The Voice in Concert, Mondays at 9:00 pm

by Peter Shimkin

Ratings organizations suggest that many classical music fans do not take to vocal music during morning and afternoon broadcasting. For me, the human voice is a magnificent instrument and I feel that such listeners are cheating themselves by avoiding it. After hosting Evening at the Opera for eight years (can you really tell me that Don Giovanni isn't Mozart at his peak?) I proposed a non-operatic vocal program, initially known as Voice & Orchestra which later changed to The Voice in Concert to accommodate recitals with single instruments and a cappella choral pieces.

I must confess that in creating these programs I listened to many unfamiliar pieces to add to old favorites like Mahler's 4th Symphony and Orff's Carmina Burana. Some unknowns were pleasant surprises like Poulenc's Babar the Elephant and the discovery that Mozart wrote songs for voice and piano. How many of them have you ever heard played on a classical music station or programmed in a live concert? They are really good, as might be expected, especially as performed by Elisabeth Schwarzkopf.

Some disappointing works were by important composers, noticeably Robert Schumann's most famous composition in his lifetime, Paradise and the Peri, a 90-minute piece about a little angel who falls to earth, and Gloria by Camille Saint-Saëns, a musician who was a long time organist at La Madeleine church in Paris.

From the beginning, my collaborator has been my fellow broadcaster John Ryden. We initially split the orchestral repertoire so he got composers before Mendelssohn and I those after, although we occasionally cheat on the bargain. The addition of recitals came at his urging and my blessing, as he is much more knowledgeable and is a bigger fan than I. Even so, for variety I have been including art songs in my recent programs.

Which brings us to the May 16th The Voice in Concert. First up are a brace of Chopin songs. Chopin songs? Who knew? Yet you will have no problem identifying the composer and you can never get enough. The next selection is In Windsor Forest by Ralph Vaughn Williams. He arranged the work as a cantata from the music of his almost-never-performed opera Sir John In Love, which contains his Fantasia on Greensleeves. We conclude with the first symphony of Alexander Scriabin, composed in 1901. Even young, the composer was inclined towards grandiose ideas. The orchestra is large. The work is in six movements, in which there is a lot of searching for a tonal center. The last movement employs a large chorus celebrating art, whose blessings can only lead to a better mankind. We will hear the reference recording by Riccardo Muti and the Philadelphia Orchestra.