marksmith's blog

This weeks show is going to feature music for wind instruments by Mozart.  Mozart wrote some of the most beautiful music for wind instruments in the history of music and he really captured the lyrical qualities and capabilities of a wide range of wind instruments.  He even managed to make the bassoon sound beautiful.!!

Concerto Italiano Part 1 - My theme for the next 2 weeks is music played by an ensemble called the Concerto Italiano.  Now the Concerto Italiano is is an Italian early music vocal and orchestral ensemble that has become well known for playing the music of baroque composers and especially for their involvement in the Vivaldi Edition recording project .  This is a recording venture conceived by the Italian musicologist Alberto Basso to record the massive collection of Vivaldi autograph manuscripts preserved today in the Biblioteca Nazionale in Turin.  This comprised round 450 works from the private library of scores Vivaldi had at home at the time of his death in Vienna in 1741 and includes numerous operas, hundreds of concertos, sacred compositions and cantatas. Much of this music has not been heard since the 18th century.

The Concerto Italiano are a historically informed performance ensemble which means they play on period instruments and following known performance practices of the time of thee composed words.  This means things like playing using gut strings and using minimal vibrato.  They were formed by the harpsichordist and conductor Rinaldo Alessandrini in 1984. Since then, they have recorded a huge amount of early and baroque music featuring well core composers such as Vivaldi, Handel and Bach as well as numerous other less well known composers.

 The Fortepiano - Repeat of show from 2011

Bartolomeo Cristofori is properly credited with making the first example, which was recorded among Ferdinando's possessions in 1700. Cristofori named it gravicembalo col piano e forte,meaning 'harpsichord with soft and loud' ― but unlike a conventional harpsichord it did not pluck the strings, but had small hammers striking them.  This is the instrument from which the modern piano eveolved and this show will include examples of fortepiano music form the late baroque and classical era played on instruments or copies of the  instruments on which these works would have originally been heard.

 Welcome to the first Variations on a Theme show for 2012.  Now I was very dilgent through December and stuck to the theme of Christmas and Advent throughout the month but now it’s the New Year so time for some new themes  and I’m going to start with a theme suggested by Mel Moratti, one of the highly knowledgeable staff at a record store in town.  Mel has a particular penchant for Gilbert and Sullivan and also 20^th Century Russian Music and he suggested the theme of film scores by Prokofiev and Shostakovich  - the first part of the show features  film music from Prokofiev followed by film music from Shostakovich

I think that we all know that Advent is the time of year leading up to Christmas, which is probably best known to children through the ever popular advent calendar. But advent is actually a very specific period in the liturgical calendars it is the beginning of the Western liturgical year and commences on Advent Sunday, which is the 4th Sunday before Christmas, This year Advent Sunday fell on the 27th of November, which makes this Sunday the 3rd Sunday in Advent. Obviously Advent is closely associated with Christmas as the next period in the liturgical calendar is Christmastide and the word Advent derives from the Latin word adventus meaning "coming". So todays show is given over to 2 works that had their genesis in Advent, both of them by J S Bach.

Bach - Cantata BWV 186 - Argre dich, o Seele, nicht

Bach - Cantata BWV 147 - Herz un Mund und Tat und Leben