Among which the nicest thing was that
we ran into bass-baritone Gerald Finley
Gerald Finley, bass-baritone; London Symphony Chorus and Orchestra. LSO Live, recorded live in the Barbican, Apr. 29-30, 2005
by Ken
So there we were ("Decoration Day greetings -- with 'old New England'-style memories provided for us by Charles Ives"), making typically (for this operation) unsteady one-step-forward, several-steps sideways progress toward Schumann's Humoreske, the final step in our Radu Lupu remembrance ("We're still targeting Radu Lupu's Schumann Humoreske, but first we're going to detour . . ."). Really, could we let another Decoration Day (probably better known lo this past half-century as Memorial Day) pass without taking note of Charles Ives's holiday musical reminiscence? From which it seemed only natural once and for all to retrace and then complete our circuit of the four remembrance pieces that make up Ives's Holidays Symphony.
It was while I was laboring on that detour down Ives alley that things started going haywire, with one thing leading to another and then another, until by happy chance we were arranging to hear first one and then two Ives songs sung by Canada's Gerald Finley, from the 61 he's recorded on his not one but two Ives song CDs. A fresh encounter with Gerald F seemed an altogether pleasanter prospect than the piling-up Ives craziness, or for that matter the hard-to-penetrate Schumann-piano perplex.
While Sunday Classics can hardly claim Gerald F as an "old friend" of Sunday Classics, we have heard him in some choice musical situations. For example, back when we were remembering conductor Bernard Haitink, and dipped into his 1980 and 2005 live recordings of the Beethoven Ninth Symphony, Gerald F was the 2005 bass soloist, and so we've already heard the magical moment I've pulled out above: when the symphony discovered that it could sing!
WE HEARD GERALD F. IN ANOTHER COLLEGIAL SETTING
we ran into bass-baritone Gerald Finley
In recital at New York City's Alice Tully Hall, 2012
[photo by Richard Termine/New York Times]
Gerald Finley, bass-baritone; London Symphony Chorus and Orchestra. LSO Live, recorded live in the Barbican, Apr. 29-30, 2005
by Ken
So there we were ("Decoration Day greetings -- with 'old New England'-style memories provided for us by Charles Ives"), making typically (for this operation) unsteady one-step-forward, several-steps sideways progress toward Schumann's Humoreske, the final step in our Radu Lupu remembrance ("We're still targeting Radu Lupu's Schumann Humoreske, but first we're going to detour . . ."). Really, could we let another Decoration Day (probably better known lo this past half-century as Memorial Day) pass without taking note of Charles Ives's holiday musical reminiscence? From which it seemed only natural once and for all to retrace and then complete our circuit of the four remembrance pieces that make up Ives's Holidays Symphony.
It was while I was laboring on that detour down Ives alley that things started going haywire, with one thing leading to another and then another, until by happy chance we were arranging to hear first one and then two Ives songs sung by Canada's Gerald Finley, from the 61 he's recorded on his not one but two Ives song CDs. A fresh encounter with Gerald F seemed an altogether pleasanter prospect than the piling-up Ives craziness, or for that matter the hard-to-penetrate Schumann-piano perplex.
While Sunday Classics can hardly claim Gerald F as an "old friend" of Sunday Classics, we have heard him in some choice musical situations. For example, back when we were remembering conductor Bernard Haitink, and dipped into his 1980 and 2005 live recordings of the Beethoven Ninth Symphony, Gerald F was the 2005 bass soloist, and so we've already heard the magical moment I've pulled out above: when the symphony discovered that it could sing!
WE HEARD GERALD F. IN ANOTHER COLLEGIAL SETTING
