I Hate Music!
Evening Music | May 6, 2010
The first performance of “I Hate Music!” by Leonard Bernstein (A Cycle of Five Kid Songs for Soprano) was with mezzo Jennie Tourel, Bernstein at the piano, this day in 1943.
We hear Tourel and Bernstein perform only the eponymous song from the “I Hate Music” cycle late in the evening, from a recording dated 11/18/1960. It is so much fun! For those of us who love music, there is a lot to enjoy, including Glenn Gould’s traversal of the Bach English Suite No. 4 in our first hour.
Keyboard concertos dominate hour two. We hear pianist Helen Grimaud’s estimable performance of the Schumann Piano Concerto, David Zinman conducting the Deutsches Symphony of Berlin. Then, from an earlier era, we enjoy the Concerto for Two Harpsichords in C, ascribed to Pergolesi but almost certainly not by him (!), Claudio Scimone conducting I Solisti Veneti from his keyboard, while Emer Buckley plays the second harpsichord. No matter the composer, this short work is by some Neapolitan master, and is a charming delight.
The Alban Berg Quartet brings us Bedrich Smetana’s String Quartet No. 1 in E Minor, subtitled “From My Life.” Smetana wrote in a letter to a friend that the quartet was meant as a picture of his own life, from his youthful longing for the inexpressible, love of travel, happiness at first falling in love with the girl he would marry, and the joy of incorporating folk elements into his own work. A few wistful notes reflect his anxiety over the fateful ringing in his ear that foretold his future deafness. Many moods...marvelous music.
We hear Tourel and Bernstein perform only the eponymous song from the “I Hate Music” cycle late in the evening, from a recording dated 11/18/1960. It is so much fun! For those of us who love music, there is a lot to enjoy, including Glenn Gould’s traversal of the Bach English Suite No. 4 in our first hour.
Keyboard concertos dominate hour two. We hear pianist Helen Grimaud’s estimable performance of the Schumann Piano Concerto, David Zinman conducting the Deutsches Symphony of Berlin. Then, from an earlier era, we enjoy the Concerto for Two Harpsichords in C, ascribed to Pergolesi but almost certainly not by him (!), Claudio Scimone conducting I Solisti Veneti from his keyboard, while Emer Buckley plays the second harpsichord. No matter the composer, this short work is by some Neapolitan master, and is a charming delight.
The Alban Berg Quartet brings us Bedrich Smetana’s String Quartet No. 1 in E Minor, subtitled “From My Life.” Smetana wrote in a letter to a friend that the quartet was meant as a picture of his own life, from his youthful longing for the inexpressible, love of travel, happiness at first falling in love with the girl he would marry, and the joy of incorporating folk elements into his own work. A few wistful notes reflect his anxiety over the fateful ringing in his ear that foretold his future deafness. Many moods...marvelous music.
