On Now

Music Through The Night®
Valerie Kahler
Listen to the Stream
  • Suite No. 4 "Mozartiana" 12:30 Peter Tchaikovsky
    Scottish Chamber Orchestra
    Jose Serebrier
    Buy Now
  • Te Deum 12:22 Franz Joseph Haydn
    English Baroque Soloists
    John Eliot Gardiner
    Buy Now
Playlist
Other MPR Radio Streams
Choral Stream
MPR News
Radio Heartland

You can now listen to Classical and Choral Music on your iOS (iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad) or Android device.

Blog Archive

July 2008
S M T W T F S
    1 2 3 4 5
6 7 8 9 10 11 12
13 14 15 16 17 18 19
20 21 22 23 24 25 26
27 28 29 30 31    


Master Archive

Recent Entries

Categories

Contact Us

Purchase the Music

  • Buy the music you've heard on-air! Your purchase helps support our classical service.
    ArkivMusic

Services

Classical Notes

Classical Notes: July 25, 2008 Archive

< July 22, 2008 | Main | July 27, 2008 >

A Grateful Dead Symphony

Posted at 11:03 AM on July 25, 2008 by Gillian Martin (1 Comments)

I've heard it said that the audience for classical music isn't aging; it's that music lovers tend to come to classical music later in life. (So the audience isn't dying out, the argument goes, it's continually replenished.) A recent spate of classical pieces by or about '60s rockers has me thinking about this phenomenon.

Next week, on what would have been Jerry Garcia's 66th birthday, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra will perform the world premier of Lee Johnson's "Dead Symphony #6," inspired by Grateful Dead songs; the following night, they'll play Led Zeppelin. Says one source, "The BSO, in my opinion, can rock."

Click here for last week's New Classical Tracks, featuring a piano concerto by Jon Lord of Deep Purple.

Comment on this post

Worldwide Wagner Web

Posted at 3:24 PM on July 25, 2008 by Rex Levang (1 Comments)

We should be used to technological wonders by now, but it's still pretty amazing that I'm sitting here at my desk, listening to the Bayreuth Festival live over the Internet. (Calling Jon Gordon of Future Tense!)

Of course, this is at the same time that I'm fielding emails, blogging, etc., and this was not exactly the reverent mood in which Wagner intended Parsifal to be heard--but I guess Bayreuth is keeping up with the times. As near as my college German could make out, the staging involves references to the Nazi period, Marlene Dietrich, and the festival itself. And the festival website includes a link to a German Wagner Wiki, and a comic strip commenting wryly on the whole Wagnerian phenomenon.

I don't know if it's sold out--more info here--but this Sunday you can see a Bayreuth performance of Die Meistersinger over the Net. At 49 Euro a "ticket," it's more expensive than, say, a Met HD ticket, but cheaper than Bayreuth itself. Not too mention a shorter waiting list.

Comment on this post

Become a Sponsor