Faith and Hope are Playing
Evening Music | May 6, 2010
“Faith and Hope Are Playing” is the flute and viola miniature by Carl Nielsen with which Evening Music opens, James Galway and Brian Hawkins doing the honors.
Violinist Dmitry Sitkovetsky and pianist Pavel Gililov bring us three familiar waltzes, “Liebesfreud,” “Liebeslied,” and “Schön Rosmarin,” by the inimitable and beloved Fritz Kreisler, whose birthday (1875) we celebrate. The third movement of Canadian composer Jim Hiscott’s String Quartet No. 1 is meant to evoke a sunset view of the Pacific Ocean, with waves becoming “innumerable shifting, sparkling points of reflected golden light, resembling schools of leaping dolphins.” As hour two begins, violinist Joshua Bell is joined by pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet in Fauré’s Violin Sonata No. 1 in A. Bell can be heard live at Lincoln Center on February 9th. Check out the “Great Performers” calendar.
We return to Nielsen in our nine o’clock hour, when his Symphony No. 4 holds sway, Sir Simon Rattle conducting the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. Nielsen’s name for this work, “The Inextinguishable,” was meant to convey the sense that life continues after any catastrophe, man-made or natural. The four movements are played without pause, the embattled forces resolving from chaos to order only at the very end. Another work with socio/political implications in its title surfaces in our last hour, as pianist Ursula Oppens, born this day in New York in 1944 and renowned as an interpreter of contemporary works, brings us her award-winning (“Record of the Year,” 1979) performance of Frederic Rzewski’s 36 variations on a Chilean song, “The People United Will Never Be Defeated!” Guitarist Manuel Barrueco plays a Chilean dance by Agustín Barrios Mangoré, “Cueca, danza chilena.” before Evening Music comes to a close.
» View today's selected reading from "The Writer's Almanac"
Hosted by Garrison Keillor
Violinist Dmitry Sitkovetsky and pianist Pavel Gililov bring us three familiar waltzes, “Liebesfreud,” “Liebeslied,” and “Schön Rosmarin,” by the inimitable and beloved Fritz Kreisler, whose birthday (1875) we celebrate. The third movement of Canadian composer Jim Hiscott’s String Quartet No. 1 is meant to evoke a sunset view of the Pacific Ocean, with waves becoming “innumerable shifting, sparkling points of reflected golden light, resembling schools of leaping dolphins.” As hour two begins, violinist Joshua Bell is joined by pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet in Fauré’s Violin Sonata No. 1 in A. Bell can be heard live at Lincoln Center on February 9th. Check out the “Great Performers” calendar.
We return to Nielsen in our nine o’clock hour, when his Symphony No. 4 holds sway, Sir Simon Rattle conducting the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. Nielsen’s name for this work, “The Inextinguishable,” was meant to convey the sense that life continues after any catastrophe, man-made or natural. The four movements are played without pause, the embattled forces resolving from chaos to order only at the very end. Another work with socio/political implications in its title surfaces in our last hour, as pianist Ursula Oppens, born this day in New York in 1944 and renowned as an interpreter of contemporary works, brings us her award-winning (“Record of the Year,” 1979) performance of Frederic Rzewski’s 36 variations on a Chilean song, “The People United Will Never Be Defeated!” Guitarist Manuel Barrueco plays a Chilean dance by Agustín Barrios Mangoré, “Cueca, danza chilena.” before Evening Music comes to a close.
» View today's selected reading from "The Writer's Almanac"
Hosted by Garrison Keillor
