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Music

Copland: 10 x 10

Over the years, Aaron Copland has been hailed as the quintessential American composer by everyone from Leonard Bernstein, who said, "He's the best we've got," to director Spike Lee, who paid musical tribute to Copland in his films. November 2000 marks the centenary of his birth - 100 years of Copland. To mark the occasion, we've come up with 10 nuggets about 10 aspects of the composer - 100 audio clips, anecdotes, quotes, and more.

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Giving Thanks, 2001

LIKE YOUR THANKSGIVING FEAST, Giving Thanks combines traditional fare with unexpected delights. For Thanksgiving 2001, we've invited some wonderful guests to the program, including Patrick Stewart, Michael Feldman, W. S. Merwin, Katy Butler, Bill Holm, and Ellen Kushner.

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The hair-owing tale of a genius

Beethoven's music has intrigued and delighted us for 200 years, but who would have thought that his hair would endure for nearly two centuries as well? This improbable longevity is the inspiration for Beethoven's Hair, Russell Martin's skillfully written biography that weaves stories of the composer's humorous but sometimes-gloomy life with the journey a lock of his hair began after his death in 1827.

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A concert of remembrance and reconciliation

From the decimation of Nanjing, China, through the destruction of Nagasaki, Japan, to the rending of Korea at the 38th parallel, the people of Asia have experienced the horrors of war throughout much of the 20th century. To help humanity come to terms with it all, Young Nam Kim, artistic director of the Chamber Music Society of Minnesota, commissioned four composers—three of Asian ancestry—to each create a work of remembrance and reconciliation. Their works were presented in Hun Qiao: Bridge of Souls, a concert that pays homage to the victims and survivors of war atrocities and to their descendants.

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You've got (Mozart's) mail

Mozart would have loved email. It would have been the perfect outlet for his frenzied, frequent, and very personal communications. His unorthodox spelling and scattershot style would have been well served by todays more immediate and chatty electronic medium. (And I have no trouble at all imagining him firing off the latest awful jokes to his father, sister, and cousin, from a laptop on the road.) Im convinced of this after reading the composers correspondence in Robert Spaethlings smart and revealing "Mozarts Letters, Mozarts Life" (W.W. Norton, 2000).

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Ransom of the Opera

When I hear Dvorák's "Song to the Moon" from Rusalka I nearly believe I can fly. To experience Beverly Sills singing "Mariettas Lied" from Korngold's Die Tode Stadt fills me with an indescribable longing. Music like this brings feelings of "other-worldliness," the idea that a place exists where harsh reality is shut out and quiet beauty rules, even in the most unusual of story lines. Ann Patchett's lovely novel Bel Canto (HarperCollins, 2001) is filled with just this kind of magic.

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The music of family history

The spring of 1933 brought the first of many insidious measures levied against the Jews of Germany, long before the so-called "Final Solution." The systematic institutionalization of anti-Semitism included the boycott of Jewish businesses, the confiscation of property, the prohibition of marriages between Jews and Aryans and, from the earliest days, the expulsion of Jewish musicians, actors and artists from the nation's orchestras, opera companies and theaters. The little-known story of Jüdische Kulturbund is brought to light in "The Inextinguishable Symphony" (John Wiley & Sons, 2000) by Martin Goldsmith, for years a respected music host and commentator on National Public Radio.

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Mindy Ratner's China Chronicles

A troupe of 70 young musicians from the Greater Twin Cities Youth Symphonies travelled through China for a concert tour. The tour took the students through Beijing, Xian, and Shanghai to perform in some of China's most prestigious concert halls. The musicians also toured some of China's historical sites, including the Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, the Great Wall, the Summer Palace, the Terra-cotta Warriors, the Grand Canal, and the old and new Shanghai. MPR classical music host Mindy Ratner sent diary entries back to us during the GTCYS tour.

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Itzhak Perlman: Humor and Grace

I'd never seen Perlman perform live. Never seen how slowly he makes his way on those crutches and how a violin section parts itself extra-wide so he can get to his podium and chair. The concertmaster held his violin and bow, waiting. The audience greeted him especially warmly. The applause was still full as he planted his left crutch up on the podium and swung his left leg up. Then the right crutch. As he swung his right leg up—I can't say exactly what happened next, but for some reason his right leg missed the podium altogether, and his right crutch flew out with it.

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From Russia with controversy

An amiable, modest public figure or a morbidly sensitive, possibly suicidal, neurotic? Such are the conflicting images of Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky, whose birthday we celebrate this month. Though the popularity of his music is undisputed, the picture of Tchaikovsky the man has been anything but. Alexander Poznansky, a Russian music scholar at Yale, has taken a fresh look at this complex personality in "Tchaikovsky Through Others' Eyes" (University of Indiana Press, 1999) - a fascinating account of his life and career collected from the diaries of people closest to him.

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