous novel of the Depression era. Both of those operas went over the air a decade ago on Sundays in May and September of 2015. Rappahannock County I rebroadcast on Sunday, May 28, 2023. 27 the opera in its world premiere recording had been my offering once before on Stonewall Sunday, June 28, 2015, this amounting to an audio trilogy of Gordon's lyric theaterworks broadcast in the course of that year.
keithsbrown1948@gmail.com
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