Boston Musica Viva with composers John Harbison and Michael Gandolfi

This afternoon at 3pm on 89.7 and later this evening at 10pm on All-Classical WGBH, you can hear Boston Musica Viva, with their director, Richard Pittman, perform in our Fraser Performances Studio. Michael's music is always filled with rhythmic urgency and instrumental color, and any chance to hear John Harbison's music is sure to bring depth and meaning. Both composers will be in our studio, so I hope you can tune in. BMV begins their new season tomorrow night at the Tsai Performance Center in Boston.

Update (Sept. 28): Due to rights restrictions, I've removed the text for The Seven Ages, but the poems by Louise Glück used by John Harbison include

I. THE SEVEN AGES

II. THE BALCONY

III. DECADE

IV. AUBADE

V. SUMMER NIGHT

VI. FABLE

BSO Opening Night

The Boston Symphony Orchestra kicked off its 2009-2010 season last night with a concert that connected the past and the present in gorgeous sound. John Williams, the former Pops conductor and film composer, was on hand for the premiere of his Harp Concerto, which he calls "On Willows and Birches." It was written for Ann Hobson Pilot, who's just retired after 40 years with the BSO, and who played the piece with grace and precision. Also on the program was Debussy's La Mer, which the BSO premiered in the U.S. in 1907, only a couple of years after it was written. It's right in the center of the repertoire this orchestra built its reputation on, and last night showed why.

Boston Globe review here (with the title of the piano encore in case you were wondering...), and you can hear highlights from the concert on Sunday afternoon at 3pm on WGBH 89.7 and All-Classical WGBH.

And in the news...

Yes, you probably already know by now that the WGBH Educational Foundation is acquiring WCRB, the 60 year old 24 hour classical music station at 99.5FM in Boston. Since the announcement of this move yesterday, stories have been published in the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald, and commentary is available from, among others, Dan Kennedy, Radio-Info, and WBUR.

Many astute readers (not to mention some listeners who have contacted me personally) have commented that moving our classical programming to 99.5 will, because it is a lower power signal than 89.7, cut off a large segment of Boston's classical music audience. There is no doubt that 99.5 is a problem for most of the southern part of our listening region, but there are solutions that even a year ago weren't as viable as they are now.

The first is HD radio, a technology that, while slower to catch on than some predicted, has already allowed WGBH to get a head start on offering a 24/7 classical service. We've been running round the clock classical music on 89.7-HD2 for around three years. And when we begin broadcasting on WCRB, the plan is to carry that signal on 89.7-HD2. So yes, there's a bit of an investment involved in getting an HD radio, but if you're south of the Pike and you love classical music, I hope you'll consider it. I've had an HD radio in my car for a while now, and it couldn't be simpler to use. It's not too hard to track down an outlet to get an HD radio, but one place you might start is the NPR Shop.

Another way to access that same signal is via internet radio. See the previous post to get a few ideas for getting started, and, as promised, I'll take this up in a separate, upcoming post.

And the winner is... you!

Nice starter piece in the Boston Globe this morning on internet radios, with a comparison of a few different models that allow you to access All-Classical WGBH without the necessity of being near your computer or tying up your iPhone. A couple of others not mentioned, but that I've heard solidly positive reports about, are the Aluratek AIRMM01 and the Tivoli NetWorks system. Check 'em out. More on internet radio in a future post, but suffice to say for now, this is one of the most exciting areas of radio development at the moment, and we're proud to be part of it.

Classical Celtic ... or is it Celtic Classical?

Tune in this afternoon at noon for a Celtic Sojourn on 89.7, and hear the great gambist Jordi Savall's latest exploration. He's enlisted harpist Andrew Lawrence-King in a recording of Scottish and Irish music, and Brian O'Donovan invited me on the show to talk a bit about Savall and his background. If you're already familiar with Savall, you won't be disappointed. If not, this might be the perfect entry point in learning about one of today's great musicians.

Note by Note

A few years ago, the New York Times did a terrific series that tracked the construction of a new Steinway piano. If you were as fascinated by that piece as I was, you'll want to check out Note by Note: The Making of Steinway L1037 tonight at 8pm on WGBH 2 (with several subsequent airings). Preview above.

Once you've felt the Steinway love, up next at 9pm is the Vienna Philharmonic Summer Concert 2009 (also with several subsequent airings).

And just in case you missed the live broadcast of the opening night of the New York Philharmonic, including the ravishing, gorgeous Poèmes pour Mi by Olivier Messiaen, there are a few more airings of that as well.

Who needs sitcoms?

Nicolas Slonimsky on Classical Connections

From my colleague Michelle Sweet:

This month WGBH has been re-airing select episodes from the Classical Connections series for Classical Music Month. I spent a year putting together these short features that highlight just some of the stories about classical music happening in Massachusetts—both past and present. So during this special highlight month I thought it would be a great chance to bring back a small part of a documentary I produced back in 1994 about a significant, but little known musical genius—Nicolas Slonimsky. He made history when his Chamber Orchestra of Boston premiered Charles Ives Three Places in New England (albeit the premiere happened in New York, but we’ll just have to share that milestone with them.) In the middle of the three movements, Putnam’s Camp (located in Connecticut) there’s a section of the score where two competing bands are playing in different rhythms, in competing time signatures. The technical difficulty of one conductor leading what’s essentially these polyrhythmic sections was a nut that no conductor had attempted to crack. Until Slonimsky heard about it. Ives met Slonimsky through a mutual friend—composer Henry Cowell. Upon their meeting Slonimsky asked Ives if he might have a work Slonimsky could play with his Chamber Orchestra, and Ives suggested Three Places in New England, and offered to re-orchestrate it for the smaller ensemble. In his autobiography Perfect Pitch, Slonimsky says “The more I absorbed the idiom of Three Places in New England the more I became possessed by its power.” So he took it on and on January 10th 1931 history was made at Town Hall in New York.

This week on Classical Connections I’m bringing back the entire trilogy of features on the Ives masterpiece—one for each of the movements of Three Places in New England, on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, respectively. Composer and professor and Ives scholar John Heiss walks us through the first and third movements. And for that second movement, I dug into my archived interviews of Nicolas to tell his story about premiering Three Places. And on Tuesday, as a prelude to listening to these modern works of art, composer and conductor Gunther Schuller makes some suggestions for how to approach listening to contemporary music.

Enjoy!