The Fantastic Toyshop
Evening Music | May 6, 2010
If you are out of ideas for what to buy your favorite child for Christmas, take a tip from the tourists who purchased two mechanical dolls from a French toymaker...
In 1918, Diaghilev asked Ottorino Respighi to orchestrate some music by Rossini for the Ballets Russes; the result was “La boutique fantasque” (known in English as “The Fantastic Toyshop”), and the tourists as well as the mechanical dolls were characters in the ballet. And fantastic is the word for our first-hour performance by the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields under Sir Neville Marriner. Leon Fleisher, who has made a spectacular two-handed return to the keyboard, performs Schubert’s Piano Sonata in B-flat during hour two.
Malcolm Arnold’s Christmas masque, “Song of Simeon,” was written for a January 1960 fund-raiser to benefit St. Martin-in-the-Fields in London. The composer himself conducts the English Chamber Orchestra, the Ambrosian Singers, and the many soloists in this most delightful retelling of the age-old story.
Our last hour features the Chamber Concerto Op. 17/1 by Vagn Holmboe (1909), one tonight’s birthday celebrants. Anne Oland is the pianist, while Hannu Koivula conducts the Danish Radio Concert Orchestra in this work Bartókian work that was premiered by and dedicated to the composer’s wife, pianist Meta Holmboe. Our other birthday celebrant is Mitsuko Uchida (1948), who plays the Mozart Piano Sonata No. 4 in E-flat.
In 1918, Diaghilev asked Ottorino Respighi to orchestrate some music by Rossini for the Ballets Russes; the result was “La boutique fantasque” (known in English as “The Fantastic Toyshop”), and the tourists as well as the mechanical dolls were characters in the ballet. And fantastic is the word for our first-hour performance by the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields under Sir Neville Marriner. Leon Fleisher, who has made a spectacular two-handed return to the keyboard, performs Schubert’s Piano Sonata in B-flat during hour two.
Malcolm Arnold’s Christmas masque, “Song of Simeon,” was written for a January 1960 fund-raiser to benefit St. Martin-in-the-Fields in London. The composer himself conducts the English Chamber Orchestra, the Ambrosian Singers, and the many soloists in this most delightful retelling of the age-old story.
Our last hour features the Chamber Concerto Op. 17/1 by Vagn Holmboe (1909), one tonight’s birthday celebrants. Anne Oland is the pianist, while Hannu Koivula conducts the Danish Radio Concert Orchestra in this work Bartókian work that was premiered by and dedicated to the composer’s wife, pianist Meta Holmboe. Our other birthday celebrant is Mitsuko Uchida (1948), who plays the Mozart Piano Sonata No. 4 in E-flat.
