Wise and Foolish Virgins
Evening Music | May 6, 2010
The parable of the wise and foolish virgins (Matthew, 25:1–13) supplied the story line; Bach provided the music—as orchestrated by William Walton. What are we talking about?
You guessed it! When Frederick Ashton decided to create a new ballet for Sadler’s Wells in 1940, he asked William Walton to orchestrate and arrange some Bach music for the production. The result—The Wise Virgins. Well, you can’t see the ballet, but you can hear the music, and glorious it is, for Walton was careful to enhance rather than demolish Bach’s creations, most of them excerpts from cantatas, the most famous no doubt being “Sheep May Safely Graze.” You may safely listen, at the start of our second hour.
But back to hour one, whose main work is Mozart’s Flute Concerto No. 2 (See, he didn’t hate flute all that much—not if he wrote two concertos for it! And of course there’s the double one for flute and harp…) Ransom Wilson is the soloist, in a lovely and lively reading with the London Symphony under Raymond Leppard. After the third hour’s film music, we’ll bring you Robert Schumann’s Piano Quartet in E‑flat, Andre Previn on piano, with violinist Young Uck Kim, violist Heilchiro Ohyama, and cellist Gary Hoffman. Johannes Ockegehm’s incomplete Mass, Fors seulement, leads us toward the evening’s end. This is a very interesting arrangement for the Calefax Reed Ensemble, comprised of oboe, English horn, clarinet, alto and soprano saxophones, bass clarinet, and bassoon.
You guessed it! When Frederick Ashton decided to create a new ballet for Sadler’s Wells in 1940, he asked William Walton to orchestrate and arrange some Bach music for the production. The result—The Wise Virgins. Well, you can’t see the ballet, but you can hear the music, and glorious it is, for Walton was careful to enhance rather than demolish Bach’s creations, most of them excerpts from cantatas, the most famous no doubt being “Sheep May Safely Graze.” You may safely listen, at the start of our second hour.
But back to hour one, whose main work is Mozart’s Flute Concerto No. 2 (See, he didn’t hate flute all that much—not if he wrote two concertos for it! And of course there’s the double one for flute and harp…) Ransom Wilson is the soloist, in a lovely and lively reading with the London Symphony under Raymond Leppard. After the third hour’s film music, we’ll bring you Robert Schumann’s Piano Quartet in E‑flat, Andre Previn on piano, with violinist Young Uck Kim, violist Heilchiro Ohyama, and cellist Gary Hoffman. Johannes Ockegehm’s incomplete Mass, Fors seulement, leads us toward the evening’s end. This is a very interesting arrangement for the Calefax Reed Ensemble, comprised of oboe, English horn, clarinet, alto and soprano saxophones, bass clarinet, and bassoon.
