Morning music

This morning I am driving in to work with a lot on my mind and I turn on the radio. And what do I hear but one of the suites from "Der Rosenkavalier."

And I am listening. And immediately I start kvetching to myself.

The performance is too herky-jerky. The tempos are too erratic. Phrases are exaggerated. The wrong things are brought out. It is not the way I like it. It is overengineered. Why are conductors always overengineering things?

That was when I suddenly came to my senses.

Who was overengineering things? Me.

Here I was facing this stressful day, and I was driving in to work, and "Rosenkavalier" ...



... was on the radio. It did not have to be. All of a sudden my day was touched by magic. So what if it wasn't perfect?

Why look that gift horse in the mouth?

That was not the performance I heard, by the way. I chose that clip because I liked the idea of its slideshow. The performance I heard ended when I pulled into my parking space. For the record it was conducted by Christoph Eschenbach.

By that time all was forgiven.

You should never become so critical of music that you cannot enjoy it!

Dohnanyi Radio

I love the wild and woolly world of Internet radio.

Today writing on my Leonard Pennario Web log about a conversation I had with the biographer of Ernst von Dohnanyi I was Googling around looking for this and that. And I found Ernst von Dohnanyi Radio. That is Dohnanyi pictured above. Here he is a little bit older.

It is funny how he kept that same look. Very distinguished, a little suspicious.

Back to Ernst von Dohnanyi Radio. I listened for a while. It was not strictly Dohnanyi -- as a matter of fact, I did not hear any Dohnanyi in the 10 or 15 minutes I listened. It seemed to be music that someone who liked Dohnanyi would like. Which, I have to say they are right. I like Dohnanyi, and I liked what I heard on Ernst von Dohnanyi Radio. They played the Brahms Lullaby, Then an orchestra-plus-soprano version, in the original German, of Schubert's "Ave Maria." Then a weird choral piece by Rachmaninoff that I loved.

Intrigued, I began looking around this site -- Last FM, it is called -- to see what else it offered. "Why not try Foo Fighters, Muse, indie or rock?" it prompted me. Ha, ha! Because I do not want to listen to them, that is why.

Instead I opted for a string of Cyrillic letters. And it wound up being Prokofiev.

As you listen to Prokofiev Radio you get to look at a whole bundle of beautiful old photos of old Serge. They were playing Vladimir Ashkenazy playing the Piano Concerto No. 1.

This is a fine way to get behind with your day first thing.

Opera gentleman

A big voice in classical radio is gone. He was 90. His name was George Jellinek. My friend Steven Carlson at Instant Encore alerted me to this today, to this loss. George Jellinek used to be in charge of WQXR in New York City and he also was known for his erudite interviews with singers. He is pictured above with his wife.

Here is a clip of him interviewing the singer Virginia Zeani.

As I told Steven, to hear their accents together is hilarious!

We are always seeing pictures of George Jellinek old but here is a picture of him younger.

George Jellinek seems like an educated man of the sort we do not often find now. He wrote a book, "The Road to Radio and 'The Vocal Hour.'" And in it he mentions that he took seven years of Latin, "an invaluable asset."

Who in the world takes seven years of Latin now?

I used to hear Jellinek sometimes on the Texaco Opera Quiz they used to run during intermissions in the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts.

I miss those square old voices on the radio.

The voices of virtuosi

So nice of Virtuoso Voices yesterday to mention what I wrote about Orli Shaham to all their followers, or whatever you want to call them, on Twitter! Every day I find myself thinking how small the world is getting.

Yesterday I had not quite grasped what Virtuoso Voices is. I thought it was someone like me sitting around in his or her pajamas finding quotes from musicians and zinging them around the Internet. But it turns out Virtuoso Voices is a kind of interesting business. They interview musicians and make the interviews available by subscription to classical music radio stations.

They also do promo spots.

That must explain when I tune in to WNED-FM and hear, "This is Thomas Hampson and you are listening to WNED-FM in Buffalo!"

And I am thinking: Wait, Thomas Hampson ...


... has not been here since I was 18!

It is fun to browse the Virtuoso Voices Web site. One thing they have is an extensive document on the do's and don'ts of interviewing musicians, which, I printed it out so I can keep it and refer to it. I am in print and they are in radio but it is nice to be able to learn from others' experiences.

They also have a long list of performers you can scroll down, and you will find little clips of them talking. It is fun just to hear their voices. You can occupy yourself for hours this way!

You can hear Leif Ove Andsnes, for instance, talking about Mozart: "There are so many voices, there is such energy."

And the site suggests: "Use this clip to enhance your introduction to Leif Ove Andsnes playing Mozart." That is a picture up above supposedly of Leif Ove Andsnes that I grabbed from some British singer's Web log because I could not resist it. This is a cute Web log! It is called Intermezzo.

Back to Virtuoso Voices. Here is Vladimir Ashkenazy sounding like quite the smoothie talking about Beethoven: "I am overwhelmed." That is what he says at the end, his voice trailing off.

Now if you hear that on your classical station you will know where it came from.

I love finding out how the radio business works.

And reflecting on how, every day, the world is getting smaller.