Karajan

Just caught a particularly compelling documentary on the legendary Herbert von Karajan on WGBH 2 a couple of nights ago (preview clip above). It's showing again on WGBH 44 on Sunday, Sept. 13 at 4:30. What I found especially interesting was a segment in which rehearsal and performance clips of Karajan and Leonard Bernstein are shown in relatively rapid alternation, the point being that both were geniuses who managed to obtain transcendent results, but through vastly different means. Tape it, TiVo it, or just block it out on your schedule. You won't be sorry.

Flanders Recorder Quartet and more from the Boston Early Music Festival

When I was playing trumpet for a living, it was invariably astounding to people that I owned 9 different kinds of trumpets. Turns out, that's actually about average for most professional trumpeters I know, maybe even a bit low. Tools of the trade, as they say. But then there's the Flanders Recorder Quartet (above), who told me in June after their Boston Early Music Festival concert that they had about 40 different kinds of recorder on stage with them that night.

Well, you can get a taste of that concert on Saturday at 10am in the second of our special concert presentations from the 2009 Boston Early Music Festival. Also on the program is the BEMF debut of Zefiro, a lively wind ensemble from Italy, and the North American debut of Stile Antico, the vocal ensemble from England, who sang an exquisite and ravishing concert based on their most recent recording, Song of Songs.

And by the way, if you missed last week's special with the Ricercar Consort and host Cathy Fuller, you can listen to it whenever you want online, where all of these programs will be archived.

Enjoy!

As it was in the beginning...

As the next season of the Boston Symphony Orchestra approaches, this is an ideal time to visit the BSO web site and take a look and listen at the features our producer Brian Bell has archived there. If you've heard Brian's work at intermissions during our live broadcasts from Symphony Hall and Tanglewood, you already know how thoroughly he digs into all kinds of things, from straight ahead interviews with conductors and guest soloists to guided tours of specific works on the program to profiles of BSO players. In fact, a friend of mine who recently moved to Boston from Cleveland, where he was a subscriber to that city's great orchestra and listened to them on the air on WCLV, was astonished and delighted to hear one of our broadcasts and the context Brian and host Ron Della Chiesa gave to the concert.

Especially interesting at this time are the pages Brian put together devoted to the first music director of the BSO, Georg Henschel. When you take a listen to the feature about him and check out the programs from that fall of 1881 when it all got started, you'll find one particular name figuring as prominently on programs as it does now physically at Symphony Hall: Beethoven. During that first season, Henschel conducted the orchestra in all of Beethoven's symphonies, and, in fact, did the same thing during each of the next two seasons. And I think it's safe to say that running the entire cycle wasn't born out of a lack of new ideas. Rather, it was no doubt because Henschel knew that Beethoven's symphonies as a unit make up one of the best ways to forge an orchestra's sound and put it on display. And James Levine is now ready to do the same thing, with all nine of Beethoven's symphonies scheduled within three weeks, from late October to early November.

The Met's Orfeo ed Euridice on Opera Bash

We're in the midst of an annual weekend long celebration of opera at WGBH, with scads of fantastic operas programmed for WGBH Channel 44. You're not going to go wrong with any of them, but the one I'm targeting is at 5pm on Sunday. It's Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice, in a production by Mark Morris, with costumes by Isaac Mizrahi. Aside from the extraordinary and heartfelt performances by Stephanie Blythe as Orfeo and Danielle de Niese as Euridice, what I really loved when I saw the production earlier this year was the modernist conception of the staging. Morris's choreography transports the music from its ancient roots into what to me feels like a more relevant place. And Mizrahi not only has something to say through his costumes for the main characters, but also clearly had some fun with the Greek chorus, who, standing on a movable scaffolding throughout the action, impersonate dozens of famous historical figures, from Abraham Lincoln and Queen Elizabeth to Gandhi and Jimi Hendrix, all coming together as the entirety of humanity in the afterlife. Reviews were positive, mixed, and negative, all of which tells me that it's worth paying attention to. Personally, I loved it.

Ricercar Consort from the Boston Early Music Festival

Each Saturday at 10am during September, we're featuring a fantastic array of performances from this year's Boston Early Music Festival, and it kicks off on the 5th with the Ricercar Consort from Belgium. My colleague Cathy Fuller spent some time with the group and their director Philippe Pierlot when they were in town for a June 11 concert at Jordan Hall. Listen especially for the remarkable soprano Céline Sheen singing some gorgeous love letters in song.

Coming up next week on the 12th, it's the Italian ensemble Zefiro, Stile Antico, and the Flanders Recorder Quartet.

Coming up... the Boston Early Music Festival

Every once in a while, we get the chance to dig a bit deeper in our production here, heading out to concert halls to talk with musicians about their performances, their backgrounds, and what makes them tick. The result is radio that, we hope, connects you with music and the specific performances in a stronger, more compelling way. The Boston Early Music Festival gave us several of those opportunities last June (lots to read in the Boston Globe, Boston Phoenix, and New York Times), and now you've got the chance to experience them.

Beginning tomorrow, Tuesday, September 1 at 2pm, you can hear a four part presenation of the BEMF production of Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea with the remarkable Gillian Keith in the title role, and each day features additional commentary from the festival's co-directors, Stephen Stubbs and Paul O'Dette.

Then, each Saturday at 10am in September, you can catch special productions that feature several other performances from the festival, including the Ricercar Consort, Zefiro, Stile Antico, the Flanders Recorder Quartet, and many more. Details to follow, but for now, tune in and enjoy the opera!

JT

When my wife and I recently visited her parents, she ran across a tee shirt she bought at one of her first concert experiences. It's one of those '70s era "athletic" shirts with three-quarter length sleeves and features a quite long-haired James Taylor. I guess that clearly makes her part of the target audience for our broadcast on Aug. 30, and I hope you can tune in, too (don't worry, no vintage tees required). JT will be on stage with the Boston Pops and John Williams, and the seats in the Koussevitzky Music Shed are SOLD OUT. So even if you were thinking about doing a reverse "Stockbridge to Boston" to catch it, lawn tickets are the only option. Nothing wrong with that, but you can also tune in at 2pm on 89.7-FM and All-Classical WGBH on the internet to hear the concert live. And to learn more about James Taylor's connection to Tanglewood and the BSO, check out Geoff Edgers's piece in the Boston Globe.