Valentine's Day
Evening Music | May 6, 2010
Our Valentine’s Day gifts to you are musical, of course. So hold your love’s hand and listen to compositions about love—from the ever-present Anonymous, through musicals, to Philip Glass.
Speaking of holding hands, we begin with four hands (those of Katia and Marielle Labeque) playing ‘One Hand, One Heart’ from Bernstein’s “West Side Story.” Richard Rodgers rules, of course, with “If I Loved You,” “My Funny Valentine,” and the romantic Waltz from “Carousel” on the roster. Gershwin lends a hand with “Somebody Loves Me” and “Love Is Here to Stay.” And we hear from Cole Porter, Vincent Youmans, and Anonymouswhose “Drink to me only with thine eyes” gets a winning rendition from baritone Thomas Allen and guitarist Sharon Isbin.
It being the start of our American Music Festival, we emphasize American composers on this lovely evening. Jerome Kern’s score for the silent film “Gloria’s Romance” can be heard in our second hour, as Frederick Fennell coaxes magic from the Music Crafters Orchestra. Samuel Barber’s “The Lovers” sets nine of Chilean poet laureate Pablo Neruda’s “Twenty Poems of Love and a Song of Sadness.” Be warned: these are heart-stopping explorations of the ecstasy of erotic love in English translation. Howard Hanson’s Symphony No. 2 is subtitled “Romantic,” and that it is. Hanson himself conducts the Eastman Rochester Symphony.
Two final valentines: Fats Waller’s “Valentine Stomp” as played by pianist Paul Posnak; and Jacob Druckman’s “Valentine,” a work for solo contrabass, in which soloist Lawrence Wolfe is required to bow, pluck, hammer, tap, sing, hum, inhale, whispermuch of that simultaneously. It’s not your usual softhearted and soothing valentine, but it’s a valentine, all the same.
Speaking of holding hands, we begin with four hands (those of Katia and Marielle Labeque) playing ‘One Hand, One Heart’ from Bernstein’s “West Side Story.” Richard Rodgers rules, of course, with “If I Loved You,” “My Funny Valentine,” and the romantic Waltz from “Carousel” on the roster. Gershwin lends a hand with “Somebody Loves Me” and “Love Is Here to Stay.” And we hear from Cole Porter, Vincent Youmans, and Anonymouswhose “Drink to me only with thine eyes” gets a winning rendition from baritone Thomas Allen and guitarist Sharon Isbin.
It being the start of our American Music Festival, we emphasize American composers on this lovely evening. Jerome Kern’s score for the silent film “Gloria’s Romance” can be heard in our second hour, as Frederick Fennell coaxes magic from the Music Crafters Orchestra. Samuel Barber’s “The Lovers” sets nine of Chilean poet laureate Pablo Neruda’s “Twenty Poems of Love and a Song of Sadness.” Be warned: these are heart-stopping explorations of the ecstasy of erotic love in English translation. Howard Hanson’s Symphony No. 2 is subtitled “Romantic,” and that it is. Hanson himself conducts the Eastman Rochester Symphony.
Two final valentines: Fats Waller’s “Valentine Stomp” as played by pianist Paul Posnak; and Jacob Druckman’s “Valentine,” a work for solo contrabass, in which soloist Lawrence Wolfe is required to bow, pluck, hammer, tap, sing, hum, inhale, whispermuch of that simultaneously. It’s not your usual softhearted and soothing valentine, but it’s a valentine, all the same.
