Maryland's All-Classical Music Station
“The Takács Quartet are matchless, their supreme artistry manifest at every level.”
– The Guardian, London
The Takács Quartet plays Haydn, Dvořák, and the second commissioned work of the SHCS 50th anniversary season. Here is Executive Director, Catherine Cochran, with more.
The Cathedral Choral Society in Washington, D.C. is opening its 74th season with Haydn’s Creation, directed by J. Reilly Lewis. The bass soloist is D.C. native, Kenneth Kellogg, who came in to WBJC to talk about the performance.
I hope you’ve been following and enjoying the complete cycle of the Haydn String Quartets that we’re broadcasting on WBJC at 6.30pm each weekday evening. To add some behind-the-scenes perspective, the violist from the Angeles String Quartet, Brian Dembow, came in to talk to me about the recordings.
The Scalatti keyboard sonata cycle was such a success in some quarters that we had requests to start over again at the very beginning! Actually, we’re going to do something new and different.
I was at the 40th anniversary gala concert for Gretna Music up in Pennsylvania a few weeks ago and, at the after party, I met a couple of musicians, past and present, who listen to WBJC. Their names are Karen and Ron Erler, and, in the course of conversation, Karen asked if we had in the WBJC music library the complete Haydn String Quartets performed by the Angeles Quartet, who were based in – you guessed it – Los Angeles. I checked, and we didn’t. Now here is the really, really cool part: Karen and Ron decided that they wanted to donate the set – all 67-and-a-half quartets on 21 CDs – to WBJC. They personally hand delivered the box set to the studios last week, and I have been busily cataloguing them for the WBJC library ever since.
Starting THIS MONDAY AT 6.30 p.m. I will be playing the complete cycle, starting with Opus 1, through the “Sun” Quartets, the “Russian” Quartets, the “Prussian” Quartets, the “Tost” Quartets, the “Apponyi” Quartets, the “Erdödy” Quartets, the “Lobkowitz” Quartets, all the way up to Haydn’s unfinished quartet No. 68.
I am thrilled and excited, and so very grateful to Karen and Ron for their generosity, as I am sure you will be too as we work our way through this extraordinary body of work by one of our greatest composers. See you at 6.30 p.m. this coming Monday!
First and Franklin Presbyterian church has a very aptly named music series, the Spire Series. The steeple was completed in 1879 and, at 273 feet, is the tallest in Baltimore.
Chad Bowles, who is the Chair of the Piano Department at Peabody Preparatory, is presenting a varied program as part of the Spire Series on Friday evening.
Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)
Sonata in G Major, Hob. XVI:40
York Bowen (1884-1961)
Sonata in F Minor, Op. 72
Franz Liszt (1811-1886)
Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude
Fantasie and Fugue on BACH
Listen to Chad’s interview here
In his later years Franz Joseph Haydn personally enjoying great success and fame, but the world around him was in trouble
. In 1798 Haydn wrote Missa in Angustiis (“Mass for troubled times”) which may have been premiered the day Admiral Horatio Nelson defeated Napoleon in the Battle of the Nile. This late mass would gradually be called “Lord Nelson Mass.” It’s the first work on today’s choral hour. Listen as well for some outgoing music by Estonian composer,
This coming Sunday, November 18th, Pro Musica Rara will present Love Letters from the Eighteenth Century at Towson University’s Center for the Arts. PMR’s Artistic Director Allen Whear did painstaking research into the correspondence and personal lives of some Enlightenment-era notables for this program; you can listen to our interview by clicking on the link below.
PMR’s Love Letters From The 18th Century
What is the longest viola joke?
Harold in Italy.
Okay, this one is quite funny, but for the most part I just don’t get the plethora of viola jokes. I mean, I get them, but I don’t understand why violas are the butt of the dumb blonde jokes of the music world. The viola has such a beautifully mellow tone and it does such a great job of filling out the middle voice of a piece of music. After all, Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart, Dvorak and many others thought highly enough of the viola to make it the additional instrument in their string quintets; Schumann wrote his exquisite Märchenbilder (Fairy Tale Pictures) for viola; Brahms made a viola version of his two Clarinet Sonatas; there’s Mozart’ Sinfonia Concertante; there’s Walton’s Viola Concerto, and so the list goes on.
I’ve been thinking about this since hearing the Brentano String Quartet open the Shriver Hall Concert Series last Sunday evening. From the opening Haydn Quartet, I kept finding my ear being drawn to the viola part, beautifully played by Misha Amory. It’s not that he drew attention to himself—not at all—but the viola lines were just so clear and added such depth to the inner workings of the music. It turns out Misha has stellar credentials; he holds degrees from Yale University and the Juilliard School and now serves on the faculties of the Juilliard and the Curtis Institute. But it’s more than just that. There is an innate musicality and sensitivity to his playing that helps to bind the whole quartet together.
Incidentally, Misha is married to the violist, Hsin-Yun Huang, so they have quite a little viola cottage industry going there—good luck to them!
Conductors: Trevor Pinnock and Harry Bicket
Cellist: Paul Gomziakov
Fauré: Masques et Bergamasques
Haydn: Overture to L’Isola Disabitata
Haydn: Cello Concerto in C Major
Mozart: Symphony No 40 in G Minor, K 550
Rameau: Suite from Les Boréades
Conductor: Riccardo Muti
Violinist: Pinchas Zukerman
Brahms: Violin Concerto in D Major, Op 77
Brahms: Symphony No 2 in D Major, Op 73
Haydn: Symphony No 89 in F Major