fantastic Virgil Thomson podcast
Yale has launched an ambitious series of netcasts to share its wealth of historical recordings with the public. The school is among a handful of pioneers in the field of university podcasting, offering not only lectures, but also live music performances of historical and contemporary significance.
Vivian Perlis and Libby van Cleve of the Oral History of American Music (OHAM) Project at Yale have compiled a 20-minute program of musical excerpts from OHAM’s archives and interviews. Particularly interesting is the podcast of Virgil Thomson, featured on Friday’s Exploring Music program.
Go to Apple’s iTunesU site or the School of Music Netcasts.
Another tidbit- a picture of Orson Wells and Virgil Thomson found by Producer Cydne Gillard:
Böcklin’s Isle of the Dead
Today we featured Rachmaninoff’s tone poem Isle of the Dead, inspired by this painting of Arnold Böcklin:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isle_of_the_Dead_%28painting%29
Interestingly, Böcklin also painted a contrasting work, Isle of Life, in 1888:
Rachmaninoff quotes/pictures
Cydne Gillard found some fantastic quotes about this week’s composer, Sergei Rachmaninoff:
I am a Russian composer, and the land of my birth has inevitably influenced my temperament and outlook. My music is the product of my temperament, and so it is Russian Music. I never consciously attempt to write Russian music; or any other kind of music, for that matter. I have been strongly influenced by Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov, but I have never consciously imitated anybody. I try to make my music speak simply and directly that which is in my heart at the time I am composing. If there is love there, or bitterness, or sadness, or religion, these moods become part of my music, and it becomes either beautiful or bitter or sad or religious. For music is as much a part of my living as breathing and eating. I compose music because I must give expression to my feeling, just as I talk because I must give utterance to my thoughts.”
The New Book of Modern Composers, David Ewen. Knopf. 1961
“Some people achieve a kind of immortality just by the totality with which they do or do not possess some quality or characteristic. Rachmaninov’s immortalizing totality was his scowl. He was a six-and–a-half-foot-tall scowl.”
Stravinsky
“Although certain of his works have enjoyed a phenomenal vogue with the public, Rachmaninov has no proper place in a book on contemporary music.”
Introduction to Twentieth Century Music, Joseph Machlis. W.W. Norton. 1961
And be sure to look through all three pages of some very interesting pictures posted to Rachmaninoff.org: http://is.gd/4XmMz
Rachmaninoff's hand
Leaving WQXR, NYC
Hi - Bill Siegmund the engineer here. Thursday October 8th at 8:00pm Eastern will be the end of WQXR @ 96.3FM. WQXR had been owned by the New York Times since 1944, until it was sold to NPR affiliate WNYC this past summer. And it’s been the base of operations for Exploring Music for almost four years. Today Bill M. and I recorded some shows on French music, and when I walk out of here I won’t be coming back. Well, I will come back to pack up our equipment, but by the time that happens this place will be emptied of all the wonderful, incredible, generous, hard-working people who’ve made this station as good as it is over the years. I’m done working now, and as I write I’m listening to WQXR’s programming, which is at the moment a live broadcast from the Instituto de Cervantes here in Manhattan. They do a series called In the Gardens of Spain, hosted by the always delightful David Dubal. The series continues for a few weeks, and will carry over to the new WQXR, which moves to 105.9 on the FM dial. The technical aspects of the broadcast were expertly handled by Anthony Bartlett, whom you might know from his having engineered some of our Exploring Music shows, and the concert was attended by Margret Mercer, WQXR’s program director, and Harold Chambers, the former Director of Operations. These are two of the people I will miss from around here, and I hope very much to catch up with them for some revelry this week. Thanks from all of us on Exploring Music to everyone who has been so gracious during our stay here. I look forward to all the times our paths will cross in the future.
Aloha,
Bill
New York Philharmonic interviews
Mssrs. McGlaughlin and Siegmund (affectionately known as the Bills) talked with some of the NY Phil musicians in preparation for this week’s broadcast. Here are the complete interviews:
Robert Botti:
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
John Deak
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Glen Dicterow
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Arnie Lang & Chris Lamb
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Judy Nelson
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Bach on the Beach
This week on Exploring Music we’re playing the B Minor Mass of J.S. Bach and I’m on the beach for some much needed R & R with family and close friends. On Tuesday evening I had the pleasure of streaming the program onto my i-Phone while walking along the beach in Corolla, NC. I had beautiful clouds out to sea on my right and a crimson sunset on my left. On the radio we were playing Glorias, first from Palestrina’s Missa Papae Marcelli, then from Bach’s F Major Mass, and then from the B Minor. Very interesting that the F Major and the B Minor are adjacent BWV numbers and yet present such different dramatic takes on some of the same material.
It was during the B Minor that I turned around to make it home
in time for an Indian feast prepared by one of our housemates, plus yummy rum drinks prepared by another, and this gave me a look at the waxing gibbous moon rising offshore. (And I just looked up waxing gibbous.) This portion of the walk was accompanied by Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, the Orchestral Suite No.3, thirst and hunger.
Usually I’m so busy actually working on the show and other projects that it’s tough to find the time to listen to a whole show all the way through (much less while walking on the beach at sunset). I was reminded of the joke about the two bass players chatting in the orchestra pit before the opera starts. One of them has just returned from taking a few days off. His buddy asks him how his vacation was. He says, “It was great. I actually went to see the opera one night.”
“Oh yeah? What did you see?”
“Carmen”
“Oh, I love Carmen. I always wondered what that one sounds like from out there”
“It’s great. I couldn’t believe it. You know that part where we’re playing ‘dum…dee dum dum dum…dee dum dum dum’? The soprano sings the most beautiful melody during that.”
(insert rim shot!)
I work with Bill M in New York, and then we send raw voice tracks to our crack team of editors toiling in Chicago. It’s nice to get the chance to hear a show put together, and I have to say that they do the most beautiful editing on the parts we send them that are a little bit ‘dum…dee dum dum dum…” It reminds me of how fortunate I am to be able to do this for a living.
We’re taking turns cooking dinner, and last night my wife and I made a Mexican feast, aka Taco Night. She made a delicious pork shoulder, which was shredded and used as filling, along with ground beef, black beans, guacamole, corn salsa, Chimichurri, rice and salsa from a jar.
Turns out exploring the music of the B Minor Mass doesn’t go so well with this kind of food preparation, so we didn’t get to hear the whole show last night. But tonight an evening beach walk beckons, even though it has turned grey, rainy and blustery. (The beach is actually closed by the weather, which is an odd concept for a kid from Hawai’i.) I’m thinking it might be just the right environment for the show tonight, which will focus on the crucifixus. Enjoy, and til next time…cheers.
Sounds of Chicago’s Lakefront
Bill mentioned this book today, which he used extensively in researching our week with the Grant Park Music Festival:
Posted by Jesse McQuarters, Producer, Exploring Music
LA Guitar Quartet playing “Farewell to Stromness”
Bill mentioned today a favorite version of Peter Maxwell Davies’ Farewell to Stromness- check out the video below of the LAGQ:
Posted by: Jesse McQuarters, Producer, Exploring Music
Fern Hill by Dylan Thomas
Dylan Thomas Caedmon collection @ Amazon.com
Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.
Read the rest of this entry »
Blog Search & Navigation
Twitter Updates
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |