Monday, May 7
Three agendas to start the week off:
1. New releases. All recordings on today's show are hot off the press (or whatever they call the machine that makes CDs).
2. Birthdays. May 7 is a big day for both Brahms and Tchaikovsky; violinist Julia Fischer soloes in works by both. It's also the birthday of Atlanta Symphony conductor Robert Spano, whose new recording of Ralph Vaughan Williams' Fifth Symphony we hear.
3. Weird instruments. You learn something every day. The vis-a-vis, I've learned, is a hybrid keyboard instrument from the 1770s, part harpsichord and part fortepiano. We hear Mozart on one of the two surviving exemplars of this mutant. And don't miss tomorrow's show, featuring the blob-shaped, five-stringed, viola-type creature called the viola pomposa.
And now, your rundown.
11 AM
- Holst: St. Paul's Suite. Northern Sinfonia, Griffiths (Naxos 8.570339)
- Vaughan Williams: Symphony No. 5. Atlanta Sym, Spano (Telarc 80676)
- Ginastera: Pequena Danza. Fernando Viani (Naxos 8.557911-12)
- Ginastera: Milonga. Fernando Viani (Naxos 8.557911-12)
- Turina: La Oracion del Torero. Cuartetto Casals (Harmonia Mundi 987072)
- Reinecke: Symphony No. 1. Bern Sym, Moesus (CPO 777 105)
- Mozart: Sonata in D for piano four-hands, K. 381, played on vis-a-vis. Staier, Schornsheim (Harmonia Mundi 901941)
- Brahms: Violin Concerto in D major. Julia Fischer, Netherlands Phil, Kreizberg (PentaTone 5186 066)
- Tchaikovsky: Valse-Scherzo, Op. 34. Julia Fischer, Russian National Orch, Kreizberg (PentaTone 5186 095)
