Music

September 10, 2001 9:00 AM

A concert of remembrance and reconciliation

From the decimation of Nanjing, China, through the destruction of Nagasaki, Japan, to the rending of Korea at the 38th parallel, the people of Asia have experienced the horrors of war throughout much of the 20th century. To help humanity come to terms with it all, Young Nam Kim, artistic director of the Chamber Music Society of Minnesota, commissioned four composersâthree of Asian ancestryâto each create a work of remembrance and reconciliation. Their works were presented in Hun Qiao: Bridge of Souls, a concert that pays homage to the victims and survivors of war atrocities and to their descendants.

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August 5, 2001 9:00 AM

You've got (Mozart's) mail

Mozart would have loved email. It would have been the perfect outlet for his frenzied, frequent, and very personal communications. His unorthodox spelling and scattershot style would have been well served by todays more immediate and chatty electronic medium. (And I have no trouble at all imagining him firing off the latest awful jokes to his father, sister, and cousin, from a laptop on the road.) Im convinced of this after reading the composers correspondence in Robert Spaethlings smart and revealing "Mozarts Letters, Mozarts Life" (W.W. Norton, 2000).

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August 1, 2001 9:00 AM

Ransom of the Opera

When I hear DvorÃ¡k's "Song to the Moon" from Rusalka I nearly believe I can fly. To experience Beverly Sills singing "Mariettas Lied" from Korngold's Die Tode Stadt fills me with an indescribable longing. Music like this brings feelings of "other-worldliness," the idea that a place exists where harsh reality is shut out and quiet beauty rules, even in the most unusual of story lines. Ann Patchett's lovely novel Bel Canto (HarperCollins, 2001) is filled with just this kind of magic.

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July 5, 2001 9:00 AM

The music of family history

The spring of 1933 brought the first of many insidious measures levied against the Jews of Germany, long before the so-called "Final Solution." The systematic institutionalization of anti-Semitism included the boycott of Jewish businesses, the confiscation of property, the prohibition of marriages between Jews and Aryans and, from the earliest days, the expulsion of Jewish musicians, actors and artists from the nation's orchestras, opera companies and theaters. The little-known story of JÃ¼dische Kulturbund is brought to light in "The Inextinguishable Symphony" (John Wiley & Sons, 2000) by Martin Goldsmith, for years a respected music host and commentator on National Public Radio.

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June 21, 2001 9:00 AM

Mindy Ratner's China Chronicles

A troupe of 70 young musicians from the Greater Twin Cities Youth Symphonies travelled through China for a concert tour. The tour took the students through Beijing, Xian, and Shanghai to perform in some of China's most prestigious concert halls. The musicians also toured some of China's historical sites, including the Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, the Great Wall, the Summer Palace, the Terra-cotta Warriors, the Grand Canal, and the old and new Shanghai. MPR classical music host Mindy Ratner sent diary entries back to us during the GTCYS tour.

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May 23, 2001 9:00 AM

Itzhak Perlman: Humor and Grace

I'd never seen Perlman perform live. Never seen how slowly he makes his way on those crutches and how a violin section parts itself extra-wide so he can get to his podium and chair. The concertmaster held his violin and bow, waiting. The audience greeted him especially warmly. The applause was still full as he planted his left crutch up on the podium and swung his left leg up. Then the right crutch. As he swung his right leg upâI can't say exactly what happened next, but for some reason his right leg missed the podium altogether, and his right crutch flew out with it.

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May 5, 2001 9:00 AM

From Russia with controversy

An amiable, modest public figure or a morbidly sensitive, possibly suicidal, neurotic? Such are the conflicting images of Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky, whose birthday we celebrate this month. Though the popularity of his music is undisputed, the picture of Tchaikovsky the man has been anything but. Alexander Poznansky, a Russian music scholar at Yale, has taken a fresh look at this complex personality in "Tchaikovsky Through Others' Eyes" (University of Indiana Press, 1999) - a fascinating account of his life and career collected from the diaries of people closest to him.

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April 5, 2001 9:00 AM

Deconstructing Figaro

It's the most famous aria in the world. Everybody knows it - but not everybody knows what it's about. So we called in the experts from the Minnesota Opera's production of The Barber of Seville. Listen to baritone Ryan Taylor and conductor Emmanuel Plasson as they join MPR's John Birge to deconstruct Figaro.

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April 1, 2001 9:00 AM

The St. Matthew Passion

Sometime in the Middle Ages, Christian churches began observing Holy Week by retelling the story of Christ's crucifixion in music. Those beginnings were simpleâBible verses set to simple chant melodiesâbut eventually they would culminate in one of the most ambitious musical compositions of all time. When J. S. Bach came to write his St. Matthew Passion in the 1720s, the passion, as a musical form, had grown to allow orchestra, choirs, and non-scriptural choruses and arias. But even by the standard of the Baroque passion, the Passion According to St. Matthew is exceptional for its musical richness and its grand scope.

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March 17, 2001 9:00 AM

Sound Irish, 2001

Sounds Irish features music by and conversation with some of Ireland's most prominent classical artists and ensembles, including James Galway, two harp players (Minnesota's Ann Heymann and ClÃona Doris of County Down) in studio sessions, singer CaitrÃona O'Leary, remembering composer Joan Trimble and more.

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