by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING TODAY:
12:00 Noon – Trinity Cathedral Brownbag Concert. The Horizon Trio (Garrett Folger, trumpet & composer, Carmen Castaldi, drums & Anthony Fuoco, piano). Jazz at Trinity Cathedral.
TODAY’S HEADLINES (from Arts Journal):
Corporation or Public Broadcasting Has Officially Dissolved (The Guardian)
Ultimately, NPR Will Be Okay, Says Ari Shapiro (Substack)
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
French composer Francis Poulenc (pictured) was born on this date in 1899, making January 7 a good occasion to revisit his Flute Sonata. Demarre McGill plays it here with pianist Michael McHale, but you can simultaneously raise a glass to a second musician, Jean-Pierre Rampal, born on this date in 1922, with a performance of the work he recorded with pianist Robert Veyron-Lacroix.
His Gloria exemplifies his compositional style, aptly described by a YouTube commentator: “His ingenious ability to join the secular and the sacred, in this case, French cabaret and High liturgy is unmatched, except maybe for Mozart.”
That comment was in response to a live performance by soprano Else Benoit, the Netherlands Radio Choir and Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, led by Peter Cijksatra, that took place in Utrecht in November of 2019.
An earlier work that captures Poulenc’s urbane wit is the 1928 Concert Champêtre for harpsichord and orchestra — quite a large ensemble to pit against the soloist, but Poulenc was writing for the heavy Pleyel instruments championed by the dedicatee, Wanda Landowska, during the 20th century harpsichord revival.
Jory Vinikour was featured in the Concerto at Severance Music Center with Stéphane Denève and The Cleveland Orchestra in March, 2018. Here’s a performance by Ewa Mrowca on Landowska’s Pleyel harpsichord Grand Modele, with the Symphony Orchestra of the Music Academy in Kraków, Rafał Jacek Delekta, conducting.
No doubt many of our readers vividly recall the Live in HD broadcast of Poulenc’s moving Dialogues of the Carmelites from the Metropolitan Opera. Click here to watch the chilling final scene as performed by The Met during its 2018-2019 season. Conductor: Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Blanche de la Force: Isabel Leonard. Madame Lidoine: Adrianne Pieczonka. Soeur Constance: Erin Morley.
To end with a bit of sheer silliness, Rampal good-naturedly appears here in a duet with Miss Piggy.
