CGF Newsletter 24: King of the Night
Mr. Oratonio essays a new role; a decidedly unchristian concert cancellation; Sydney harbor’s fixer-upper
Name That Tune
This week’s Name That Tune was submitted by Listener Rebecca. Here’s your hint: among the audience of the premiere of this work were Virginia Woolf, Evelyn Waugh, and Noël Coward. No Googling!
As always, your goal is to provide as much accurate analysis as possible. First try to get the nationality, year, and genre, then make educated guesses about the composer and — if possible— the piece. If you know the piece immediately, send us an email at classicalgabfest@gmail.com instead of commenting so the rest of us can have fun guessing.
Last Week’s Results
CGF Newsletter 23
Bernard Herrmann, Moby Dick (cantata)
The clue ended up being a big help here (thanks Joey!) I guessed Bernard Herrmann, as did Listeners Kevin and Laurie. Listener Eric had some very insightful guesses, namely Rosza and Chavez. Listener Ellen weighed in with Stravinsky.
Going one newsletter further into the past: Listener Eric weighed in with the correct answer (John Alden Carpenter!) after I had scheduled Newsletter 23. Very impressive, but get those guesses in in a more timely manner, people!
Think you can stump your fellow Listeners? Go ahead and try!
Head to our Google Form to upload a 30-second clip of an unidentified piece of classical music for us to try to identify.
Blythely Going Where No Woman Has Gone Before
From the San Diego Union Tribune:
Next weekend in San Diego, internationally famous singer Stephanie Blythe will celebrate another career first. She will become the world’s first female opera singer to sing the male high baritone title role of “Gianni Schicchi” in a professional production. In recent years, Blythe has been exploring the lower register of her famously voluminous voice, and Gianni is a part she has enjoyed singing to herself for many years. Now, she’s taking the role public.
“I have sung along with it in my heart for a long time,” said Blythe, who’s now 27 years into her professional career. “I don’t see why I have to ignore an entire portion of my voice because of my gender. I am a mezzo, but I’m a low mezzo. I’d like to take on the moniker of contralto profundo. The meat of my voice is where it is. Why should I avoid it because I’m a woman?”
Oh Dear
This message was tweeted by the Kings’ Singers’ on Monday:
Pensacola Christian College released their own statement in a tweet. All I can say is that it heartens me to see so many response tweets by decent folks.
This Old Opera House
This week in Scandalous Architecture News From 50 Years Ago That Is Completely New To Me, it turns out that Sydney’s iconic opera house, one of the most famous structures in the world, is actually a dilapidated, unfit-for-purpose dump inside, and it’s all down to terrible Australian politics in the 1960s. But now somebody wants to do something to fix it:
For context (from Wikipedia):
After the 1965 election of the Liberal Party, with Robert Askin becoming Premier of New South Wales, the relationship of client, architect, engineers and contractors became increasingly tense. Askin had been a "vocal critic of the project prior to gaining office." His new Minister for Public Works, Davis Hughes, was even less sympathetic. Elizabeth Farrelly, an Australian architecture critic, wrote that:
at an election night dinner party in Mosman, Hughes' daughter Sue Burgoyne boasted that her father would soon sack Utzon. Hughes had no interest in art, architecture or aesthetics. A fraud, as well as a philistine, he had been exposed before Parliament and dumped as Country Party leader for 19 years of falsely claiming a university degree. The Opera House gave Hughes a second chance. For him, as for Utzon, it was all about control; about the triumph of homegrown mediocrity over foreign genius.
Classical Mixtape
Bartók, Romanian Folk Dances
This piece is considered kind of basic in classical music circles, but there’s nothing wrong with the basics! A friend mentioned they’d be conducting it soon, and it occurred to me I hadn’t listened to it in a good long while. It put an immediate smile on my face.
The piece gets performed a lot on conducting recitals because it’s short, it requires minimal instrumentation, it’s not too hard to play, but it still has some conducting tricks so it’s worthwhile to put on an audition video. However, this performance by the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra shows that it comes together just splendidly without the services of a conductor. These people are so into it!
Not wading into the NTT guessing space this week, because this is a rare NTT that I know by ear! Confirmed by text to Joey.
NTT: Because of the literary luminaries hint, I'm going to guess Virgil Thomson (specifically Four Saints in Three Acts? one of those works I've always meant to listen to but haven't gotten around to yet). From a musical stylistic standpoint, I don't know that I could offer any other suggestions.