Show 135: A Retrospective

[Added on 2015/7/18:  This used to be called Show 35.  I've renumbered the shows, so that this one is Show135.  The first digit will indicate which series the show is from: 1 for the first cycle, 2 for this second cycle, and so on.  For instance, the July 4^th show for this year will be numbered numbered Show201, and so on.  If you didn't figure this out yet, my first show aired the week of July 4th, 2014.]

Notice that our web page cover art already incorporates the Rainbow theme: the five Adirondack chairs are all colored brightly!  This is a great week for people of alternate lifestyles, and I'm sure that very soon that phrase: "Alternate lifestyles" will stop being so useful.  I am a little uncomfortable with all the crowing that is going on; it is quite unnecessary to present the triumph of the LGBT community as a massive defeat for gender-conservatives, to coin a phrase.  Jesus loves and forgives everybody, just as he has forgiven countless TV evangelists for their adultery over the past several decades.

It has been just about a year since I started hosting this show, so I'm going to play one track from each of the 34 original shows I put together.  (I can hardly believe that I did not provide original shows on 17 occasions!!  Some weeks, it was just too much to do, to come up with 112 minutes of material.  In the early weeks, where the shows were actually much more ambitious than the last several shows, I put in more than 10 hours for the two-hour show.  Obviously I could not keep that up.  In the later shows, I essentially put each show together in about 6 hours.)

Show 134: Something for Parents :)

[Added on 2015/7/18:  This used to be called Show 34.  I've renumbered the shows, so that this one is Show134.  The first digit will indicate which series the show is from: 1 for the first cycle, 2 for this second cycle, and so on.  For instance, the July 4^th show for this year will be numbered numbered Show201, and so on.  If you didn't figure this out yet, my first show aired the week of July 4th, 2014.]
 
It's getting close to the anniversary of this show; it was the week before July 4th last year that I put up the first edition of Archie's Archives!

This show will try to celebrate parents of both sexes — why have two separate days for mothers and fathers?  (Answer: so you get to spend more money!  It's good to have these answers ready.)  Some of the pieces I have, unfortunately, are religious in inspiration, but I decided long ago that I would enjoy religious music without any embarrassment, despite being a firm unbeliever, because it's too much frustration having to avoid religious music, and I imagine that in an ideal world, composers would have written beautiful music even if they were totally non-religious.  In the —a little less than ideal— world we actually have, of course, many composers would have written very little, if not for the religious inspiration, or being faced with the duty of supplying music for weekly worship.  In good times, religion serves as stimulation for art, sort of artistic insulin, if you will.  In bad times, religion comforts those who suffer, providing the opiate for the masses, and enables those who impose suffering to do so without too much backlash.  And we all know who they are.

Johann Sebastian Bach was often called Papa Bach, and Joseph Haydn was called Papa Haydn.  So we can feature works by these composers with no apology.  In fact someone (I can't remember who) said that Bach should not have been called Bach, which means brook, but rather, Meer, which means, the sea.  In Dutch, the word for sea is zee, and those who cross the Tappan Zee Bridge must know that it refers to the fact that The Mighty Hudson is particularly wide at that point.  (My wife always calls it The Mighty Hudson, and it gives us a good chuckle, though the allusion eludes me.  I guess all I have to do is ask her...)

Show 133: Name That Tune

Richard Strauss

[Added on 2015/7/18:  This used to be called Show 33.  I've renumbered the shows, so that this one is Show133.  The first digit will indicate which series the show is from: 1 for the first cycle, 2 for this second cycle, and so on.  For instance, the July 4^th show for this year will be numbered numbered Show201, and so on.  If you didn't figure this out yet, my first show aired the week of July 4th, 2014.]

 This week's show will be a quiz.  After a short clip, you will be given a few seconds to recognize the name of the work, and the composer.  One point for getting it right, except for a few exceptions, where you're allowed two points.

I'm putting this photo up, because Richard Strauss's birthday was on Thursday, June 11.
If you're determined to cheat, here is a list of the pieces, so you can play match the names and the tunes:

• Air (on the G string)  —Bach
• Symphony 5  —Beethoven
• Hungarian Dance  —Brahms
• Arabesque  —Debussy
• Pavana Lachrimae  —Dowland
• Nimrod  —Elgar
• Rhapsody in Blue  —Gershwin
• Watermusic  —Handel
• Midsummer Night's Dream  —Mendelssohn
• Violin Concerto  —Mendelssohn
• Clarinet Quintet  —Mozart
• Symphony  40 in G minor  —Mozart
• Pictures at an Exhibition  —Mussorgsky
• Suite from Abdelazer  —Purcell
• Fanfare from Also sprach Zarathusthra  —R. Strauss
• Unfinished Symphony  —Schubert
• Die Moldau  —Smetana
• Liberty Bell March  —Sousa
• 1812 Overture  —Tchaikovsky
• Ride of the Valkyries  —Wagner

Show 132: Versions-New tunes from Old

[Added on 2015/7/18:  This used to be called Show 32.  I've renumbered the shows, so that this one is Show132.  The first digit will indicate which series the show is from: 1 for the first cycle, 2 for this second cycle, and so on.  For instance, the July 4^th show for this year will be numbered numbered Show201, and so on.  If you didn't figure this out yet, my first show aired the week of July 4th, 2014.]
 
This show is concerned with pairs of pieces or performances, either contrasting performances of the same piece, or a pair of pieces, one derived from the other.

Part A

Bach: Brandenburg No 4 in G Major, BWV 1049-Allegro, (Anthony Newman, Brandenburg Collegium), BWV 1067 in F major, for Harpsichord (Sviatoslav Richter)

Mozart: Piano Concerto no 23 in A major, K488 (First with Chick Corea and Bobby McFerrin conducting the St Paul Chamber Orchestra, then with Malcolm Bilson and John Eliot Gardiner conducting the English Baroque Soloists, with original instruments)


Part B (continuing with Mozart K 488)

Disney: Sleeping Beauty Waltz; Tchaikovsky: Sleeping Beauty Waltz

Britten: The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra-Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Purcell;  Henry Purcell: Abdelazar

Huey Lewis and the News: I Want A New Drug; Weird Al Yankovich: I Want A New Duck


Part C

Eric Carmen: Never Gonna Fall In Love Again; Rachmaninov: Symphony N 2 in E Minor Op 27 3  Adagio

The Beatles: Revolution

Wagner: Overture to Die Meistersinger (Herbert von Karajan, Berlin Philharmonic; Glenn Gould, Piano)

Part D, continuing with the Gould piano transcription

Mozart: Gran Partita, iv-Adagio (Hogwood, Academy of Ancient Music; Marriner, Academy of St Martin In the Fields)

Bach: Cantata No 11 'Lobet Gott in seinen Reichen' (Janet Baker); Mass in B minor - Agnus Dei (The Bach Guild)

Note: Our Signoff Tune is presented here in a full brass band version.

For next week:  I'm planning to present a Name That Tune type quiz.  All the mystery tunes will be from Archie's Archives broadcasts.

Archie