... erm.
BBC Radio 3 (www.bbc.co.uk/radio3) is playing every note they can find of Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky (sometimes more than once with different performers)- starting yesterday and ending Friday, but with their "Listen Again" link or some other ways, one can still catch yesterday's programs until next Sunday- in a program called, not that informatively, the "Tchaikovsky Experience". So yesterday afternoon EST (evening GMT) they broadcast Tchaikovsky's 5th symphony - conducted by Valery Gergiev, from a Philips CD- followed by Stravinsky's half-hour setting of part of the Lamentations of Jeremiah, his Threni, written from 1957-1958... from a recording that (I think) originally appeared on a CBS LP some years back (this work has only been recorded- twice? thrice?) - then a brief - less than five minutes - Tchaikovsky cantata "for the Jubilee of O A Petrov" (from a Russian LP). (Some of the performances are commercial recordings, some specially for the BBC and recorded in their studios, as often with them.)
(Before the symphony, there was 8 minutes of Tchaikovsky vesper service, Stravinsky's Abraham and Isaac, his Symphony of Psalms- the other well-known piece of the evening... and his "Babel". Though the program does say details may change, and I taped it for future listening *blush*- I know for sure that the symphony and Threni were played, will check about the others. I haven't heard Threni, even from the recording at our library, in years, which may not speak well of it- actually it's a striking, memorable piece, weird yes but also good.
The program is full of interesting and good things; Stravinsky's practically never-heard opera Mavra (listed as Shostakovich's Mavra unaccountably- someone needs to edit these things sometimes, likewise the violin concerto in the same part of the schedule-
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/tchaikovskyexperience/pip/9hza2/
will be on Wednesday morning; when do you hear some of Tchaikovsky's operas, for that matter (several of them on Thursday, Mazeppa and Le Rossignol today), or his "other" piano works and songs- or many of Stravinsky's songs- his last work, The Owl and the Pussycat... (mid-afternoon Wed.)? (And Stravinsky's brief but pretty stunning remembrance for a friend, In Memoriam Dylan Thomas- also broadcast Thursday, along with Agon and Tchaikovsky's Liturgy...)
The work I'm really hoping to catch :) , which I listened to a number of times in college, is the rather brief -- compressed. Concise. ...- Variations: Aldous Huxley in Memoriam (ah, I see that's on today--
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/tchaikovskyexperience/pip/gajav/
-- yay!! - fortunately again can probably catch it using their archives until a week from today, though I won't press my luck too much.)
