For Your Listening Pleasure

"Three African-American Operas" If Porgy and Bess is without a doubt the most well-known opera that deals with African Americans, there are many other works that have African American subject matters in the stage repertoire, and I chose to assemble three of them in this Listener Guide. Works by Scott Joplin, George Gershwin and Jerome Kern. Details at our archive page @ https://archive.org/details/pcast209

"Three Bach Cello Suites" Bach's cello suites stand out because of the paradox they represent; they are simple yet complex, they achieve the effect of implied three- to four-voice contrapuntal and polyphonic music in a single musical line. As formulaic compositions, they follow the usual Baroque musical suite make-up, each movement based around a baroque dance type. The cello suites are structured in six movements each: prelude, allemande, courante, sarabande, two minuets or two bourrées or two gavottes, and a final gigue.Details at our archive page @ https://archive.org/details/15SuiteNo.4EnMiBemolMajeur [First time on our podcasting channel]

"Puccini: Gianni Schicchi (Trittico, Part 3)" Gianni Schicchi is an opera in one act by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Giovacchino Forzano, based on a story that is referred to in Dante's The Divine Comedy. It is the third of the trio of operas known as Il trittico. Its first performance was at the Metropolitan Opera in 1918. The opera is best known for the soprano aria, "O mio babbino caro" (Oh, my dear papa). Details at our archive page @ https://archive.org/details/PuccinisGianniSchicchicomplete [First time on our podcasting channel]

|Puccini: Suor Angelica (Trittico, Part 2)" Banished to live in a convent after having an illegitimate child, Sister Angelica has not heard from her family in seven years. Finally a visitor is announced: it is Angelica’s aunt, the princess. Rejecting Angelica’s gestures of affection, she explains that when Angelica’s parents died, she was made guardian of both her and her younger sister. The sister is to be married, and the princess demands Angelica sign her share of the inheritance over to her. Crushed by her aunt’s cruelty, Angelica asks about her little son. The princess coldly tells her that he died two years earlier. The devastated Angelica signs the document, and the princess leaves. Angelica grieves that her child died without her mother by her side (“Senza mamma”). She drinks poison, then suddenly realizes that suicide is a mortal sin. Praying for forgiveness, she dies with a vision of her son greeting her in heaven. Details at our archive page @ https://archive.org/details/ppyjc61_yahoo_02SA [First time on our podcasting channel]

"Puccini: Il Tabarro (Trittico, Part 1)" Giorgetta, the young wife of the barge-owner Michele, is having an affair with the deckhand Luigi. At the end of a day’s work, she offers wine to him and the two other stevedores, Tinca and Talpa. They begin a playful dance, which is interrupted by Michele. Giorgetta asks him why he seems so troubled, but he remains silent. Talpa’s wife, Frugola, arrives to take him home. When Tinca claims he loves nothing more than to drink, Luigi suddenly blurts out that drink seems to be the only way to cope with their bleak existence (“Hai ben ragione”). Frugola dreams of a little house in the country and Giorgetta wishes she could leave the barge for a happier life. She and Luigi consider the beauty of the city (Duet: “È ben altro il mio sogno”). Michele appears from the cabin and Luigi, who can’t bear to see Giorgetta with her husband, asks to be left in Rouen on the next trip out. Michele dissuades him, arguing that there will be no work there. Giorgetta and Luigi arrange to meet later that evening; she will light a match once Michele has gone to sleep. Luigi goes off and Michele again comes on deck. He tries to evoke Giorgetta’s past love for him by recalling happier days before the death of their infant child a year earlier, but she rejects him. Alone, Michele expresses his suspicions that she is in love with another man (“Nulla! Silenzio!”). He settles down on the deck and lights his pipe. Seeing the lit match from a distance, Luigi rushes on board believing it is Giorgetta’s signal. Michele grabs him and forces him to confess his love for Giorgetta, then strangles him and conceals the body under his cloak. Giorgetta reappears on deck to apologize to Michele, who throws open his cloak exposing Luigi’s dead body.Details at our archive page @ https://archive.org/details/02IlTabarro [First time on our podcasting channel]

"Beethoven: Piano Sonatas nos. 30 - 32" Born in California in 1940, Stephen Kovacevich made his concert debut as a pianist at the age of 11; then, at the age of 18 he moved to London to study under Dame Myra Hess on a scholarship and has been a London resident ever since, currently living in Hampstead. In 1961 he made a sensational European debut at the Wigmore Hall, playing the Sonata by Alban Berg, three Bach Preludes and Fugues and Beethoven's Diabelli Variations. In 1967, he made his New York debut and since then he has toured Europe, the United States, the Far East, Australia, New Zealand and South America. Details on our archive page @ https://archive.org/details/pcast198

[Project 366 Listener Guide # 83] Great composers, conductors and soloists have all contributed to the success of Germany's orchestras. The city of Berlin alone counts at least six major orchestras: The Staatskapelle Berlin (the orchestra of the Berlin State Opera), Berlin Symphony, Konzerthausorchester Berlin.and Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin – both based in East-Berlin before German reunification - and their west-side counterparts the Berlin Philharmonic and Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin. This Listener Guide revisits a pair of Beethoven gems – his Triple concerto and Eroica symphony – performed by a pair of Berlin-based orchestras. Read our fresh take on December 6 @ http://itywltmt.blogspot.com, details @ https://archive.org/details/pcast238-Playlist (ITYWLTMT Podcast #238 - 27 Jan, 2017)

"Three Scandinavian Symphonies" Jean Sibelius wrote seven symphonies; and his Third Symphony represents a turning point in Sibelius's symphonic output. His First and Second symphonies are grandiose Romantic and patriotic works. The Third, however, is a good-natured, triumphal, and deceptively simple-sounding piece which hardly foreshadows the more austere complexity of his later symphonies. The Sibelius is flanked by a pair of symphonies by the early-romantic Swedish composer Franz Berwald. Details at our archive page @ https://archive.org/details/02Berwald.SinfoniaN3InDoMagg [First time on our podcasting channel]

"Variations for Orchestra" Benjamin Britten’s Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Purcell is also commonly known as “The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra”, and is often performed with a narrator introducing the different variations which, in turn, showcase sections of the orchestra. One could rightly say that this work is a “concerto for orchestra". Details at our archive page @ https://archive.org/details/pcast141

"Variations on a Song" Today's installment of our series on Themes and Variations looks at such works that find their initial theme in song - be it nursery rhymes, folk or popular songs – works by Mozart, Arban, Paganini, Kodaly and Gershwin. Details at our archive page @ https://archive.org/details/pcast139

"Themes & Variations - Paganini Edition" 'Theme and variation' structure generally begins with a theme followed by variations on that theme - each variation, particularly in music of the eighteenth century and earlier, will be of the same length and structure as the theme. This form may in part have derived from the practical inventiveness of musicians, and our first selection - Paganini's 24th caprice for solo violin - is an excellent example of the genre. Details at our archive page @ https://archive.org/details/pcast137

"Menotti: Amahl and the Night Visitors" For those of you who aren't familiar with the piece, it is a one-act opera, sung in English, that tells a sort of Holiday Tale taking place in the Holy Land around the time of Christ's birth. As the title suggests, a young cripple shepherd (Amahl) and his mother are visited by three Kings (the very Kings of the Gospel) on their way to see the Blessed Child. As in any good tale, there is a good mix of tragedy and magic, along with a miraculous and fitting ending. Details at our archive page @ https://archive.org/details/AMAHLTHENIGHTVISTORS_201609 [First time on our podcasting channel]

“Tchaikovsky: Orchestral Suites #3 and 4” In the early summer of 1884 Tchaikovsky had already achieved much, and yet, in his habitual manner, he was again questioning his own powers as a composer, fearing that he had nothing left to say. Entries in his diary in May express these anxieties, as he struggled with the composition of the third of his orchestral suites. In fact the work, particularly in its final set of variations, was to prove one of his most effective. Tchaikovsky had first entertained the idea of writing a suite based on pieces by Mozart in 1884. The impetus for putting the project into practice came with the imminence of the centenary of the first performance of Mozart's opera Don Giovanni. The completed suite was first performed at a Russian Music Society concert in Moscow on 26th November. Details at our archive page @ https://archive.org/details/01TchaikovskySuiteNo.3Op.55 [First time on our podcasting channel]

[Project 355 – Listener Guide # 77] An acetate disc is a type of mechanical sound storage medium, widely used from the 1930s to the late 1950s for recording and broadcast purposes and still in limited use today. They are also known as a lacquer (a technically correct term preferred by engineers in the recording industry), test acetate, or transcription disc (a special recording intended for, or made from, a radio broadcast). This is the original medium used to capture Glenn Gould CBC Radio performances in the early to mid-1950’s featured in ths listener guide, including his first known recording of the Goldberg Variations. Read our fresh take on November 29 @ http://itywltmt.blogspot.com/, details @ https://archive.org/details/pcast161-Playlist (ITYWLTMT Podcast # 161 - 20 June 2014)

“Thanksgiving” Thanksgiving Day is a national holiday celebrated on various dates in Canada, the United States, some of the Caribbean islands, and Liberia. Similarly named festival holidays occur in Germany and Japan. Although Thanksgiving has historical roots in religious and cultural traditions, it has long been celebrated as a secular holiday. More details at our archives page @ https://archive.org/details/pcast296