Best of Bix

It would have been Bix Beiderbecke's 101st birthday (b. 1903) today, so we are having a "Best of Bix" party, playing arrangements of four of his memorable compositions. Too bad we can't hear him play cornet; Ravel heard him on a visit to New York, and thought he was a genius. Ravel was right. Violinist Melissa White gives an outstanding performance of Gwyneth Walker's "An American Concerto." Andre Previn heads the London SO in Vaughan Williams's "Pastoral" Symphony, a long preface to other, shorter pastoral works. Finally, our time machine transports us to 16th-century Italy, whence cometh our suite of three "mannerist" madrigals by Carlo Gesualdo, that most eccentric proponent of harmonic audacity, performed this evening by Pomerium Musices under Alexander Blachly.
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