CGF Newsletter 32: Wu Woos with Wolfgang
Michelle plays Elvira; Beethoven enters the chat; Pointless blue fringe
Name That Tune
This week’s Name That Tune was submitted by Listener Jeremy. Here’s your hint: this composer was a winner of the American Academy in Rome’s “Rome Prize” (not to be confused with the Prix de Rome).
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 31
Nino Rota, Sinfonia sopra una canzone d’amore
A couple folks were bold enough to take a stab at this one, but they didn’t get too close I’m afraid. Named composers included Vaughan Williams, D’Indy, Dvorak, Smetana, and Janacek.
As per the hint, Nino Rota was the teacher of Riccardo Muti.
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.
NEWS!
As if I could be a bigger Michelle Wu fan, it turns out that the Boston mayor is scheduled to perform a Mozart concerto movement with the hometown band. As reported by Boston.com:
“The program includes music by two pioneering figures in Boston’s musical history, George Chadwick and Florence Price, as well as important voices of our time: Valerie Coleman and Roberto Sierra,” Fogg said. “And the performances of Duke Ellington’s moving ‘Come Sunday,’ as well as music by the Dropkick Murphys, remind us how the Boston Pops has for nearly 140 years embraced and championed the widest range of musical genres. We are also honored that Mayor Michelle Wu has agreed to play the beautiful slow movement of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21, with the Boston Symphony and Andris Nelsons.”
I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me so much that America’s most urbanist mayor is also a classical music aficionado. The two seem to go hand in hand!
More Brilliant Guidance from ChatGPT
As someone who is currently spending several hours a day with the score of Beethoven’s 9th symphony, I’m not so sure I agree 100% with your police work there, ChatGPT.
Lookin... spiffy?
On the podcast, my co-hosts and I talked a lot about concert attire, so I’m always interested in seeing innovation in this sphere, even when it comes in microdoses such as the new look for the musicians of the Richmond Symphony:
My thoughts and feelings on this issue are well-known, so I’ll try to condense them as much as possible: I personally have no problem with continuing to wear formal 19th-century full dress and gowns, and I think it’s a fun kind of classical drag show that we should lean into. It helps mark our art form as something special, something out of the ordinary, something interesting and richly historic.
However, I’m not at all closed off to innovation. What I dislike is the trend towards all black concert attire. The music that we play is resplendent, and I think the visual presentation should match. All black attire sucks the light from the stage and wastes the opportunity to add visual interest to our concert presentations. I think it can work for some things (a Requiem or a Passion, for example) but overall I feel it’s best avoided.
Richmond isn’t the first symphony to experiment with their own design concept, but my critique would be: go big or go home. If you’re going to design something, DESIGN SOMETHING. Don’t just add blue accents to what has become the new normal. I guess it’s better than nothing.
Classical Mixtape
Charles Avison, Concerto Grosso No. 5 in D minor (after Scarlatti)
In the spirit of our Name That Tune submission from two weeks ago, here is some more music directly inspired by the great Domenico Scarlatti. Unlike Casella’s Scarlattiana however, this piece was written by one of Scarlatti’s 18th century contemporaries, the little known English composer Charles Avison, who arranged Scarlatti’s keyboard sonatas into an extensive bunch of concerti grossi for string orchestra.
If you’re like me—by which I mean, you enjoy Handel and Corelli but are always interested in something fresh and different—you’ll absolutely love these concerti. They’re a revelation!
Here’s a quick link to the full album on Spotify.
CGF Newsletter 32: Wu Woos with Wolfgang
Last Week’s NTT: I wasn’t quite as off base as I feared, but that was pretty bad. Thing is, I’d had Nino Rota on the brain for entirely different reasons (clarinet-related, of course) and didn’t make that connection.
Re: concert attire, I would guess that going big in new design would start to present budgetary concerns.
I'm 100% confident I know the composer to this week's NTT and like 95% certain I know the piece, so I will refrain.