The D-Day 70th Anniversary Special

On Vivace this week, we have some musical birthdays to celebrate: Siegfried Wagner, Aram Khachaturian and Ignaz Pleyel.   

However, the main focus of the show will be to mark the 70th anniversary of a date that everyone knows: June 6, 1944.

It was on that morning that Allied forces crossed the English Channel and landed on the beaches of Normandy, in northern France to liberate Western Europe from the occupation of Nazi Germany. 

 

On the first day, 176,000 troops, including 73,000 Americans, arrived by landing craft and ships as well as nearly 14,000 aircraft. The Allied forces were able to secure Northern France within 3 months, despite considerable resistance by Nazi forces. It proved to be the turning point in World War Two.

Early on Friday morning, exactly 70 years after that momentous morning, many world leaders, including Britain's Queen Elizabeth, 28 European Heads of Government and the presidents of Russia and the United States will gather in Normandy to remember and pay homage to those who died. The American commemoration will be a concert, which we will reproduce for you in its entirety starting at 7 am. 

This is sure to be compelling listening. As ever, I hope you'll join me for this special D-Day edition of Vivace here on WTJU-Charlottesville.

"O Fortuna" Mondegreens -- Animated!

A mondegreen is a misinterpretation of a phrase with a near-homophony of the original. Usually this results in a new (and often humorous) meaning. In the case of Carl Orff's "O Fortuna," it can also provide some welcome relief to this over-used and often over-blown work.

Lowenthal Delivers a Potent Post-Modern Program

Jerome Lowenthal: Rochberg, Chihara & Rorem
Jereome Lowenthal, piano
Bridge Records

Pianist Jerome Lowenthal presents an attractive program of works that he has some kind of direct connection to. And that connection makes these not just informed, but exciting and insightful performances.

George Rochberg's compositions make up the bulk of the release, with three works that are similar in construction, yet yield different results. "Carnival Music" (composed for Lowenthal) is a wild mix of academic atonality and commonplace blues, tangos, and marches -- filtered through a fun-house mirror. "Nach Bach" a work Lowenthal champions, is more aggressively atonal, with snatches of Bach interspersed, like sunshine glimpsed through roiling clouds.

"The Partita Variations" features a number of pastiches (again, mixed with atonal elements) that culminate in a decidedly tonal three-part fugue.

Lowenthal easily sails through the sudden shifts in style -- one moment playing heart-on-your-sleeve Tchaikovsky, the next icily stabbing disjunct notes across the keyboard.

Paul Chihara's work, "Twice Seven Haiku for Piano," is the result of a suggestion made by Lowenthal to the composer. It's a set of quite short characteristic pieces that cover a wide range of styles and genres. These are fun little musical vignettes that Lowenthal plays with relish. The album concludes with Ned Rorem's "75 Notes for Jerry," written for Lowenthal's 75th birthday. Lowenthal's tender performance makes the work sound very close to Debussy, a fitting end to this post-modern program.