The cold snap is behind us and we’re feeling the warmth of spring on Now Is the Time, Sunday, May 19th at 10 pm. Ingrid Arauco’s Florescence buzzes and hums for the flute and harpsichord of Mélomanie (pictured, left), and Derek Bermel brings Thracian Sketches in all its Bulgarian-inspired rhythms to viola and percussion.
George Tsontakis takes us to the Mediterranean with orchestral Gymnopedies that are more Greek than French, but France infuses the sound of Avner Dorman’s Moments Musicaux for piano.
Things heat up with the computerized kicks of Thrum by John Gibson, and finally, with the two electric guitars that rock David Lang’s Warmth.
We’re having fun with numbers on Now Is the Time, Sunday, May 12th at 10 pm. Four dances for piano is what Keith Carpenter calls An even number of odd pieces, and Sketches Set Seven, also for piano, is Ed Bland’s contribution to what he called “urban classical funk.”
Mr. Bland passed away after this show was produced, so we honor his memory with this look into his wide-ranging career.
Charles Wuorinen’s Dodecadactyl is a fun two-guitar romp through the twelve pitches, and from her set of life-rhythm-inspired Genesis works is Janika Vandervelde’s Genesis V, for four guitars. For two sopranos is the riveting Madrigal III by Sergio Cervetti, setting a text from pre-Columbian Mexico.
Concertos for low instruments bookend a concerto for orchestra on Now Is the Time, Sunday, May 5th at 10 pm. Gunther Schuller conducts Orchestra 2001 in his Concerto da Camera, a classical-sized work with twists. Carter Brey’s singing tone dives deep into Steven Gerber’s Cello Concerto, bringing up a work of warmth and beauty.
The program opens with a perky yet challenging Concerto for Tuba and Orchestra by John Williams. Although he’s known worldwide for his decades of award-winning film scores, he’s written many concert pieces—including concertos. This one has become a repertoire piece for tubists since he composed it in 1985.
from John Williams: Concerto for Tuba and Orchestra
Discoveries from the Fleisher Collection broadcasts Saturday, May 4th, 2013, 5-6 pm on WRTI and wrti.org.
Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953). Summer Day, Children’s Suite for Small Orchestra, Op. 65b (1935/41). San Diego Chamber Orchestra, Donald Barra. Koch 7042, Tr 10-16. 12:02
Prokofiev. Romeo and Juliet, excerpts, Op. 64. (1935-6). Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Valery Gergiev. Nederland 2008, Disk 2, Tr 1, 2, 4-12, 14-17. 39:03
Sergei Prokofiev lived in Paris in 1936 but longed for Russia. He had never relinquished his Soviet citizenship in the years he was abroad; since 1918 he lived in the U.S., Germany, and France. He toured America, Europe, and the USSR often, playing piano in and conducting his growing repertoire of increasingly popular works.
He took an apartment in Moscow in 1932 but kept his home base in Paris. He actively sought new opportunities in the Soviet Union, and the country, in return, sought him. Lieutenant Kije, known from the often-played concert suite, was originally a film score commissioned in Russia. The Kirov (now the Mariinsky) Ballet Company in Leningrad asked him for Romeo and Juliet, but when financial troubles threatened to undo the project, the Bolshoi in Moscow took it over.
Their sponsorship of it was doubly auspicious, since he had first offered it to the Bolshoi. They had rejected it, at first, but were now changing their mind. The composer was thrilled by the turn of good fortune.
For years Prokofiev had been thinking about repatriating, and even kept a diary mulling the pros and cons of such a decision. He knew that the Soviet regime had a hot-and-cold relationship with its artists, writers, and composers. But he had, while living abroad, undergone a change in his compositional language. His music was less violent and more accessible than it had been in his younger days. If this was seen by the authorities to be friendly to their populist propaganda, well, so be it. He was writing what he wanted to. And with the government on his side, the building of his career ought to be easier than his trying to chase down opportunities on two continents by himself.
So in 1936 he moved back. And the government clamped down.
Prokofiev had given the Shakespearean tragedy a happy ending and friends urged him to rewrite it so as not to upset the powers. Pravda had recently gone after artists who tampered with tradition, and a happy Romeo would only be waving a red flag at a wary bull. So the ending was changed.
The word had already gone out that composers should be writing music for children. Prokofiev wrote Music for Children or Summer Day for piano and later orchestrated some of it into a suite. It follows a child’s life from morning through night with picturesque games and dances, ending on a moonlit meadow.
Prokofiev, like Shostakovich and others, would have a cat-and-mouse game with Joseph Stalin for the rest of his life. He wrote some of his best music in his homeland, while some made-to-order propagandist pieces are forgettable. In a final symbol of his struggle in his once and future country, Sergei Prokofiev died on March 5th, 1953. It took a long time for the country to notice, because Stalin died the same day.
On the first Saturday of the month Jack Moore and I host Discoveries from the Fleisher Collection on WRTI 90.1 FM in Philadelphia and on the all-classical webstream at wrti.org. We also broadcast encore presentations of the entire Discoveries series (now 11 years and counting!) every Wednesday at 7:00 pm on WRTI HD-2. For a look at all the shows, click here.
Charlotte plays the original piano version of the “March” from Summer Day:
It’s different ways to say good night on Now Is the Time, Sunday, April 28th at 10 pm. Alex Freeman’s solo piano Night on the Prairies leads to a sextet in Jeremy Beck’s In Flight until Mysterious Night (and do we hear Steely Dan in there?). Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble then runs with the Night of the Flying Horses of Osvaldo Golijov.
Then, two quartets. Night Blossoms of Mary Jane Leach is a haiku for four singers, and the four string instruments of Kronos play Terry Riley’s long-breathed Cadenza on the Night Plain, out into that good night.
We’re traveling far and enjoying the journey on Now is the Time, Sunday, April 21st at 10 pm. From his CD Stream of Stars, Dylan Mattingly’s Atlas of Somewhere on the Way to Howland Island imagines the last flight of Amelia Earhart, somewhere over the Pacific, finishing with the movement “Islanded in a Stream of Stars.”
James Aikman’s CD Tremors From a Far Shore yields his Violin Sonata No. 2, a large-breathed work opening with a piano-centered Habanera. It also includes a second-movement Homage to his grandmother. Miguel del Aguila’s softly delicious Pacific Serenade leaves us wanting to hear more from him, as we continue on our way.
My latest CD review for WRTI, podcast with musical examples below. You can read all my CD reviews here.
In the Heart of Things: Choral Music of Francis Pott
Commotio. Matthew Berry, conductor
Naxos 8.572739
Whether communication is too easy, or articulation is too difficult, our time is not a time of counterpoint. Instead of corresponding, we post or tweet; instead of reasoning, we shout and repeat, louder and louder. Music is often an event or a stepping-up of rungs of events: hooks and ladders, clanging past, looking for a fire.
The choral music of Francis Pott, however, flows by, refreshingly contrapuntal. That joy in the working of voices is particularly evident in his 2012 CD, In the Heart of Things. If counterpoint seems anti-modern, he admits it, and points to Thomas Tallis, William Byrd, and other past masters of the polyphonic Mass as models. That’s appropriate, because In the Heart of Things is a collection of his choral music revolving around the most substantial work on the recording, his Mass for Eight Parts.
From the Kyrie through the Agnus Dei, this Mass is a triumph of intricate beauty. Upper, middle, and lower streams of voices glide by and mingle, their complexity unnoticed because they shimmer. Sometimes they sneak in, as the “Hosanna” does at first in the Sanctus, or roll in waves, gathering strength as at the end of that movement.
Sometimes the power is overwhelming, as at the end of the Gloria, the final “Amen” surging, unexpected, rank upon rank. Pott composed the Agnus Dei in memory of someone he didn’t know, a past singer of Commotio, the choir that commissioned this. His gentle, pointed lyricism melts the voices into a sea of comfort.
Francis Pott was raised in the English chorister tradition, and knows this repertoire from the inside. His setting of a familiar text, such as Balulalow (known by many from Benjamin Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols), or the new Mary’s Carol (Pott wrote this in memory of his father-in-law), always balances freshness of expression with aptness to the language.
His Lament honors a soldier killed in Afghanistan. Using the poem of Wilfrid Wilson Gibson, “But we, how shall we turn to little things / And listen to the birds… nor feel the heart-break in the heart of things,” we know the composer feels deeply what we also feel. This fellow-feeling is at the heart of artistry.
Francis Pott weaves a living counterpoint of music and emotion because he himself has sung it. His music breathes the life of tradition, but it is ever fresh, ever modern.
The cold snap is behind us and we’re feeling the warmth of spring on Now Is the Time, Sunday, May 19th at 10 pm. Ingrid Arauco’s Florescence buzzes and hums for the flute and harpsichord of Mélomanie (pictured, left), and Derek Bermel brings Thracian Sketches in all its Bulgarian-inspired rhythms to viola and percussion.
