It was a first for me. I have never before been to the opera when a singer gave an encore of an aria in the middle of the performance. I guess it depends on the opera, and an opera buffa certainly lends itself to it more than, say, Wagner’s Ring Cycle! Well, if you were … Read More »
I went along to the Candlelight Concert at Second Presbyterian Church on Sunday evening especially to hear Francis Poulenc’s Sextet for Piano and Winds with members of the Baltimore Symphony and Sylvie Beaudoin. Poulenc was pretty much self taught, and he learned from the music that he liked. He said his gods were Bach, Mozart, … Read More »
You can tell when the big guns come to town by who is in the audience. I saw Leon Fleisher walking up aisle at Shriver Hall yesterday evening during the intermission of Richard Goode’s recital. It’s been a couple of decades since Goode played on the Shriver Hall Concert Series, and it was certainly wonderful … Read More »
You wouldn’t know this to listen to 91.5 FM (or maybe you would!), but WBJC staffers are inveterate coffee drinkers. The studios are redolent with mouthwatering smells. For myself, I drink copious cups of tea during my air shift (I joke with my colleagues that in truth I’m just one giant teabag), and today I … Read More »
I don’t remember ever hearing Lukas Foss on WBJC, and I know I have certainly never programmed him. I knew of him only peripherally as an avant-garde American composer but closer inspection has him rubbing shoulders with many notable names and institutions. He studied at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia with Fritz Reiner, amongst others. … Read More »
Twyla Tharp – for a start, isn’t that a wonderful name to conjure with? (Her parents clearly had a vivid imagination—her younger sister’s name is Twanette.) I’ve known of Twyla Tharp’s work, peripherally, for years, and loosely associated her with Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, Paul Taylor—that style and period of choreographers—but I had never seen … Read More »
From time to time you may have heard us play the recordings of the Philadelphia-based Renaissance Band, Piffaro (rhymes with Figaro). The name comes from the double reed instruments of the oboe family, which were descended from the shawms of the Medieval era. Well, the Piffaro Renaissance Band has quite an active touring schedule, and … Read More »
By “univocal” I’m not referring to a singular song but to a form of writing that is constrained by using just a single vowel, like “No cool monsoons blow soft on Oxford dons” (credit to the 19th century poet, C.C Bombaugh). The best known contemporary example is by the Canadian poet, Christian Bök, who has … Read More »
I’ve blogged once before about how some conductors convey the architecture of the music through their gestures and body language. With Nicholas McGegan, who conducted Bach, Rameau, Haydn and Mozart with the BSO this weekend, he conveys the sheer joy of music. He is like a little fireball on the podium, and if he needs … Read More »
Restoration comedy—the stuff of sexual innuendo and other extravagances following the reopening of the London theatres by Charles II—is most famously represented by writers like John Dryden and William Congreve. (I once played the silly, awkward, country girl, Miss Prue, in Congreve’s Love for Love when I was a drama student – imagine that!) But, … Read More »
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