Guest DJ Maria Bachmann
Many thanks to Maria Bachmann, whose hectic touring schedule finally matched up with our own – a couple of years after we first talked about her coming in as guest DJ. It was a real treat having her with us at last; her introductions & selections couldn’t have articulated the guiding principles of classics without walls any better if we had planned it together – but the set was all hers. Thanks again, Maria, and come back soon.

Paul Moravec: Ariel Fantasy (2001)

Maria Bachmann vn / Jon Klibonoff pf (Endeavour 1020, The red violin)

Béla Bartók: Concerto for orchestra, Sz. 116: mvt II, Giuoco delle coppie / Game of pairs (1943)

Chicago Symphony Orchestra / Fritz Reiner cond (RCA Victor 09026-61504-2, rec. 1955)

Johannes Brahms: Concerto in A minor for violin, violoncello, and orchestra, op. 102: mvt II, Andante (1887)

David Oistrakh vn / Mstislav Rostropovich vc / Cleveland Orchestra / George Szell cond (EMI CDM 7 64744 2, rec. 1970)

Sergei Prokofiev: Sonata no. 7 for piano, op. 83 (1939-42)

Vladimir Horowitz pf (RCA Victor 09026-60526-2, rec. 1953)

trad. csardas: A pacsirta / The skylark

Sándor Déki Lakatos (vn) and his Gypsy Band (Harmonia Mundi HMP 3903027, rec. 1993)

Jerry Livingston, Al. J Neiburg, Marty Symes: Under a blanket of blue

Louis Armstrong tpt, voc / Ella Fitzgerald voc / Oscar Peterson pf / Herb Ellis gtr / Ray Brown b / Buddy Rich dms (Verve MGV 4003)

The Gipsy Kings: Viento del arena (1989)

The Gipsy Kings (Nicolas, Pablo, Canut, Patchai, & Andre Reyes; Diego, Paco, & Tonino Baliardo; and Chico Bouchikhi) (Elektra Nonesuch 60892-2, Mosaïque)

Alas, our aircheck CD burner failed at the halfway point. Sigh. This means two things: first, we’ll get a truncated podcast up first, then try to recreate as much of the broadcast as possible; and second (as usual, and as longtime listeners know all too well), little KUSF needs your money!

Radiohead (T. Yorke / J. Greenwood / E. O’Brien / C. Greenwood / P. Selway): Everything in its right place (2000)

Christopher O’Riley pf (Odyssey SK 87321, True love waits: Christopher O’Riley plays Radiohead)

Ludwig van Beethoven: Piano sonata no. 8 in C minor, op. 13 (”Pathétique”) (1798)

Enid Katahn pf / Edward Foote pf-technical (Gaspard GSCD 332, Beethoven in the temperaments)

Carl Vine: Sonata for flute and piano (1992)

Immanuel Davis fl / Stephen Gosling pf (Overdressed Late Guy Productions OLGP-245CD)

Gustave Charpentier: Louise: “Depuis le jour” (1887-1900)

Leontyne Price S / RCA Italiana Orchestra / Francesco Molinari-Pradelli cond (RCA 6587-2-RC, Aria)

Gian-Carlo Menotti: Amahl and the night visitors: “Thank you, good friends” (1951)

Chet Allen S / Andrew McKinley T / Leon Lishner Bar / NBC Symphony Orchestra & Chorus / Thomas Schippers cond (RCA 6485-2-RG)

Friday 2-16 is the centennial of Alec Wilder, a remarkable figure in American music. The great historian of American popular song in the first half of the 20th century, he was also a brilliant composer of songs himself, with complete disregard for walls between “art” song, jazz, and pop. Tonight’s show started with a barely-scratching-surface tour of his songwriting, with soprano Valerie Errante.

Alec Wilder:
“In the morning” (a)
“Moon and sand” (b)
“Margaret” (a)
“The plowman” (c)
“Moon and sand” (d)
“The rose on the wind” (a)
“Blackberry winter” / “The echoes of my life” (b)

a – Valerie Errante S / Robert Wason pf

b – Valerie Errante S / Robert Wason pf / Aleck Brinkman b

c – Valerie Errante S / Ken Meyer gtr

d – David Liebman tsx / Marius Beets b / Eric Ineke dms
(a, b, c – Albany Records TROY 404, Eastman American Music Series, vol. 10: Songs of Alec Wilder; d – Daybreak DB CHR 75214)

Arvo Pärt: Fratres (1977/1992)

Gil Shaham vn / Roger Carlsson perc / Göteborgs Symfoniker / Neeme Järvi cond (DG 289 457 647-2)

Aaron Copland: Nocturne

Maria Bachmann vn / Jon Klibonoff pf (Endeavour 1020, The red violin)

George Gershwin: My one and only / Rialto ripples rag

Maria Bachmann vn / Jon Klibonoff pf (Endeavour 1020, The red violin)

The superb violinist Maria Bachmann, of the Lark Quartet, Trio Solisti, and an exceptionally wide-ranging solo career, will be our guest spinner two weeks hence on February 26th, coming off Trio Solisti’s performance the previous evening in San José (Feb. 25, 7pm, San José Chamber Music Society at Le Petit Trianon Theatre, 72 N Fifth St, San José, with a program of Rachmaninoff, Schubert, and Brahms) and with her newest solo CD, The red violin, in hand – it will be released this coming Tuesday, 02-13, on Allegro’s Endeavour Classics label. (I’ve been listening for the last week, and it’s dang good, a very substantial recital of Moravec, Copland, Corigliano, Ravel, and Gershwin, accompanied by pianist Jon Klibonoff.)

As always when we have guests in the studio, classics without walls has taken a solemn vow upon an original-pressing Hans Hotter LP and Eric Voegelin’s straw hat that we’ll waste no time on “artist interview” questions. Not only will Maria share a set of her choice with us, but given her experience producing many a broadcast on WQXR (New York), classics without walls listeners will get an exceedingly rare chance to hear radio professionalism at work . . . .

[photo by Robin Holland, used with permission]

. . . for being the first reporter in the entire Chronicle organization actually to report on the Bonneville/Entercom trade. Three and a half weeks late, and in a special-interest section of the entertainment throwaway, but at least it’s actual reportage. Apart, that is, from its merely repeating what the gossip column already “broke” with a couple of added facts and quotes thrown in.

Garchik noted that “Entercom’s top guy plays violin and is said to be classically minded” (emphasis mine), while Fong-Torres quotes Bill Lueth thus: “I hear that the founder of Entercom is an arts lover” (ditto). I guess hearsay is as good as news. I suppose we could wait around for someone at the Chron to pick up the phone and do some actual reporting about this mysterious fiddler, but methinks it will be a long wait.

My, but this is wearisome. Thank God I’m not a reporter; I wouldn’t know what to do with all that spare time.

By the way, I hear that KDFC has begun to acknowledge the station’s sale on the air. Thank God I’m not a reporter, or I’d have to ascertain this by way of some extended listening. <shudder>

Oh, and News Flash: Bill Lueth also sez “This could mean the end [sic] of classical music radio [sic] in San Francisco.” One can only hope.

Three weeks of non-coverage and counting . . .

Arnold Schönberg: Kammersymphonie / Chamber symphony, op. 9 (1906)

Schönberg-Ensemble / Reinbert de Leeuw cond (Koch CD 311009 H1)

Steel Pole Bath Tub: Unlistenable: “What I need” (1996)

Mike Morasky egtr / Dale Flattum eb / Darren Mor-X (Darren Morey) dms (0 to 1 003)

anon. Maronite chant: Innanni’ uchachidu khidraka / I contemplate thy bridal chamber (Byzantine liturgy for Holy Week, Exapostilarion for Tuesday): Arabic version, Greek version, Arabic version 2

Sr Marie Keyrouz SBC / St-Julien-le-pauvre Byzantine Choir (Harmonia Mundi 901315)

Mozart Camargo Guarnieri: Sonatine (1947)

Immanuel Davis fl / Stephen Gosling pf (Overdressed Late Guy Productions OLGP-245CD)

William Susman: Floating falling (1987)

Andre Emelianoff vc / Jonathan Haas timp (www.susmanmusic.com)

Well, well. Twelve days after the fact the Chron has finally reported – after a fashion – on the Bonneville/Entercom story, the absence of which from Bay Area reportage has so perplexed us. The splendid Leah Garchik has a small item about KDFC today (01-31, p. E8 in the print edition, on line here, down toward the bottom – God forbid the Chron should have to go to the effort of tagging individual items). Curiously, it lacks any reference to the seller, or to the other two stations being traded away. Still, Ms Garchik gets the Tin Star with Choking-Doberman Cluster for being the first to break the Chron’s silence on this story.

Kinda reminds one (one of a certain age, at least) of the days when the real news would show up as an aside in Caen’s column. Ms Garchik’s column is the closest the Chron can muster to a regular Caen-style “gossip” – a highly inadequate term for what the brilliant but astonishingly nasty Caen actually practiced, by the way – feature; its preoccupation with those most boring of creatures, local politicos and the class of hangers-on who have replaced “socialites,” is no fault of Ms Garchik’s, but of the town she has to cover. And it features the brilliant “Public eavesdropping” item, which resurrects the premise of Stan Mack’s Real Life Funnies (”Guarantee: All Dialogue Is Reported Verbatim”) with the additional virtues of concision and community participation.

At any rate, I prefer to assume that she found the story herself; I’d hate to think the editors (finally tipped off by a certain letter, perhaps?) are using her as cover for their own lousy performance on this one. So congratulations, Leah Garchik – coverage at last!

Georg Philip Telemann: Overture in C major, “Hamburger Ebb’ und Fluth / Hamburg tides” (1723)

Musica Antiqua Köln / Reinhard Goebel cond (Archiv Produktion 413 788-2)

György Ligeti: Sonata for violoncello solo, I: Dialogo (1948)

Matt Haimovitz vc (SFCO 2005-2006 highlights)

George Crumb: Sonata for solo violoncello (1955)

Robert Sylvester vc (Desto DC-7169)

Franz Schubert: An die Musik / To music, D. 547 (1817, Schober)

Hans Hotter BBar / Gerald Moore pf (Columbia 33CX-1626, rec. 1957 / Testament SBT 1198)

Johannes Brahms: Heimkehr / Homecoming, op. 7, no. 6 (1851, Uhland)

Hans Hotter BBar / Gerald Moore pf (Columbia 33CX-1448, rec. 1956 / Testament SBT 1198)

Well, at first it seemed like fun just waiting around to see how long it would take for our clue-crippled local rag to lift its slumbering head and groggily mention a major radio deal affecting (a) the #2 station in its “market” and (b) the #9 station, which also happens to be the top-rated “classical” station in the country. But as the days wear on, it becomes drearily apparent that this is simply going to become a tale not told by an idiot – or any idiot in town, it would seem – and it’s less & less fun, and ever more an exercise in open-mouthed astonishment.

Yes indeed, as of this writing, fully six days after it was announced, you may search the on-line presence of not only the Chron, but the Examiner, the Oakland Trib, and the local tabloids as well, for any hint of the swap that sends the unspeakable KDFC from the Mormons into the hands of Entercom – in the very same week that the latter was all over the news as owners of a not-quite-as-inadvertently-homicidal-as-they-might-wish Sacramento station. Is there any satisfaction in what amounts to scooping the entire local “news” apparatus? Hardly, unless one counts vertigo, nausea, and brain freeze as forms of satisfaction.

So for those who haven’t been paying attention because they assume the crack reporting teams at their local papers can be trusted to do it for them, note that Bonneville is trading two San Francisco giants of aural anaesthesia, #2 KOIT and #9 KDFC, and a minor-leaguer, #20-or-thereabouts KMAX, for three big Seattle stations and four in Cincinnati.

I guess it shows that KDFC has been more effective than anyone suspected, since it seems to have succeeded in rendering the entire San Francisco media establishment comatose. Oh well – I guess death by a steady diet of numbingly third-rate sewing-machine music and smarmy condescension is less painful than death by water.

UPDATE Saturday 01-27: Nine days and counting.