Music Features

So beautiful! Bach's St Matthew Passion BWV 244 is performed here under the baton of Enoch Zu Guttenberg, founder of the prestigious Neabeuern Choral Society. Vocalists include: Jard Van Nes, Hermann Prey, Claes-Hakan Ahnsjo, Margaret Marshall, and Aldo Baldin. Listen to the entire St. Matthew Passion on WRTI on Good Friday, March 29th at 12 noon, and in a Philadelphia Orchestra live, concert recording on Sunday, April 28th.

The Philadelphia Orchestra is mourning the loss of its conductor laureate, Wolfgang Sawallisch, who served as the ensemble's sixth music director from 1993 until 2003. He passed away on February 22, 2013 at his home in Grassau, Germany at age 89.

The maestro guest conducted all over the world, and had previously led the Opera Theater of Augsburg, the Vienna Symphony, L'orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the Hamburg Philharmonic, and for more than two decades, the Bavarian State Opera. He was also a gifted pianist, playing chamber music and filling in for The Philadelphia Orchestra itself during an ice storm when an all-Wagner with singers was scheduled.

Susan Lewis  profiles the maestro, focusing on his Philadelphia years,  speaking with Philadelphia Orchestra violinists Davyd Booth and Jonathan Beiler, cellists Gloria de Pasquale, Kathy Reed, and Richard Harlow, and bassoonist Mark Gigliotti about their memories of the Sawallisch years.

This week's Crossover guest is one of the most well-known pianists in classical music - Emanuel Ax.  Mr. Ax is a multiple Grammy winner in both solo and chamber performances, and has enjoyed a career that has spanned over four decades.

Emanuel Ax was born in Lviv in western Ukraine in the summer of 1948, and raised in Poland.  His first piano teacher was his father, who started him on the keyboard at age 6.  At 7, he started official studies at the Miodowa School in Warsaw, eventually winding up in Winnipeg, in Manitoba, Canada when the family moved there two years later.  There he studied piano in school, and as a member of the Junior Music Club of Winnipeg.

In 1961, the family moved once again to New York City, where Mr. Ax began studies at Juilliard under Mieczyslaw Munz, eventually winning the Young Artists Award in 1973.  He came to prominence in 1974, after winning the first Arthur Rubenstein International Piano Competition in Tel Aviv.  He followed that in 1975 with the Michaels Award for Young Artists, and the Avery Fisher Prize in 1979.  From there, he has embarked on a career that has taken him around the world, performing solo, and with some of the most prominent chamber ensembles and orchestras in classical music.

Since 1973, Mr. Ax has been Yo-Yo Ma's main duo recital partner.  He also formed a quartet with Ma, Jaime Laredo and Issac Stern, releasing several CD's for Sony/CBS before Stern's death in 2001 adjourned the ensemble.

Emanuel Ax's latest CD is called, "Variations: Haydn, Beethoven and Schumann," on the Sony Classics label.  The pianist points out that each of these sets of Variations is unusual, “each revolutionary in its own way.” He has also discovered that they go very well together in a concert program. Now, surely to the worldwide delight of fans of virtuoso classical piano performance, he presents them together on a recording as well.  In the world of the pianist, says Mr. Ax, “we’re so centered on the sonata style. What’s nice sometimes is to look at other ways to deal with structure, other ways to deal with expression, other ways to deal with forming your thoughts.” 

Emanuel Ax will perform on Tuesday March 19th at 8 pm at the Leffler Performance Center at Elizabethtown College, as part of the Gretna Music series.  Tickets and information here or call 717-361-1508.

Listen for Jill's conversation with pianist Emanuel Ax, and music from his latest CD, "Variations: Haydn, Beethoven and Schumann," on Crossover, Saturday morning at 11:30 am on WRTI-FM, with an encore the following Friday evening at 7 pm on HD-2 and the All-Classical web stream at wrti.org.

Time's marching on Now is the Time, Sunday, March 17th at 10 pm. Whether it's the change of clocks or seasons, something is trying to get our attention. Former Take 6 member Cedric Dent arranges the gospel song Somebody's Knocking at Your Door for piano, Margaret Garwood sets Tombsongs for choir, and Leonardo Balada puts an amplified classical guitar through its paces, with orchestra, in Persistencies.

New-music standout Zeitgeist rips through Chris Gable's game-show send-up Beat That Clock, and Dick Hensold applauds their three-decade longevity in Zeitgeist Anniversary Tune. Sebastian Currier persistently works his own tune in Variations on "Time and Time Again" for flute and piano.