My friend Sherry Gendelman, who hosts a popular Sunday morning classical music show on KPFA in Berkeley, started her program last week with a piece for violin and orchestra. No sooner did the performance begin than the phones started ringing. ‘What is this?’ six listeners in a row immediately demanded.
“I woke up to this magical music. It was so lovely,” one caller exclaimed. “Thank you so much.”
I am not surprised at the reaction. Sherry started her lineup with Ralph Vaughan Williams’ radiant tone poem The Lark Ascending: A Romance for Violin and Orchestra. Marked “Andante Sostenuto” in the orchestral score, the composition begins with a violin cadenza that invokes the scene of a beautiful bird stretching her wings in a garden. It’s always a hit with listeners.
Sunday morning is the perfect time for a community radio stations to host classical music. While we are on the subject, I can’t wait for KSQD-FM (aka “The Squid”) in nearby Santa Cruz to start broadcasting. A big chunk of the classical music group associated with now sadly defunct KUSP-FM will be hosting programs on the weekends. Check the end of this post for more details.
Here are three more pieces that I think very successfully open a Sunday morning classical music program.
The overture to Russlan and Ludmilla by Mikhail Glinka. Some Russian composers, like Dimitri Shostakovich, specialize in dark sarcastic music; others, like Borodin, exude optimism. This Glinka piece, the opening to his rarely performed opera, definitely falls into the optimism category. In contrast to the Vaughn Williams score, it will roust up your listeners and inspire them to accomplish Great Things. While I was a kid growing up in New York City, the Hayden Planetarium at the Museum of Natural History started its shows with Russlan. There is just something cheerfully cosmic about the piece.
Bela Bartok’s Third Piano Concerto, second movement, “Adagio religioso.” Bartok wrote this composition at the very end of his days. One of his students finished the piece after he died in 1945. The hauntingly beautiful slow movement begins with a homage to a Beethoven string quartet, then features orchestral imitations of the birds the composer heard from his hospital bed. It is a musical essay that invites us to meditate and be grateful for our lives.
PS: Yes, I believe in playing single movements of symphonies on radios shows. I know. Blasphemy.
Alan Hovhaness, Symphony Number 2, “Mysterious Mountain,” first movement. Hovhaness composed this work in 1955 at the request of the conductor Leopold Stokowski. The rhythmically complex first movement begins with a gorgeous prayer intoned by strings, followed by celesta and harp episodes, then a beautiful oboe solo, then back to the prayer. It is perfect for Sunday morning.
Meanwhile the staff of KSQD-FM continues to fundraise and tackle obstacles in pursuit of a broadcasting date. You can read about some of the hairy details here, but I think a comment from one of the project’s movers and shakers, Rachel Goodman, summarizes the situation: “There’s a lot of legal twists and turns, and huge bureaucracies involved. It’s like pushing a boulder up a hill, and then you run into a bigger boulder.”
In any event, when it all comes through, there will be lots of interesting music on the weekends. Former KUSP-FM host Joe Truskot sent me an email the other day with details on some of the plans:
“My fellow hosts and I are very happy to bring locally produced, classical music shows back to the communities of the Monterey Bay. All four of us (Nicholas Mitchell, Jim Emdy, Chris Smith and me) were part of the KUSP classical music programs and are passionate about music.
It will be a different listening audience and will require some programming changes. I was a sub for all the classical music programs on KUSP so I understand the various niches that we occupied, but we were all evening shows devoted to particular genres. My show was 20-21, music of the 20th century and today.
My new show “Music of the Masters” won’t have those restrictions but it will have to jive with what listeners are doing on Saturday mornings. I find it exciting to match music with a “rise and shine” attitude. I’ll also have to keep an eye out for news, traffic, times, and weather. As far as selections, I’m amassing a large collection of works which will capture attention immediately. It’s been fun to go back to my college days (when I really got hooked on classical music and classical music radio) and recall which pieces grabbed a hold of me and wouldn’t let go: Tchaikovsky “Capriccio Italien,” Ravel “La Valse,” Liszt’s “Liebestraum,” Glinka’s Overture to “Russlan and Ludmilla,” Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man,” Strauss’ “Blue Danube Waltz” and on and on and on.
One other goal of mine is to create programs which offer large orchestral works, chamber ensembles, lieder, choral works, and music from dance, opera, movies, and video games. I love themed programs and being challenged to assemble selections that fit the theme – all with the purpose of listeners enjoying the show and staying tuned in. For example, FRESH WATER MUSIC featuring Liadov’s “The Enchanted Lake,” Ferdé Grofé’s “Niagara Suite,” Smetana’s “The Moldau,” Schubert’s and Barber’s “Music to be Performed on Water,” Druckman’s “Reflections on the Nature of Water,” and, of course, excerpts from Handel’s Water Music.”
If you want to help make this happen sooner rather than later, The Squid is still in fund-raising mode. More information on the project as I get it.
