Saturday, January 23, 2016

Tonight -- Show 116: Magic!

This is a repeat of a show from December 2014, which has understandably some references to the Holidays.

There are a number of pieces describing various magical artifacts from The Magic Flute, Mozart's immortal Singspiel (musical play).

There are a few tracks describing elements from Wagner's The Ring of the Nibelungs, the enormous opera cycle, which lasts a total of nearly 15 hours.  This is Wagner's Ring, not to be confused with Tolkien's Ring, even if they are distantly related.

There is an excerpt from Hansel and Gretel, which is a fairy story about the evil magic of a witch.  The opera was written by the original Engelbert Humperdinck.  (There is even a song by the more recent crooner, Engelbert Humperdinck.)

I should have included some songs from the Disney magical fairy tales, but I did not.  Full playlist will be added sometime this weekend!!  Here is a link to the blog about the original broadcast, though the podcast files were never uploaded.  The order was changed slightly.

Archie

Saturday, January 16, 2016

Show 101A: Trios

The musical genre of the Trio is very special.  As many of us know, traditional harmony is written in four parts, so when someone writes a trio, the harmony is usually not full in the usual sense.  However, melodically, a trio works harder to get our interest.  There are other tricks that composers use; Bach gets a lot of mileage with implied harmonies, musical lines that fill in more harmony than a single voice can be expected to.

The original show numbered 101, our very first show, had the following playlist:

Bach: our usual introductory piece, the Fugue in A minor, BWV 543.  This is not, of course, a trio.
The Beatles: "You're going to lose that girl", from the Help album, and the movie.
Bach: Trio Sonata in E Flat, BWV 525, i, performed by guitars.
Bach: Terzett from the Christmas Oratorio, "Wenn wird die Zeit erscheinen?"
Episodes: Train Wreck
Bach: Trio Sonata from the Musical Offering, Movt i.
Gordon Lightfoot: Early morning rain (Peter, Paul and Mary)
Haydn: Divertissement No. 2, i - Allegro
Wagner: The Overture to Die Meistersinger von Nuremberg (excerpts)
Bach: Tenor aria from Cantata 85, "Seht was die Liebe tut", adapted by William Walton.
Tom Lehrer: Alma
Signoff: Fantasia on Heykens's Starlight Serenade.

For tonight, we add some more trios by Bach, a triple concerto, a few movements from a trio from Beethoven, and one from Mozart, a trio from the so-called Coffee Cantata, and a transcription of a movement from Bach's famous Cantata No. 40, Wachet auf.


Friday, January 8, 2016

Show 215: More Better Concertos!!!



Well, more, anyway!

This is my last original hurrah before classes begin, and I have to rely on recycling older shows.

Part A (Beethoven, Glazunov)

Beethoven: Piano Concerto No 3 in C minor - iii (Alfred Brendel)

Glazunov: Violin Concerto in A Minor (Maxim Vengerov)

Part B (Elgar, Siblius, Heykens)

Elgar: Violin Concerto in B Minor (Dong-Suk Kang)

Sibelius: Violin Concerto (Kyung-Wha Chung)

Heykens: Starlight Serenade (Richard Tauber)

Part C (Grieg)

Grieg: Concerto in A Minor for Piano and Orchestra (Philippe Entremont)

Part D (Schumann)

Schumann: Concerto in A minor for Piano (Rudolf Serkin)

Enjoy!

Archie

P.S. For next week-a, I am planning to put up a repeat of my very first show, from July 4th, 2014.  That was a one-hour show, all about Trios.  It was also the only one-hour show, I might add, which explains why I never put it up again.  So I had to supplement it with another hour of music related to the number 3.  I have.  That's for next week.

Arχ2ie.