Classical Iowa

Jamie Bernstein can't call her childhood a typical one. On any given weekend, she might find Lauren Bacall, Isaac Stern, Richard Avedon, Mike Nichols, Stephen Sondheim, Lillian Hellman or Sidney Lumet hanging out at her house. Jamie's father was Leonard Bernstein.

“I shouldn’t tell you this, but she advocates dirty books…. Chaucer…Rabelais... BALZAC!” It’s a laugh line any actor would crave, and it advances the plot of  The Music Man. We know from the start that Harold Hill and Marian Paroo will end up together - it’s a musical, after all. So to keep us interested, Meredith Willson needs other tensions, and he finds one in moralistic opposition to the library. And who could make more hilarious bluenoses than the mayor's wife and her circle, or more believable ones?

When pianist/ composer Nathan Carterette plays the Goldberg Variations in our Cedar Falls studio on Tuesday, March 13th, you can listen on-air, or stream the video at our Facebook page. Carterette has performed the Goldbergs live on radio before (using Mr. Rogers' old piano at Pittsburgh's WQED), but this is the first time you can watch if you choose.

If you listen to my daily program, you might notice that I can't resist English pastoral music. You might not guess that I once thought of it as an indulgence, a guilty pleasure like gooey brownies (or, more to the point, sticky toffee pudding). I learned early on to equate "greatness" in music with Germanic thoroughness, and "significance" with cutting-edge spikiness. Musicology back then wrote off the English pastoral style as "a reactionary mishmash of escapism, sentimentality and nostalgia—a refuge for dead-enders and also-rans."

Tune in at 7PM tonight (Oct. 4th) for IPR's first live broadcast from the beautiful new Voxman Music Building in Iowa City.  You'll hear the renowned Chiara String Quartet, known for such innovations as performing masterpieces from memory. They'll be going their separate ways next September, so now's the time to catch them at their peak!

Join us Wednesday, Sept. 6, at noon - in person, on air, or with video on Facebook Live - for a performance by the uniquely innovative Project Trio. Be part of the studio audience, OR listen on-air, OR watch online at IPR's Facebook page! Gramophone wrote that Project Trio is "willing and able to touch on the gamut of musical bases ranging from Baroque to nu-Metal," and the New York Times called flutist Greg Pattillo “the best in the world at what he does.” Intrigued?

Tune in for tonight's LA Philharmonic broadcast to hear Brahms, Ravel - and James Matheson. Born in Des Moines in 1970, Matheson has become one of America's most honored and widely performed composers. From 2009-2015 he also served as director of the LA Philharmonic's Composer Fellowship Program, and tonight at 7 that orchestra plays the premiere of his latest tone poem, Unchained. Also on the program is Helene Grimaud playing the epic Piano Concerto no. 2 of Brahms, a composer this French pianist is especially identified with.

When the San Francisco Symphony appointed the American conductor, composer, and pianist Michael Tilson Thomas as its music director, the chemistry was perfect from the start. The orchestra and "MTT" inspired each other creatively, and conveyed the artistic excitement to listeners. That was in 1995, and since then the orchestra has gained even more international renown than it already had, winning the most prestigious international prizes, including the Gramophone Award, France's Grand Prix du Disque, Japan's Record Academy, and no fewer than 11 Grammy Awards.

School is back, and so is IPR's monthly classical request show! The next edition goes live this Friday, August 25th from 2 PM - 4 PM. What pieces would you like to share with other IPR listeners? Send your requests to classical-request@iowapublicradio.org by Thursday, August 24th. Please ask for two pieces, in case one of your choices has been broadcast recently.

Join Barney from 2-4pm today (Friday) for the inaugural spin of IPR Classical's monthly request show. Your requests filled up the two-hour playlist quickly, with welcome favorites and neglected delights. Tune in to hear what you and other listeners chose!

Is there a classical piece you'd love to share on Iowa's airwaves? Now you can. IPR's monthly classical request feature will debut on Barney's show on Friday, March 31st, from 2-4 PM, and it's easy to participate. Here's how:

 1.) Send your request by email to classical-request@iowapublicradio.org by midnight, Thursday, March 30th.

At 4 PM Sunday or 7 PM Monday, tune in for a Carnegie Hall concert of Beethoven's 4th and 6th ("Pastoral") Symphonies by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and Sir Simon Rattle. After 16 years as principal conductor in Berlin, Rattle is heading home next year to the UK for a new post with the London Symphony Orchestra. But first he and the Berlin wanted to do the Beethoven cycle, and here's a chance to hear part of it in concert!

Just how much is classical music about classics? According to the 2016 Mega-Meta-List, about 80%. Yes, I'm joking when I answer a complex, subjective question with a number (trust me, it was funny in Douglas Adams), but quantifying the unmeasurable is sort of what the meta-list project does.

For this year's classical mega-meta-list, I found 70 "best classical of the year" lists from 27 countries,  entered them into a spreadsheet, and hit "sort." A few albums soared to the top, and in Part 1 I celebrated tho

Hearty congratulations to Cedar Rapids native Michael Daugherty on winning not one but three Grammy Awards, for an album that includes a work written for Iowa and first broadcast on IPR. The album, Tales of Hemingway (Naxos 8.559798), won "Best Classical Compendium" for Daugherty and for the performers, the Nashville Symphony led by Giancarlo Guerrero.

In 2007, I read that the "dispute about classical recording is whether it is dying or dead," but in 2016 it seemed as frisky as kids swarming a playground. So many albums came out that trying to winnow them to a "best-of-the-year" list could make you empathize with an Ivy League admissions officer. Yet the challenge didn't daunt hundreds of critics worldwide, and their choices were fascinating. In recent years I've been aggregating all the lists I could find into a "meta-list," and I wasn't ready to stop just yet, so ... welcome to IPR's 2016 Classical Mega-Meta-List!

We're not sure what to call them - "long-forms"? "essays"? - but some IPR posts take extra time to explore the landscape of classical music and what it tells us about our world. IPR's new Classical Barn page lets you find these posts quickly and easily. Click on the link to explore for yourself!

Wednesday at 7PM is your chance to hear a concert featuring a great new South African soprano and a young woman who is the talk of the conducting profession. Lithuanian conductor Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla just took the reins of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra; at 29, she is its first woman Music Director (a post previously held by Sir Simon Rattle and Andris Nelsons). Mirga.

"An ideal introduction to the art form.... the most cogent [Manon] in memory" - that's what Opera News said about Des Moines Metro Opera's "meticulously crafted" Massenet. Hear it Saturday at 8PM or Sunday at 3PM on IPR's "Operas in October" series, hosted and produced by Jacqueline Halbloom.

Has classical music become a worldwide music culture in which non-Europeans are full, equal members and no nationality has special privileges? And does Japan scramble cultural storylines and stereotypes more than most countries? I make both cases in contemplating a giant of Bach interpretation, the keyboardist / conductor Masaaki Suzuki. 

Tune in at 5PM to hear the Quad City Symphony premiere a work written for them by Maquoketa native John Frantzen  - broadcast on the nationally syndicated show, Performance Today with Fred Child. The piece is called "Beyond a Wild Dream," and Frantzen wrote it for the QCSO's 100th anniversary season; music director Mark Russell Smith conducted. Frantzen has won many awards for his music, has been performed at Carnegie Hall and by the Philadelphia Orchestra, and has written a piece you want to hear - tonight!