orchestra21

Bach – Music for Christmas
WCFSO – December 2011

Last weekend’s Bach celebration at the WCFSO featured such a fabulous array of music that it proved impossible to choose just one piece to share. So I made a mini-mixtape featuring excerpts from our performances of two Christmas cantatas and the Sixth Brandenburg. I led two of the pieces from the harpsichord; more details on soloists and movements are in the SoundCloud player:

Not sure which I like more – SoundCloud’s new iPad app or fresh HTML5 player:

Copland – Billy the Kid, Introduction: The Open Prairie
WCFSO – February 2007

Each summer I give at least a few outdoor concerts, and rarely does at least one of those performances not include the iconic American music of Aaron Copland. This particular piece – with its big-sky setting and evocation of the western prairie – is one of my favorites for open-air programs. [The recording comes from an indoor concert as most of my outside shows aren’t taped.]

Incidentally William Henry McCarty, the iconic subject of Copland’s 1938 ballet and a host of other artworks, can be glimpsed in just one confirmed photograph:

[Image via the Guardian, which reports that this tintype photo sold at auction in Denver last month for over $2 million.]

GPOYW Let us take you into the intense, vivid world of Bartók’s Miraculous Mandarin EDITION

[Roll over the image to hear our breakdown of this remarkable piece and to see me conduct an excerpt from it.]

Beethoven – Symphony no. 5, Allegro con brio [opening]
WCFSO – April 2011

This is how we opened yesterday’s WCFSO concerts for nearly four thousand elementary school students. When we stopped I asked our young listeners – many of whom had never been to an orchestra concert – if they recognized Beethoven’s music. Every hand went up.

Classical music, not quite dead yet.

[And for what it’s worth, the kids’ attentiveness during our subsequent performance of this entire movement and the symphony’s three others was on point. Thanks to all of our area teachers for preparing their kids so thoroughly for these performances.]