Weekend of June 12, 2010

Stranger than Fiction (Schumann's Violin Concerto)

Today, we're continuing our PT party for Robert Schumann's 200th birthday. There's much about his life that's worthy of a Gothic novel: passion, romance, madness, death. If you add in a seance and a brush with Hitler's Nazi Germany, it could be a summer blockbuster. The funny thing is, it's all true. The seance and the Nazis don't enter the picture until 80 years after Schumann's death, and all center around the premiere of his violin concerto. All the details are in hour two, plus a performance by violinist Thomas Zehetmair and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.

Today's Playlist

LISTEN

hour 1

Claude Debussy
Finale from Sonata for Violin and Piano in G Minor
Dmitry Sitkovetsky, violin, Pavel Gililov, piano
Antonio Caldara
Sinfonia in A Minor for Strings and Continuo
Il Giardino Armonico, Giovanni Antonini, conductor
Cite de la Musique, Paris, France
Biagio Marini
Sonata
Daniel Hope, violin, and friends
Rolf Liebermann Studio, Hamburg, Germany
Antonin Dvorak
Third movement from String Sextet in A, Op. 48
Musicians from the Savannah Music Festival
Savannah Music Festival, Savannah, Georgia
The Piano Puzzler
This week's contestant is Joe Comiskey from Portage, Michigan
Robert Schumann
First movement from Piano Concerto in A Minor, Op. 54
Freddy Kempf, piano, the Hong Kong Sinfonietta, Junichi Hirokami, conductor
Hong Kong City Hall, Hong Kong, China
Claude Debussy
Menuet
Leonard and Slava Grigoryan, Guitars
Spivey Hall, Morrow, Georgia

hour 2

Peter Tchaikovsky
June, from the Seasons, Op. 37B
Yefim Bronfman, piano
Jacob Clemens non Papa
Ego Flos Campi
Stile Antico
Boston Early Music Festival, Boston
Johann Sebastian Bach
Invention No. 6
Yang Wei, pipa, Daxun Zhang, bass
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston
Benny Golson
I Remember Clifford
Boston Brass
Virginia Arts Festival, Newport News, Virginia
Robert Schumann
Violin Concerto in D Minor
Thomas Zehetmair, violin, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Simon Rattle, conductor
The Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Program Archive

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