Gobble, Gobble!
Evening Music | May 6, 2010
Gobble, gobble! It’s turkey day, and there is plenty of American or Thanksgiving-related music on this evening’s plate, so join us in celebration...
We open with—surprise, surprise“Turkey in the Straw.” A down-home, country/folk version by Bill Crofut and friends. Tap your feet and sing along! Virgil Thomson, whose birthday it is (1896), is responsible for “Autumn,” a concertino for harp, strings, and percussion. Ann Mason Stockton is the harpist, and Neville Marriner conducts the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. Hour two offers more American music. Jerome Moross is best known for his movie music, but his Symphony No. 1 (turns out, it’s the only one!) is a fine work, one given its premiere by the British conductor Sir Thomas Beecham in the Hollywood Bowl. We get to hear American JoAnn Falletta conduct the London Symphony Orchestra. (Hmmm. He came over here…she went over there...)
Appropriate to the day, we hear Thomas Canning’s “Fantasy on a Hymn Tune” and Dominick Argento’s “Reverie, Reflections on a Hymn Tune” before listening to a choral version of Stephen Foster’s “Old Folks at Home.”
9:00pm on Thursdays signals movie music; staying with our homage to things American, we play Virgil Thomson again, but this time it’s his music for “The River,” written for a documentary film made for the Farm Security Administration back in 1937. Richard Kapp conducts the Philharmonia Virtuosi. Roy Harris says his “Folk Song Symphony,” written in 1940 when our nation was committed in World War II, was meant to reflect the feelings of the time. It draws on such diverse sources as Civil War tunes, cowboy songs, and spirituals—culminating in a finale that features “When Johnny Comes Marching Home.”
We open with—surprise, surprise“Turkey in the Straw.” A down-home, country/folk version by Bill Crofut and friends. Tap your feet and sing along! Virgil Thomson, whose birthday it is (1896), is responsible for “Autumn,” a concertino for harp, strings, and percussion. Ann Mason Stockton is the harpist, and Neville Marriner conducts the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. Hour two offers more American music. Jerome Moross is best known for his movie music, but his Symphony No. 1 (turns out, it’s the only one!) is a fine work, one given its premiere by the British conductor Sir Thomas Beecham in the Hollywood Bowl. We get to hear American JoAnn Falletta conduct the London Symphony Orchestra. (Hmmm. He came over here…she went over there...)
Appropriate to the day, we hear Thomas Canning’s “Fantasy on a Hymn Tune” and Dominick Argento’s “Reverie, Reflections on a Hymn Tune” before listening to a choral version of Stephen Foster’s “Old Folks at Home.”
9:00pm on Thursdays signals movie music; staying with our homage to things American, we play Virgil Thomson again, but this time it’s his music for “The River,” written for a documentary film made for the Farm Security Administration back in 1937. Richard Kapp conducts the Philharmonia Virtuosi. Roy Harris says his “Folk Song Symphony,” written in 1940 when our nation was committed in World War II, was meant to reflect the feelings of the time. It draws on such diverse sources as Civil War tunes, cowboy songs, and spirituals—culminating in a finale that features “When Johnny Comes Marching Home.”
