Music Features

To celebrate WRTI's 60 years on the air, we've selected some of your favorite pieces and put them together in one fabulous collection as our thanks to you - our loyal listeners!Contribute today at the $160 level and we'll thank you with our limited-edition WRTI 60th Anniversary Classical 3-CD set with liner notes from your favorite hosts. Pledge Here, and Thanks!Check out the track list below! Click on a title for an audio excerpt and more information. CD 11. Marin Marais (1656-1728): Sonnerie de Saint Genevieve du Mont de Paris2-4. Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750): Brandenburg Concerto No.35. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791): Ave verum corpus6. Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827): Für Elise7. Beethoven: Romance No.2 in F8. Morten Lauridsen (b.1943): O Magnum Mysterium9. Johannes Brahms (1833-1897): Tragic Overture10. Franz Schubert (1797-1828): Notturno in EbCD 21. Richard Wagner (1813-1883): Tristan und Isolde. Prelude and Liebestod2. Carl Orff (1895-1982): Carmina Burana. O Fortuna3. Franz Biebl (1906-2001): Ave Maria (Angelus Domini)4. Gerald Finzi (1901-1956): Eclogue for Piano and Strings5. Randall Thompson (1899-1984): Alleluia6. Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958): The Lark Ascending7. Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924): Gianni Schicchi. O mio babbino caroCD 31. Aaron Copland (1900-1990): Appalachian Spring2. Stanley Myers (1930-1993): Cavatina (theme from The Deer Hunter)3. Samuel Barber (1910-1981): Adagio for Strings4-9. Arrigo Boito (1842-1918): Mefistofele. Prologue in Heaven

60th Anniversary Classical CD Highlight: Thompson, Alleluia

WRTI Your Classical and Jazz Source

Published September 19, 2013 at 12:06 AM EDT

Randall Thompson's Alleluia, performed by Voices of Ascension, Dennis Keene, conductor, is featured on CD 2 in the WRTI60th Anniversary Classical 3-CD set.
From Randall Thompson, then Director of the Curtis Institute of Music, Serge Koussevitzky wanted a choral fanfare, loud and festive, for the opening of the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood. But Thompson couldn’t do festive, not in July 1940. Evil was spreading in Europe, and France had fallen the month before.

Over five days Thompson took the word “Alleluia”—literally, “Praise the Lord”—and turned it on its head, just as (he said later) it is in the Book of Job: “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” Thompson calls this a sad piece, this slow and insistent six-minute layered intoning of “Alleluia,” ending in “Amen.” It’s an atypical fanfare, but the Thompson Alleluia is one of the most beloved choral works of all time.

Check out all of the 60th anniversary Classical CD highlights here!

Contribute today at the $160 level and we'll thank you with our limited-edition WRTI 60th Anniversary CDs. Choose either our Classical (3 CDs) or Jazz (2 CDs) sets with notes from your favorite hosts. Pledge Here, and Thanks!