WETA Classical

As we approach JS Bach's birthday this Sunday, we turn our attention to a new recording by Polish pianist Piotr Anderszewski. He has assembled twelve prelude-and-fugue pairings from Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier into an original sequence, instead of following Bach's arrangement by key.

Throughout the week, we'll present individual selections several times each day, and we'll broadcast Anderszewski's entire compilation on Wednesday evening and Sunday afternoon. James Jacobs spoke with Anderszewski last week and has produced a short feature that we'll air along with cuts from the album.

We hope you enjoy our celebration of Bach this week.

"I cannot resist playing works of such magnificent architecture, such range of expression – works that offer both the interpreter and the listener almost limitless scope for exploration." -- Piotr Anderszewski

As part of Women's History Month, we focus our attention on a new recording featuring three women: 19th-century guitarist/composer Emilia Giuliani, Italian guitarist Federica Artuso, and musicologist Nicoletta Confalone.

This album presents the complete guitar works of Emilia Giulini, the daughter of the famous Mauro Giuliani, who popularized the guitar as a concert instrument. Her compositions show the influence of Italian opera, with an emphasis on variations on arias by Rossini and Bellini.  "Amazing deeds and performances on the verge of acrobatics" is how Emilia Giuliani's virtuosity was described by her contemporaries. When she appeared on the concert stage with Franz Liszt in Naples, critics admired her as "every finger a Liszt!"

Included with the 2-CD set is a booklet with an essay by Confalone on Emilia Giuliani's life and contributions, and one by Artuso about Giuliani's approach to guitar performance. For the recording, Artuso performed on a guitar handcrafted in 1830 and with similar qualities to the one portrayed in the portrait of Giuliani featured on the album cover.

We hope you enjoy these new discoveries this week on Classical WETA.

The dynamic French cellist Gautier Capuçon recorded a selection of favorite short pieces just before the global pandemic began last year. He released this collection -- "Emotions" -- in the fall after setting out on the road across France for "Un Eté en France" (a summer in France), performing in village squares, schools, and other community spaces.

This week, we'll hear well-loved pieces from this album, including Debussy's Clair de lune, Dvořák's Song to the Moon, Tchaikovsky's Sentimental Waltz, Schubert's Ave Maria, and a dozen others. These are beautiful performances -- we hope you find this music meaningful and uplifting.

We're pleased to resume Album of the Week during Black History Month by featuring the wonderfully talented family of musicians: the Kanneh-Masons. They recently released a recording of Carnival of the Animals by Camille Saint-Saëns, along with several other animal-themed classical works. 

The Carnival of the Animals features a new text by author Michael Morpurgo, narrated by him and Academy Award-winning actor Olivia Colman (of The Crown fame). Listen all week for portions of the Carnival as well as several full performances. 

Here is a note from the seven talented Kanneh-Masons who are featured in this recording:

The idea for this album grew from our special connection with music as young children. Music that speaks to the young, brought to life in the creative dialogue between narrative and sound has an impact that lasts a lifetime. As very young children, our parents introduced us to Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf, and we listened to this obsessively every morning before Primary school. (We still love the way the music illustrates the words spoken in that recording by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and Dame Edna Everage!)

We were all similarly fascinated by the magical world of story and music created in Carnival of the Animals by Saint-Saëns. The drama, the picture-painting and the humour which is packed into the music has been brought into vivid colour by Michael Morpurgo’s story poems, – also narrated by the extraordinary Olivia Colman – which are funny, exciting and at times incredibly moving.