ERIC HARRISON, HOST:
Good afternoon and thanks for tuning in to Little Rock Public Radio, KLRE-FM, 90.5. I'm Eric Harrison, I write about arts and culture at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and I’ll be your host for the next two hours.
You're listening to our new show, ‘Major and Minor Masterpieces,’ where we will focus each week on a broad range of classical music, from chamber music to choral works to full symphonies and maybe even a touch or two of opera.
Just a bit of background to introduce me to you, and to give you a reason why I, and the folks that run this radio network, feel like I’m qualified to host a public classical music radio show.
I’ve been listening to classical music all my life. My dad, who always insisted that the musical instrument he played best was the stereo, had a limited collection of old 78s and a couple of LPs, flimsy Camden Records “pirates” of legitimate orchestras playing Brahms’ First Symphony and Tchaikovsky’s Fourth, which we played until the needle literally went through the grooves to the other side. We even somehow came up with a recording of Beethoven’s Ninth on nine 45rpm singles, which had to be loaded onto a spindle, played through, then turned over to hear the entire work.
I grew up in Philadelphia, which at the time had a thriving commercial classical radio station, WFLN-FM, and I took the opportunity to attend, whenever possible, concerts by the renowned Philadelphia Orchestra, while it was still being conducted by the legendary Eugene Ormandy.
I took piano lessons as a kid, proceeding to simpler sonatas by Mozart and Beethoven before giving the keyboard up in the ninth grade to concentrate on the viola. I picked that up in the fifth grade as part of my elementary school’s instrumental music program.
I played in orchestras all the way up through high school and college — Haverford College, in suburban Philadelphia, in part because of its chamber music program — my coaches were my former piano teacher, Sylvia Glickman, who was on the faculty there, and the fabled DePasquale String Quartet, all Philadelphia Orchestra first-desk players. So I got to not only hear but study great works of chamber music from the best.
After I graduated I moved to Little Rock — officially to take a job at what was then the Arkansas Democrat — and began writing classical music reviews as a sideline to my job on the copy desk. Within 18 months I had moved up the ladder to entertainment editor, and started building the paper’s award-winning arts and cultural coverage. At the conclusion of the newspaper war, I converted to writing full time, nowadays covering restaurants, theater and — yes — classical music.
(SOUNDBITE OF WOJCIECH “BOITEG” CIESLINKSKI’S “FIRST VIOLIN”)
On today's inaugural show, we’ll take a look at unusual Requiems, by German composer Johannes Brahms and French composer Gabriel Faure.
Johannes Brahms’ German Requiem, op. 45, was inspired in part by the deaths, first of his mentor, Robert Schumann, in 1856, and of his mother in 1865. Some of the music is repurposed from his early abortive attempts over many years to create a first symphony (at which he finally succeeded in 1876).
Brahms’ massive choral-orchestral work was unprecedented in several respects. It’s in German, not Latin, and seems more designed to comfort the living rather than to focus on the dead. It does not mention the name of Jesus Christ per se, and the none off the text comes from the the Catholic Requiem Mass but consists instead of excerpts from the biblical books of Psalms, Revelation, Ecclesiastes, Isaiah and Hebrews, the epistles of St Paul and the gospels of St. Matthew and St. John. It uses just two soloists, a soprano and a baritone.
The piece is in seven movements and pardon me if my German is a little ragged, the first — “Selig sind, die da Leid tragen (Blessed are they that mourn, they shall have comfort)” — is scored without violins, the somber melodies played primarily by the divided viola section. The fourth movement, “Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen (How lovely is thy dwelling place),” is frequently sung separately as an anthem.
Movements 2 — “Denn alles Fleisch es ist wie Gras (For all flesh is as the grass, and all the glory of man is as the flower of the grass)”; 3 — “Herr, lehre doch mich” (Lord, let me know mine end); and 6 — “Denn wir haben keine bleibende Statt (Here we have no abiding city, but we seek one to come)” — feature slow introductions sung principally by the soloists followed by choral fugues. The last, “ Selig sind die Toten (Blessed are the dead)” ends peacefully by echoing the theme of the first movement.
Now let’s hear a recent recording with soprano Elizabeth Watts and baritone Stéphane Degout and the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir, with Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducting.
(JOHANNES BRAHMS’ “GERMAN REQUIEM”)
You’ve heard soprano Elizabeth Watts and baritone Stéphane Degout and the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir, with Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducting, perform Johannes Brahms’ German Requiem. You’re listening to “Major and Minor Masterpieces” on Little Rock Public Radio and station KLRE-FM, 90.5.
—PROGRAM BREAK—
[EDUCATIONAL SEGMENT]
SARAH BUFORD, PRODUCER:
Hey Listeners, it’s me Sarah, your producer. Here on Major and Minor Masterpieces, we want to make classical music accessible to everyone in our community. For example, Eric and my understanding of classical music are at very different ends of the spectrum and he throws around a lot of musical terms that require a little explanation. So, we’re working together to incorporate a minute or two each week to bridge the gap between our knowledge sets.
This week our term is actually symphony. We’re starting off simple but it’s an important term. Okay, so Eric, what exactly is a symphony?
ERIC HARRISON, HOST:
Well, Sarah, loosely defined, a symphony is a multi-movement work for orchestra.
The form derives from the introductory movement, known as the “sinfonia” or sometimes “overture,” of a suite during the Baroque era (1600-1750); sometimes the term was used for an instrumental piece played between acts of an opera or oratorio.
A sinfonia usually consisted of three divisions, traditionally fast, slow, fast. By the middle of the 18th century, composers had begun to split those three divisions into three distinct and longer movements.
As with many other musical forms, including the piano trio and the string quartet, Franz Joseph Haydn established the current format of the symphony by adding a minuet to make four movements.
Starting in the late 19th century and into the 20th, composers have extended the concept of the symphony far beyond Haydn’s formal structure; some of them have created what they call “symphonies” that are really considerably far outside the traditional form, including the “Alpine” Symphony by Richard Strauss, actually a long-form tone poem; Edouard Lalo’s “Symphonie Espagnole,” which is pretty much a five-movement violin concerto, and the “Symphonie on a French Mountain Air” by Vincent d’Indy that is, more or less, a piano concerto.
SARAH: Alright, good to know. Thanks Eric! Now back to more of Major and Minor Masterpieces.
[END OF EDUCATIONAL SEGMENT]
(SOUNDBITE OF WOJCIECH “BOITEG” CIESLINKSKI’S “FIRST VIOLIN”)
ERIC: Now let’s take a look and listen to another Requiem that veers away from the traditional Catholic Mass for the Dead.
Gabriel Faure composed his Requiem, op.48, in 1888, possibly in response to the recent death of his father; his mother also died shortly after its first performance. Faure uses the much of the standard text for the Latin Mass for the dead with two outstanding exceptions: the "Dies Irae” (“Day of Wrath”) and Tuba Mirum (a reference to the Last Trumpet), thus eliminating the fear factor of the pending Last Judgment — and the addition of two sections: "Pie Jesu,” a showcase for the soprano (or on this recording, male treble, soloist) and the final “In Paradisum” — conveying over all a message of peace and serenity.
Fauré reportedly told an interviewer in 1902 that “It has been said that my Requiem does not express the fear of death, and someone has called it a lullaby of death. But it is thus that I see death: a happy deliverance, an aspiration towards happiness above, rather than as a painful experience.”
This historic EMI recording features Robert Chilcott, treble; John Carol Case, baritone, the Choir Of King's College, Cambridge and the New Philharomia Orchestra, conducted by Sir David Willcocks.
(GABRIEL FAURE’S “REQUIEM”)
You’ve heard Gabriel Faure’s Requiem in a historic EMI recording featuring Robert Chilcott, treble; John Carol Case, baritone, the Choir Of King's College, Cambridge and the New Philharomia Orchestra, conducted by Sir David Willcocks.
(SOUNDBITE OF WOJCIECH “BOITEG” CIESLINKSKI’S “FIRST VIOLIN”)
Thanks for listening this week! I’ve been your host, Eric Harrison of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. You’ve been listening to Major and Minor Masterpieces on Little Rock Public Radio and classical station KLRE FM 90.5. Many thanks to Operations Coordinator and Producer Sarah Buford for all her hard work making all this sound good as well as a big thank you to Wojciech Cieslinski for our transition and credit music. Tune in next week for more Major and Minor Masterpieces.