Samuel Barber-Vocal Music

We celebrated Samuel Barber's 100th birthday yesterday. WFMT shared many great recordings of his music, and last night even broadcast - live from Philadelphia - the Curtis Institute's Barber Centenary Concert, in honor of of one of the college's most illustrious graduates. And, we'll continue to play more Barber this week.

I love his vocal music, so I'm sharing a couple videos of great singers singing several of these marvelous pieces.

Here's soprano Leontyne Price, with pianist John Wustman, in "Despite and Still." This may have been Miss Price's White House recital.





And here is another wonderful American soprano singing two songs by Barber, including the stunning "Sure on this Shining Night."

New Young Musicians Video

The video of the Japanese elementary school honors band is so great, that I decided to find another clip in honor of WFMT's terrific program "Introductions," How about this recent view of the YOung Musicians Foundation Debut Orchestra.

Carolyn

Rite of Spring

This week conductor David Robertson leads the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in concerts that feature music by Olivier Messiaen (his colorful "Offrandes oubliees"),the violin Concerto by Alban Berg, and the wonderful "Rite of Spring" by Igor Stravinsky. The contretemps surrounding its first performance in Paris in 1913 is well-known. But my first experience with the amazing work was from Walt Disney's film "Fantasia." Even this shortened version made a huge impression - it still sounds modern after nearly 100 years.

Here's that clip from "Fantasia" of Part 1 Genesis, with the remarkable Leopold Stokowsky conducting.

Carolyn

Alicia de Larrocha

As you probably have heard, the great Spanish pianist Alicia de Larrocha passed away last Friday night. She was one of the greatest keyboard artists of the past 60 years, and was particularly entrancing in Spanish repertoire and music by Mozart.

I was lucky enough to hear her in recital in the late 1980s at the University of Illinois. This tiny, elegant woman, all alone with the Steinway piano on the enormous stage of the Foellinger Great Hall in the Krannert Center, gave a performance of grace and passion to an enraptured audience. What a wonderful artist.

Enjoy this video of Madame de Larrocha performing the Ravel G Major Piano Concerto.

Carolyn

Music in Maine

It's still vacation time as far as I'm concerned - mainly because I haven't gone on one yet. But that longing will end soon, when my husband and I go to our favorite vacation location, the beautiful state of Maine. In addition to the sea, the lakes, the mountains, the pine trees, the lobster (!), there also is music,

Take a look at this great video documentary of the Bowndoin International Music Festival, which takes place every summer at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. It's a wonderful event, and draws musicians and audiences from around the world. Just think - classical music and seafood too!

Carolyn

GRANT PARK ENDS ITS SEASON WITH FLAIR

This past Friday and Saturday the Grant Park Music Festival ended its 75th anniversary season in style - two performances of Beethoven's Symphony #9. Conductor Carlos Kalmar led an exciting reading on Friday night, in front of an absolutely HUGE crowd in Millennium Park. When I stepped out on stage to introduce the concert I saw an absolute sea of people-the seats were completely full, there were families and picnickers on the the lawn as far as the eye could see, and hundreds of people were standing on both levels on either side of the Pavilion.

Seeing that kind of crowd makes any concert more special for the performers. The Grant Park Orchestra and its wonderful Chorus responded with an energetic and passionate performance of Beethoven's amazing 1824 masterpiece. The four young soloists, soprano Amber Wagner and mezzo Kathryn Leemhuis (both memberS of Lyric Opera's Ryan Center) as well as tenor John McVeigh and bass-baritone Jason Grant joined the chorus in the finale, which sets a good part of Schiller's long poem "An die Freude." This is a stunning plea for brotherhood and understanding among all people.

Beethoven first read this poem when he was just 20, and had been thinking of setting it since 1793. In 1824 he found a unique solution to completing his final symphony -adding this choral and vocal solo setting to the fourth movement. Once again, Beethoven, the original, found a new direction in music and, in doing so, created one of the great masterpieces of history.

I've loved being a part of this season at Grant Park. It's been fun introducing a number of the concerts (and hosting one broadcast, which was a real treat!). I come away from this summer at Grant Park with a real appreciation of the programming and level of playing and singing that happens there all summer. Congratulations to Maestro Kalmar, his orchestra, the chorus (with their conductor Christopher Bell), and all the administrators, particularly Interim General Director Leigh Levine and Marketing Director Tony Macaluso, for creating such a memorable season.

And let's not forget THE BOOK - "Sound of Chicago's Lakefront," the wonderful coffee-table history of the Festival, which is stil available online at grantparkmusicfestival.org.

Here's to many more years of great music-making, offered free to Chicago by the Grant Park Music Festival!

Carolyn Paulin

La Triviata 2.0 available for you!

I hope that you were listening last Saturday morning at 10 to La Triviata 2.0, broadcast live from WFMT's Levin Performance Studio. Even if I say so myself, it was a big success. George Preston was again a great host, our six panelists - three music professionals and three very knowledgeable listeners - were terrific, the studio audience participated very well, and a good time was had by all. My thanks to my co-producer Matt DeStefano, our engineer Eric Arunas, WFMT's operations manager Don Mueller, as well as Peter Whorf and Andi Lamoreaux, and of course, our general manager Steve Robinson, who dreamed up the game show in the first place. While it is a work in progress - you can look forward to some changes and improvements for the next one - I think we got a lot of things very right. And it was REALLY FUN!

If you missed the show - or even if you didn't - you can listen to it on our website, wfmt.com. Go to the home page and in the middle you will see a box called "Featured Programming." Just click on it and you will be taken to a page with lots of information on what's happening on WFMT in August. And just a little way down the page is the button for La Triviata 2.0. I hope you enjoy it- test your knowledge and answer our questions as you listen.

Carolyn Paulin

Return of the Game Show

On Saturday, August 1st, our WFMT Game Show "La Triviata" will make a return appearance. We're calling it "La Triviata 2.0," and it will be aired from 10 to 11 AM, live from our Fay and Daniel Levin Performance Studio. Much of it will be like our first airing of the game show back in April - George Preston will be the congenial host, we'll have three teams, and there will be multiple choice and single answer questions, as well as musical identification/audio questions and montages. There will also be a listener-only question, that you can try to win by e-mailing your answer to us.

What's going to be different? Well, we'll have two people on each team, not three, and we hope to have some really savvy WFMT listeners as team members. And we'll have a question round for our in-studio audience members as well. There will be more surprises, too, which we're saving for the broadcast.

If you would like to be on one of the "La Triviata 2.0" teams, you can apply by e-mailing me directly - contact me at cpaulin@wfmt.com. We're looking for knowledgeable listeners/fans, to team up with a WFMT or Chicago classical music scene pro, for each of our three teams. Let me know if you're interested - that's cpaulin@wfmt.com. And if you follow us on Facebook, you can read Peter Whorf's WFMT request for contestants there, too. We want to hear from you!

Hope to see you then..or do be listening to 98.7 on Saturday, August 1st from 10 to 11 AM.

Carolyn

Membership Drive

If you've been listening to WFMT lately, you are well aware that we are in the midst of our end-of-fiscal-year Membership Drive. One of the things on-air hosts and guests say is that WFMT is like a family. And I've found out from many of the people who have called in their pledges that it's indeed true. Listeners have said that WFMT helps them "get through the day," or that they feel like they know the announcers as friends. Indeed, we've had calls from England and other countries where the web-site listener mentions, for example, "meeting Carl Grapentine on the London Bridge." And we here at the station feel that you are part of the family, too.

WFMT is all about the music, and we'll get back soon to doing what both we and you love - playing the greatest variety of the greatest music we know. I thank you so much for your support of classical music and of WFMT - it's vitally important to keep this wonderful art form thriving on the radio. We can't do it without YOU!

Carolyn

Paris in the Springtime

Last week I was lucky to spend five days in Paris. The highlight of this all-too-short trip was a day in Giverny - the charming little village about 50 kilometers northwest of Paris that is famous for being the location of Claude Monet's House and Garden. Just across the street from Monet's spectacular garden is the Musée Impressionnismes Giverny, a fabulous museum devoted to Impressionist art from France and throughout the world. This lovely space was, for a number of years, under the auspices of Chicago's Terra Foundation, and until this May was a Museum of American Art.

The Foundation spent over two years working to establish a relationship with the Musée d'Orsay in Paris (home to a brilliant collection of Impressionist works) and with the Consul General of the Eure district, of which Giverny is a village. Now there is an "Établissement Public de Coopération Culturelle" in the district that supports the Musée de Impressionnismes Giverny. The Museum is open from April through October each year, and the inaugural exhibition, "MOnet's Garden in Giverny: Inventing a Landscape," holds paintings only by Claude Monet, and only of the Gardens (which you can visit across the street!).

My husband and I were treated to a guided tour of the exhibit by Diego Candil, the Director of the Museum - the paintings were from throughout Monet's long time in Giverny, for he lived there with his family from 1883 until he died in 1926, and spent the entire time creating and developing this Garden. YOu could see so many changes in style, from typical Impressionist works to several that seemed really abstract.

It's a fabulous exhibit, which I encourage anyone who can travel to France before August 15th to visit. We topped off this day of sensory delights with lunch in the Terra Café. Then we strolled across the street to Monet's House and Garden and revelled in the water garden, formal garden and lovely home. It was a day to remember!

Here are a few images of the Musée des Impressionnismes Giverny for you to savor. I know that I'll never forget that visit.









Carolyn

Tenors in Tandem in May

I hope you have been enjoying our new feature for May - "Tenors in Tandem." Each weekday morning, in the 9 AM hour, we are pairing two great tenors singing the same aria. It's fascinating to hear both similarities and differences - for example, today we heard Richard Tauber sing "Dein is mein ganzes Herz" from Lehar's Land of Smiles, - Lehar wrote this work for Tauber, and conducted the recording from 1929 - and then heard the great Autrian tenor Fritz Wunderlich put his own special stamp on it.

As we go through the month, we'll share performances by Pavarotti, Domingo, Tucker, Gedda, Melchior, and even Caruso. Here's a little clip of one of my favorite tenors, Jerry Hadley, singing the aria "It must be so" from Bernstein's Candide. thsi comes from the live performance in London in 1989, with Maestro Bernstein conducting.



You'll hear more from Jerry Hadley and a host of fabulous tenors, all this month of May in the 9 AM hour, weekdays on WFMT.

Happy listening.

Carolyn

Twelfth Night

Run, don't walk, to Chicago Shakespeare Companys' dazzling new production of Twelfth Night!!! My husband and I were lucky enough to attend the opening Sunday aftenoon, and it was maybe the most fun I've had at the theater...EVER. The cast is brilliant. The director is miraculous in creating a delightful, pretty-close-to period production that speaks to today's audiences, taking us along for a really fun ride. The production, which uses lots of water (be careful if you are in the front row), is, to my mind, without fault. And it is hysterically funny. Funny when it should, and occasionally serious and tender when it should be. It's a must see.

Twelfth Night is also a play that is full of music. Shakespeare has texts within the play that are intended to be sung...and the wonderful resident composer of Chicago Shakespeare Company, Rocco Jans, has written terrific stuff, both for instruments (guitar and viola) and for Feste (the Jester or Fool - delightfully played by Ross Lehman) to sing. These texts are very familiar to anyone who has hear English songs or choral music: "O Mistress mine, where are you roaming..." is one of the most well-known and often set.

You'll be able to hear some of this wonderful music here on WFMT on Tuesday, April 14th in the 4 PM hour. I'll be hosting an Impromptu with the two musicians, the actor Ross Lehman and composer Rocco Jans. We'll talk about the play, what it was like to compose for this wonderful work and to interact with the actors and director, and hear a number of the pieces written for this production. I hope you'll tune in.

And, by all means, heigh thee to Navy Pier to see Twelfth Night, running now through June 7th. You'll have a great time!

Carolyn Paulin

Haydn's Birthday

Today, as I'm sure all listeners are aware, is the birthday of Franz Joseph Haydn. While it's not a special numbered b-day (it's 277), this year is also the 200th anniversary of his death. We don't "celebrate" deaths, but we love to honor great composers, and our all-day Haydn-Fest is doing just that.

What amazes me, in listening to WFMT today (and preparing to host this evening's music) is the ASTONISHING variety of works that this genius produced in his wonderful long life. As he said, he had the luxury of living in relative isolation during his time as Kapellmeister at Esterhazy outside Vienna. His music-loving patron Prince Nicholas Esterhazy required him to compose a great deal, but let him be as inventive as he wanted to be. So he developed the modern string quartet and essentially created the standardized symphony as well. He even composed 126 Trios for the odd stringed instrument the Baryton. You'll actually hear two of those trios today - one this afternoon during George Preston's shift, and one in the 11 o'clock hour tonight on my program.

Another facet of Haydn's music tremendous good humor. Of course there are the funny works, like the last movement of the "Farewell" Symphony. But there is nearly always a sense of delight and happiness in Haydn's music. I think he was just a happy guy.

Enjoy the great music today on Haydn's birthday... and keep listening to WFMT.

Carolyn Paulin

La Triviata: The WFMT Game Show!

You may have heard that WFMT is debuting it's very own classical music game show (to take place via an April 16th live broadcast at 5:00pm (CST) from Marbles The Brain Store's downtown Chicago location.

It's been a lifelong dream of mine to have my hand in the creation of a game show. I am thrilled and honored to be involved with "La Triviata: The WFMT Game Show!" from the development stage. Really, I'm a game show junkie--my all-time favorites are (click for videos) The 25,000 Pyramid, The Price Is Right, Jeopardy! and an obscure one--Press Your Luck.

Here's where we stand (without spoiling any of the surprises):The assembly of our buzzer system is almost complete and should arrive sometime this week! I'm predicting many challenges in rigging this up and assigning our own buzzer sounds to them. I love me a frustrating, technical challenge!

Carolyn Paulin and I are working out the kinks in the show's formatting. She (and a few other contributors) are working hard to challenge our contestants in writing/creating trivia and music identification questions, among other surprises.

Noel Morris has been an absolute force in creating audio clues--I can't say more about that now, but I am REALLY looking forward to that round of the show.

Peter Whorf has been coming up with some great questions that may be used in some sort of a lightning round...

WFMT's "New Kid in Town," announcer George Preston is excited to host (and we're excited to hear him)!

I'm currently working on preparing theme music, sound effects, and general technical aspects of the show. The debut is only 3 weeks away and there is so much to do to polish this up. It's so exciting to be asked to create something from scratch with virtually no creative boundaries, and I can't wait 'till we go live on the 16th. We hope you'll love what you hear!
Feel free to send suggestions our way. You may just hear yours in the show's debut!

FIRST TIME FOR EVERYTHING

Well folks, this is my first BLOG ever, and I'm glad to get in touch with WFMT listeners. The life of a WFMT announcer and producer is a very active and involved one, as the piles of papers and CDs on my desk will confirm. But this job is just about the best thing since sliced bread, because you work with creative, brilliant, funny and passionate people for whom classical music is absolutely central to their existence. And we get to play the greatest music for the greatest radio audience ever. The days are busy and often stressful, but also lively and a lot of fun. I know, because listeners tell us so, that our love for music shows in our announcing.

Occasionally there is time to get away to a concert, and last night my husband and I went to a great one. We visited Pick-Staiger Hall on Northwestern University's campus in Evanston for a performance by Chicago Chamber Musicians, and what a delightful evening it was. Three great pieces on the program. First Gyorgy Ligeti's Trio "Hommage a Brahms," for French horn, violin and piano, played spectacularly well by hornist Gail Williams, violinist Joseph Genualdi (both founders of CCM), and pianist Brian Connelly. Then the wonderful Sontata for Flute, Viola and Harp, composed in 1915 by Claude Debussy - lovingly and elegantly played by flutist Mathieu Dufour, violist Yukiko Ogura and harpist Alison Attar. After intermission came one of the most delightlful chamber works ever written, by the seriously under-recognized composer Louis Spohr (a younger contemporary of Beethoven) - the Nonet in F, composed in 1813. The four string players, French horn, and four wind players gave a performance that was lyrical and lively, filled with virtuoso playing and a great deal of humor.....basically a whole lot of fun. What a way to end the weekend!

I'm always up for comments by you WFMT listeners - you can reach me at cpaulin@wfmt.com. And you can hear me four nights a week - for another month at least - from 8 to midnight on 98.7. I'll keep you posted on my doings, both on and off-mic, right here.

All the best,

Carolyn