A Birthday: Vaughan Williams
Evening Music | May 6, 2010
What would you like for Ralph Vaughan Williams’s birthday ( 1872)? Fantasia on “Greensleeves”? Stay tuned for Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra’s birthday bon-bon in our 9:00 pm hour!
But before we honor Vaughan Williams, we head to Russia, as Michael Ponti tickles the ivories in Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 3, ably supported by the Orchestra of Radio Luxembourg under Louis de Froment. This Concerto started life as a sketch for what would have been Symphony No. 6, but Tchaikovsky abandoned it, later reworking the first movement for piano and orchestra. That single movement is what we commonly know as Piano Concerto No. 3. Howeverand this is a major howeverSerge Taniev, the great pianist-composer-teacher, actually decided to finish the remaining two movements himself, working from Tchaikovsky’s piano scores and rough drafts. It is that version we play for you this evening, perhaps the only “full” version recorded.
Vaughan Williams set Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Songs of Travel” over about six years, starting in 1901; he withheld the epilogue, “I have trod the upward and the downward slope,” so it was only with its discovery after his death that the complete nine-song cycle was published. Sir Simon Rattle conducts the City of Birmingham Orchestra in support of baritone Thomas Allen, who brings to life the sad and wandering vagabond, mourning for life and loves long gone. “Greensleeves” is next.
Stephania De Kenessey’s “Magic Forest Dances,” evoking nymphs and bobolinks, bears and a gnome, will delight you as the composer herself accompanies oboist William Meredith. Sweet dreams!
But before we honor Vaughan Williams, we head to Russia, as Michael Ponti tickles the ivories in Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 3, ably supported by the Orchestra of Radio Luxembourg under Louis de Froment. This Concerto started life as a sketch for what would have been Symphony No. 6, but Tchaikovsky abandoned it, later reworking the first movement for piano and orchestra. That single movement is what we commonly know as Piano Concerto No. 3. Howeverand this is a major howeverSerge Taniev, the great pianist-composer-teacher, actually decided to finish the remaining two movements himself, working from Tchaikovsky’s piano scores and rough drafts. It is that version we play for you this evening, perhaps the only “full” version recorded.
Vaughan Williams set Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Songs of Travel” over about six years, starting in 1901; he withheld the epilogue, “I have trod the upward and the downward slope,” so it was only with its discovery after his death that the complete nine-song cycle was published. Sir Simon Rattle conducts the City of Birmingham Orchestra in support of baritone Thomas Allen, who brings to life the sad and wandering vagabond, mourning for life and loves long gone. “Greensleeves” is next.
Stephania De Kenessey’s “Magic Forest Dances,” evoking nymphs and bobolinks, bears and a gnome, will delight you as the composer herself accompanies oboist William Meredith. Sweet dreams!
