All Good Things…

At this time, I usually issue a quarterly programming update and teaer for the remainder of the year, but this one will be a little different.

After much thinking over the summer months, and considering the load this activity has taken, I have decided that my 400^th montage will be my last one, and that we will be putting an end to our regular activities at year end. Not an easy decision for me…

When we began this a little over 10 years ago, classical music accessibility landscape was under immense transformation – terrestrial radio services have been transformed by the advent of podcasting and streaming services, and access to classical music “on demand” is more accessible and prevalent. The need for my modest contribution has passed, I think.

When I looked forward to retirement, I thought I would have more time to dedicate to this activity but as it turns out, I feel I’m busier now than when I was working full time! Maybe it’s a temporary thing (with selling the house and moving into a new one being a chief preoccupation over the last few months) but I feel behind the eight ball all the time, and unable to get ahead of things like I used to.

I haven’t quite decided if this is going to be a long pause, s full stop, or something in between – I have a few months to figure that out. More to follow then in December…

September-December Programming

As I ave done since June, we will have regular (rather than daily) podcasts, following grand arcs:

For September, we will be revisiting the Mahler symphonies (with one montage and one Vinyl’s Revenge feeding the arc);

For October, we will be revisiting the Mozart Piano Concertos (with one Cover2Cover and one montage feeding that arc);

November is open right now, likely used to bring back some “In Memoriam” material (including one mintage dedicated to Jean Martinon whose death anniversary was overlooked last year)

Forr December, back to Tchaikovsky with a special crossover Cover2Cover post that will be our 400^th montage).

We have still several weeks of Lundi avec Ludwig, and our Opera Alphabet with two planned “new” large works for the letters U and X.

Happy listening!

Programming Note for June-August 2022

 Normally around this time I reduce my activities here and on different forums. 

Recently, a lot of things are happening on the home front, and I need to focus more attention on these projects - nothing sinister, I assure you - meaning I will enter my summer hiatus a month early, starting June 1st.

I have a number of series ongoing - Lundi aec Ludwig, the Lyrical Alphabet and our ITYWLTMT Podcast series (at 387 and counting down towards 400). I will do my best to continue these series in June, and into the Summer, time permitting of course.

There won't be daily podcasts for the foreseeable future, though I may drop a few shares occasionally. Remember you can always find our old material on the Internet Archive under Community Audio.

Have a great Summer

Pierre 

Programming – April to June 2022

 

Highlights for the second quarter:

We will conclude the 222 day binge challenge with our bi-weekly OPera Alphabet share of Herodiade on April 9/10. Starting on April 1 we will reintroduce ITYWLTMT Montages as part of our daily programming, with more A La Carte and PTB/material left to re-broadcast. We will also contnue Friday do-overs of PTB and OTF themes until June.

Lenten programming continues until Easter Monday. The week of April 19 will be dedicated to the late Lorin Maazel with a pair of new podcasts.

May and June will have lots of arcs on Mendelssohn, Vivaldi and Brahms.

Here is our quarterly calendar (Link here to download):

2021 Year In Review and Look Ahead to 2022

 As I usually do this time of year, I issue a quick update on what we did last year and what we plan on doing next year on all our platforms.

2021 - or Year 2 of the Corona Virus Pandemic - has ha its ups and downs, though we have tried here to continue with our daily programming on For Your Listening Pleasure, with new releases nearly every week. We completed our complete recap of our montages in 2021, and started a partial recap of our Tuesday Blog / Once or Twice a Fortnight shares in the form of the 222 day binge challenge - which marks today day 122 with our repost f Die Fledermaus.

The first 100 days of 2022 will complete the chanllenge, whuke introducing two fixtured for the upcoming year :

• Lundi avec Ludwig will replace Mozart Mondays with a weekly Beethoven program every Monday; and
• The Opera Akphabet with 26 weekend programs that will explore the lyric repertoire every other week.

Here is our calendar for the first quarter (January - March)of 2022

And to complete, our annual YouTube collection of odds and sods

Happy New Year ad thanks for listening!

Pierre

Programming – September to December 2021

 

I hope you are having a good summer, and that your area is slowly moving away from COVID-19 Public Health measures. Here in Ottawa, after well over 18 months of pandemic measures, more than 78% of eligible  adults are fully vaccinated, and we are soon approaching what we can all say are near-normal activities.

On our music platforms, we are soon entering the third year of daily podcasts on For Your Listening Pleasure. Year Two will come to a close on August 31^st with the 365^th montage in our series we began way back in April 2011. The theme for that podcast is a harbinger of the coming year of daily programming starting September 1^st.

222 Days of Binging

We spent the last year reissuing all of our montages (thus 365 all together), which marked the ten years of our blogging and music sharing activities. Overshadowed in a way was the ten-year anniversary of our other platforms, notably our presence on TalkClassical (The Tuesday Blog) and OperaLively (Once or Twice a Fortnight).

In the last few months, I’ve been spending a lot of time rummaging through our music archives for these two platforms in particular, and (to nobody’s surprise) we have more than enough material shared on TC and OL over 10 years to justify spending some time revisiting them. I challenged myself to come up with programming solely fed by these shares – complete operas from OTF “Classic”, shares from our many Tuesday series (Once Upon the Internet, Cover2Cover, Vinyl’s Revenge) and a hodge-podge of playlists we cobbled together over the years

I came up with programming for 222 consecutive days – which will cover the remainder of 2021 and the first quarter of 2022 – to address this challenge. Following our typical two-week frequency of new Friday montages, we will intersperse Friday shares that will respect that challenge – more on that below.

Programming Highlights

Here are some of the highlights (and programming tactics) that merit your attention:

Opera Content – I intend to provide complete operas every other weekend moving forward. Operas may, sometimes, give way to lyrical programs, but the intention here is to showcase our OL content.

Collections – Under our Cover2Cover and Vinyl’s Revenge series, I have planned to share some “collections” – the first three are the complete Paganini violin concertos (in September), the complete Gershwin works for orchestra and piano and orchestra (in October) and the complete Beethoven Piano Trios (in November). The music shares justify more than one “daily spot” on our binge calendar. In some cases, I plan to use a Friday slot (and montage) to deploy some of that content.

A La Carte – Our mission will shift somewhat from the business of “content creation” to that of “content curation” and in that vein, there are some parts of our music share collection that may get “extended” (in the case of playlists that are shorter in duration than 60 minutes) or “broken up” (for rather large shares). The A La Carte series will revisit some of these long or short shares and repackage them with additional material. I have some A La Carte shares planned for Tuesdays, others as Friday montages. I intend to go back to some of the original TC and OL commentary and provide updates where appropriate.

Tuesday Themes Revisited – Finally, as a way of ensuring all our Friday montages meet “the spirit” of the 222 day binge challenge, some Friday montages will revisit some past Tuesday (or OTF Classic) themes. Examples include “Rachmaninov the Pianist” and “Remembering Bob Kerr”, which we proposed on the Tuesday Blog in the early days of that series.

In December, when I tease 2022, I’ll provide more insight into how we intend to complete the “binge challenge”, other programming tactics I plan to use to finish our survey of past TC and OL material, as well as reintroduce ITYWLTMT montages (old and new) into the FYLP programming calendar.

In closing, please let me know what you think of our programming through Twitter (@itywltmt), our Facebook page or by posting comments on the platforms themselves. Your comments are valuable and always appreciated!

Your friendly Music Curator

Pierre

Here’s the programming calendar for the upcoming four months:

For Your Listening Pleasure - May to August 2021

   

Below is our programming calendar for May, June, July and August. A few points of note 

• Items that were part of Project 366 are identified, to help identify items that have not been "recycled" yet
• Items with yellow marks are part of a thematic arc

For Your Listening Pleasure - January to April 2021 Programming

  

Below is our programming calendar for January, February, March and April. A few points of note 

• Items that were part of Project 366 are identified, to help identify items that have ot been "recycled" yet
• Items with yellow marks are part of a thematic arc

For Your Listening Pleasure = Fall Programming Calendar

 

Below is our programming calendar for September, October, November and December. A few points of note 

• Items that were part of Project 366 are identified, to help identify itens that have ot been "recycled" yet
• Items with yellow marks are part of a thematic arc
• Items highlighted in November with purple marks are "In Memoriam" posts
• Items highlighted  in December with purple parks are "Beethoven @250" posts

Programming Update

In years past, we would use Labour Day as a signpost that summer is almost over and that we are into the final third of the year. In the days of COVID-19, it seems that the calendar doesn’t have the meaning that it once had.

I trust that you are all safe and doing well, in spite of the many public health measures we have come to accept.

I also hope that our musings and daily shares on our podcasting channel provide some form of respite and escape from the mundane that has become our everyday.

 I would normally take some time as we approach the end of the summer to “tease” some of the stuff we have in store for the remainder of the year, and let you in on some of the ideas we are working on for next year. Here we go…

For Your Listening Pleasure – Year Two

As I pointed out in a post August 1^st, we have come to the end of Project 366. We used the final 12 months of the project to guide our daily programming on our Podcasting Channel. As of September 1^st, we plan to begin a new 12 month cycle, this time guided by a different “project”.

Under the auspices of Project 366, we have revisited 217 of our ITYWLTMT montages – which as of now number 342. Over the next 12 months, we will be adding another 23, to bring the total up to 365, one for every day of the calendar year.

My plan is then to program all of them as daily shares on the channel. I will do my best to intersperse the remaining new montages at the rate of one or two a month, and will continue to dust off Podcast Vault features on Fridays we don’t have new montages to offer, much like I have done through the last year.

The programming will also revive some of our past “thematic arcs” – and in some cases, add new or recent montages under the arc umbrella. Also, where it makes sense, I plan to match up pairs of montages under the moniker For Your Listening Weekend.

I can tell you montage #365 will be a Quarterly Tuesday share on August 31^st 2021  but keep you in suspense as to what that will be about. It will be the launching point to programming for Year Three, that is if we’re still doing this!

On September 1^st, I will unveil our daily calendar for the remainder of 2020, which will include a lot of Beethoven in December, in itime for Ludwig’s 250^th birthday.

Tuesday Blog

We cut back on Tuesday Blogs for the Summer, limiting ourselves to monthly #Beethoven2020 shares. We have a few more of these left for the Fall, as well as some Mozart Cover2Cover titles. We need to build up our Mozart collection, as it will be an important part of our overall 2020 programming – more on that in December when we do our Year In Review teaser.

What we plan on doing that will be different moving forward, is that our Tuesday Blogs will be “bonus” shares on the Podcasting Channel, whilst continuing – at least for the time being – our policy of having Tuesday Blogs matched to YouTube clips and playlists. We keep having more and more music lovers subscribing to our YouTube channel, so I don’t see that policy ending any time soon.

The Return of OTF

I’ve discretely resumed posting on OperaLively in July. Most of our posts are concentrated on a thread I call “OTF Short Stories”, which provide a quick blurb on operatic or lyrical shares on the Podcasting Channel.

As I scan the calendar I have developed so far, I think there’s still quite a bit of material we can flag as a Short Story. I plan to provide either “encore” shares or new opera material on OperaLively (as Short Stories or as “classic” OTF posts) as we move along. In the event material isn’t on the calendar (which, remember, will be limited to ITYWLTMT Montages), I will provide the material as “bonus” shares on the Podcasting Channel, same as the Tuesday Blog.

Mozart - The Late Piano Concertos, Part 3

This is my post from this week's Tuesday Blog.

This week’s Vinyl’s Revenge completes our look at the TIME LIFE collection of Mozart’s last ten piano concertos, with nos. 20, 24 and 26.

Two pianists featured this week merit some introduction. Karl Engel (1923 - 2006) was a Swiss pianist. He trained in Basel and Paris and distinguished himself as an accompanist, often appearing in Lieder recitals with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Hermann Prey, Peter Schreier and Brigitte Fassbaender. Among his chamber music partners were the cellist Pablo Casals, the violinist Yehudi Menuhin and the Melos Quartet. Karl Engel recorded the complete piano music of Mozart and of Robert Schumann and made numerous recordings with the singers Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Hermann Prey, Brigitte Fassbaender, Peter Schreier et al. He also recorded a remarkable account of Stravinsky's Piano Concerto.

He later became particularly known for his complete cycle of Mozart piano concertos (recorded between 1974-1976) with the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg under Leopold Hager, from which TIME LIFE used his recording of the :Coronation” concerto, no. 26.

Fans of the Rolling Stones might — if they are fluent in the rarest of their ephemera — know the name Julius Katchen (1926 –1969), the only classical musician ever to be featured on their spirited television program Rock and Roll Circus. Katchen’s appearance, playing De Falla and Mozart, speaks volumes about the vivid personality of the now-largely-forgotten Katchen, a kind of rock ‘n’ roll spirit in the form of a brilliant classical musician, replete with an early death at age forty-two. Mostly remembered for his Brahms performances, Katchen left a number of recordings of the Mozart concertos for DECCA, from which we get one of several recordings of him playing the K. 466 concerto.

To complete the trio, we included Clifford Curzon playing the K. 491 concerto – he left many recordings of this concerto in particular – from his LSO/Kertesz sessions.

Happy listening!

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)

Piano Concerto No. 20 In D Minor, K. 466
Julius Katchen, piano
Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra
Karl Münchinger, conducting

Piano Concerto No. 24 In C Minor, K. 491
Sir Clifford Curzon, piano
London Symphony Orchestra
István Kertész, conducting

Piano Concerto No. 26 In D Major, K. 537
Karl Engel, piano
Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra
Leopold Hager, conducting

Discogs - https://www.discogs.com/Wolfgang-Ama...elease/4295176

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...n6ylninfx-MyrT 

Internet Archive - https://archive.org/details/01pianoconcertono.20indminor

Programming Notes – Summer/Fall 2019

Summers are typically busy at home, and work has been busier than usual for this time of year, so I’ve not been on top of things on the Blog and other platforms. As summer is usually a time when I put some of my Forum activities on hiatus, I’m hoping I can catch up on some housekeeping.

Project 366

I need to clean up some links and I need to publish the “Yellow Pages” for Part 3 of the Project (which concluded in June). I should wrap up all of that by the end of August, if not sooner.

The programming for Part 4 is generally done, and the series will resume in September for the final 66 Listener Guides. The tentative title of Part 4 is “Dates on the Musical Calendar”.

Upcoming Changes to our Pod-O-Matic Channel

Near the end of the summer, I plan to recast the channel – in large part to support Part 4 of Project 366 – and this calls for renaming and rebranding. I don’t want to spoil things by doing any pre-emptive announcements, but when things get more serious, I will issue a post with details. Suffice it to say we will be doing a lot more podcasts, and many of these will include past shares edited to be more “P-O-M-friendly”.

Fall Programming

Our summer programming will feature six new podcasts (as both July and August provide “Fifth week” opportunities), and I expect to have one OTF opera share.

In the fall, we will resume with our bi-monthly Tuesday Blogs, and there should be at least monthly OTF’s. Friday podcasts, however, may be more sparse, in part due to the (still unannounced) recasting of the Podcast channel, and in part to dovetail into our long-term programing objective of reaching Podcast # 365 in 2021, which will be our 10^th anniversary year. (The number 365 isn’t a coincidence, and our long-term programming arc will explain that – all in due course).

Our year-long look at piano sonatas will continue in the Fall, with a distinct focus on Beethoven sonatas – you will see them “coupled” in some instances with piano concertos; I know we’ve already done the complete set early in our ITYWLTMT series, but revisiting them isn’t totally unpleasant…

Speaking of revisiting works already considered in past shares, Vinyl’s Revenge will complete sharing the “Late Mozart Piano Concertos” from the TIME-LIFE 5-LP set (which I began sgharing a couple years ago). More Tuesday shares in the works will complete our look at the Berlioz year, and take a nostalgic look at pianist Jörg Demus.

Have a great summer!

Intimate Stravincky

No. 283 of the ongoing  ITYWLTMT  series of audio montages, which can be found in our archives at https://archive.org/details/pcast283

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Before I provide my usual musings on this week’s podcast, I thought I would take this time to discuss some of our programming for the coming months.

I usually slow down during the summer, which has meant no Tuesday Blogs. This year, however, I have decided to keep up with my usual cadence of providing Tuesday and Friday posts on alternating weeks. I’ve decided to do so mainly because I’m keeping my options open for a possible slowdown in 2019. When I first discussed that prospect at my 2017 Year In Review post, I was clearly under the impression that we would be making some significant changes at home in 2019 – which we may still do – but it appears less and less likely that will be the case. Those of you who have had children come back home after University will understand this situation – what my wife and I thought would be an opportunity to downsize now have to rethink that plan, at least for the next year or so.

In order to continue to have our programming stay in step with Project 366, I have to program some Cover 2 Cover shares involving music by Tchaikovsky in the Summer and begin building up some posts for Part 3 of the Project – which I had planned as a “light” program of 56 Listener Guides before we transition into the fourth and final phase of the project, a 12-month Musical Calendar that will require not only 66 additional Guides, but map the remaining 300 to days on that calendar. I have mapped out all 366 in my mind, and notionally assigned them to dates on two calendars – one covering all of 2020, the other starting in the latter half of 2019 and spanning 12 months from that point on. The path I end up choosing depends entirely on what we do in 2019, thus the need to keeps “options open”.

I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself, but I needed to bring you into my thinking as a way of explaining some of my programming choices for the remainder of 2018.

Speaking of that programing, as we segue into this week’s podcast, you must have noticed there’s been a lot of Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky among our montages in 2018. This is easily explained as an artifact of our Project 366 time capsules, with specific chapters planned on the music of Tchaikovsky (sometime this summer) and Stravinsky (to close off Part 2) as representatives of Romantic and Modern music, respectively.

Ten days or so ago, Stravinsky would have celebrated his 136^th birthday. Maybe that thin excuse helps justify our choice for this “Bonus Quarterly” podcast coinciding with the 5^th Friday of June.

What I like about this week’s montage is that it illustrates just how diverse Stravinsky’s output really is – we think of the great ballets, some of his symphonic works, and even his choral and operatic works. However, Stravinsky has left a great deal of chamber music, and works for solo instrument. This selection of “intimate” works by Stravinsky spans many decades, and features most notably tracks from a pair of recordings by members of the Orpheus Chamber Ensemble.

I think you will love this music too.

Programming - October, November & December 2017

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Already the last quarter of 2017 - 13 more weeks to go. Sure flies by, doesn't it!3

On our radar for this final quarter is the end of the first tranche of Project 366, and the launch of Part 2 and a fresh set of 122 Listener Guides. More about Part 2 in November.

Friday Blog and Podcast:

• October - Podcasts featuring Mozart (NEW PODCAST) and Salieri (NEW PODCAST)
• November - An "In Memoriam" podcast featuring Sir Jeffrey Tate (NEW PODCAST) and the music of Ieland's John Field (NEW PODCAST)
• December - a pair of piano legends in Edwin Fischer playing Bach  (NEW PODCAST) and Rudolf Serkin  playing Beethoven (NEW PODCAST)
• Our last post in December will be our annual Year in Review featuring our compilation of YouTube favourites.

Tuesday Blog (TalkClassical):

• Cover 2 Cover - Schubert Lieder with the late great Gundula Janowitz (PTB)
• Once Upon the Internet - J. S. Bach Keyboard suites (MP3.COM, PTB) and Beethoven "Live" (LiberMusica, PTB)
• Vinytl's Revenge - Mozart Piano Concertos (PTB), Rachmaninov's Second Symphony and Symphonic Dances (PTB) and Holst's Planets (PTB)
• Bonus Montage for the 5th Tuesday (October) - Symphonic Stravinsky (PTB)

OperaLively:

The Flying Dutchman (Wagner, OTF). Other opera posts TBA, time permitting.

I will update this page if programming changes in the coming weeks, and also look for unannounced “repatriated” posts from our PTB and OTF series.

Subscribe to our ITYWLTMT Fan Page on Facebook

All of our Tuesday, Friday and ad-hoc posts, as well as OTF and YouTube Channel updates get regularly mentioned (with links) on our Fan Page. If you are a user of Facebook, simply subscribe to get notified so you never miss anything we do!

... and on Twitter [https://twitter.com/itywltmt

Programming - Summer 2017

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Summer means I take time off the Tuesday Blog, Project 366  and OTF for July and August, but continue with my bi-weekly Friday podcasts. 

Friday Blog and Podcast:

• July - Conccert Arias (NEW PODCAST) and guitar music featuring Narciso Yepes (NEW PODCAST)
• August - Rene Leibowitz composer and conductor (NEW PODCAST) and oboe concertos (NEW PODCAST)
• September- Hummel (NEW PODCAST), music of Jewish inspiration (NEW PODCAST) and a 5th Friday "bonus" featuring Mstislav Rostropovich, cellist and conductor, playig Shostakovich  (NEW PODCAST)

Tuesday Blog (TalkClassical):

• Our Bonus 5^th Tuesday montage (in August) for the quarter: Andre Previn, Triple Threat (NEW PODCAST)
• Vinyl's Revenge: Vladimir Ashkenazy, pianist and conductor (PTB)
• Cover 2 Cover: Vivaldi trio sonatas, op. 1 (PTB)

OperaLively:

Fra Diavolo (Auber, OTF).

I will update this page if programming changes in the coming weeks, and also look for unannounced “repatriated” posts from our PTB and OTF series.

Subscribe to our ITYWLTMT Fan Page on Facebook

All of our Tuesday, Friday and ad-hoc posts, as well as OTF and YouTube Channel updates get regularly mentioned (with links) on our Fan Page. If you are a user of Facebook, simply subscribe to get notified so you never miss anything we do!

... and on Twitter [https://twitter.com/itywltmt

Quarterly Programming for April-June 2017

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Highlights for this quarter include a couple of Lenten selections, the start of a series on Mozart’s late piano concertos, a pair of “Robert Johnsons” and our 250^th montage (which, as we do when we hit a multiple of 50, is an extended play podcast). Here we go:

Friday Blog and Podcast:

• A pair of one-work montages: Busoni’s Piano Concerto (NEWPODCAST) and the Turangalîla Symphony (NEW PODCAST)
• Early and classical-era music favourites by Anonymous (NEWPODCAST), an assortment of classical works (NEW PODCAST) 
• A look at the legacy of Igor Markevitch (NEW PODCAST)
• Our 250^th montage, dedicated to “Unfinished” symphonies (NEW PODCAST)
• In time for Canada’s 150^th birthday, a tribute to Oscar Peterson (NEW PODCAST)

Tuesday Blog (TalkClassical):

• Cover 2 Cover: Organ Masters Before Bach (PTB), Lute Music by Renaissance composer Robert Johnson (PTB)
• Vinyl’s Revenge: Two competing versions of Ravel’s Bolero (PTB), Delta Blues standards performed by Robert Johnson (PTB) and Jeffrey Tate conducts Schubert (PTB)
• Once Upon the Internet: Hermann Scherchen conducts three of Haydn’s London Symphonies (PTB)
• Our Bonus 5^th Tuesday montage for the quarter: Haydn at the keyboard (NEW PODCAST)

OperaLively:

L’Heure Espagnole (Ravel, OTF), Tristan und Isolde  (Wagner, OTF).

I will update this page if programming changes in the coming weeks, and also look for unannounced “repatriated” posts from our PTB and OTF series.

Subscribe to our ITYWLTMT Fan Page on Facebook

All of our Tuesday, Friday and ad-hoc posts, as well as OTF and YouTube Channel updates get regularly mentioned (with links) on our Fan Page. If you are a user of Facebook, simply subscribe to get notified so you never miss anything we do!

... and on Twitter [https://twitter.com/itywltmt

Programming January-March 2017

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Happy New Year!

Here are some of the posts I have planned for January, February ad March

I plan three new installments to Project 366;expect that once a month, More on the Project 366 page.

• Friday Blog and Podcast
• A few planned podcasts see the return of major works once programmed in the past... We are revisiting an old Tuesday Blog with the recreation of the historic Mahler/Rachmaninov concert of January 1910 (NEW PODCAST) [Rachmaninov Piano Concerto no.3] and Beethoven in Berlin (NEW PODCAST) [Triple Concerto/Symphony no. 3]
• A showcase of Baroque favourites (NEW PODCAST)
• A look at works for "ancient" keyboards (NEW PODCAST)
• Viola and Orchestra (NEW PODCAST)
• Our (overdue) homage to SIr Neville Marriner (NEW PODCAST)
• A showcase of Handel favourites (NEW PODCAST)
•  Other Platforms 
• Once Upon the Internet – Berwald and Sibelius symphonies (PTB), and organ concertos by Handel (PTB)
• A new series Cover 2 Cover launches this quarter with a look at works from a 2-CD of Tchaikovsky Tone Poems (PTB)
• Vinyl’s Revenge – Tcahikovsky Suites no. 3 and 4 (PTB), Stravinsky's Petrushka (PTB) and Debussy's La Mer and Nocturnes (PTB)
• Our quarterly Tuesday Montage - Works by Bach relatives  (PTB)
• Opera –  Revisiting Il Trittico (Puccini- OTF), La voix humaine (Poulenc, OTF), The Seasons (Haydn, OTF)

I will update this page if programming changes in the coming weeks, and also look for unannounced “repatriated” posts from our PTB and OTF series.

Subscribe to our ITYWLTMT Fan Page on Facebook

All of our Tuesday, Friday and ad-hoc posts, as well as OTF and YouTube Channel updates get regularly mentioned (with links) on our Fan Page. If you are a user of Facebook, simply subscribe to get notified so you never miss anything we do!

... and on Twitter [https://twitter.com/itywltmt]

Programming - October - December 2016

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We’re already coming to the final quarter of 2016 – things sure happen fast!

Here are some of the posts I have planned for October, November and December:

I plan three new installments to Project 366;expect that once a month, on a Sunday, I will issue an installment of that project. More on the Project 366 page.

• Friday Blog and Podcast
• A trio of montages explore music either inspired or intended for the Stage and Screen – a long-overdue (and nostalgic) survey of the music John Williams composed for the “original” Star Wars Trilogy (NEW PODCAST), stage works by Sibelius (NEW PODCAST) and a montage of works inspired by the works of William Shakespeare (NEW PODCAST).
• A pair of montages will feed our ongoing Project 366 in later chapters – a re-creation of the “scandalous concert” led by Arnold Schoenberg (a few months before another scandalous ballet performance) in 1913 (NEW PODCAST), and the “Morning, Noon and Night” trilogy of Haydn symphonies (NEW PODCAST).
• As we do every year, I plan to have my “Year end Review” and YouTube collage playlist for you to enjoy at the end of 2016
•  Other Platforms
• Once Upon the Internet – Bach Cello suites (PTB), the piano music of Scott Joplin (PTB Part 1, Part2) and a collection of WGBH podcasts (PTB)
• Vinyl’s Revenge – Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique (PTB), Marriner conducts Stravinsky (PTB) and Respighi’s Roman Trilogy (PTB)
• Opera – La Bohème by… Leoncavallo (OTF), Le Roi d'Ys (Lalo - OTF), La Wally (Catalani, OTF)
• The Creation (Haydn, OTF)

I will update this page if programming changes in the coming weeks, and also look for unannounced “repatriated” posts from our PTB and OTF series.

Subscribe to our ITYWLTMT Fan Page on Facebook

All of our Tuesday, Friday and ad-hoc posts, as well as OTF and YouTube Channel updates get regularly mentioned (with links) on our Fan Page. If you are a user of Facebook, simply subscribe to get notified so you never miss anything we do!

Programming for July, August and September 2016

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Per our new programming policy, I’m going to steer clear of “commitment dates” for my blog and podcast posts, to give me more flexibility.  So far, this has worked well, and we have kept pretty much to a bi-monthly Blog and Podcast, as well as bi-monthly Tuesday Blogs. Ag; eain this quarter, I don't foresee a return to opera posts, but I sense we may resume these in the Fall.

I plan three new installments to Project 366;e xpect that once a month, on a Sunday, I will issue an installment of that project. More on the Project 366 page.

• To feed Project 366, I plan podcasts that are aligned with forthcoming installments. These include:
• A podcast of music for String orchestra (NEW PODCAST)
• Orchestral music in the form of overtures (NEW PODCAST) and symphonies (NEW PODCAST)
• Trumpet concertos (NEW PODCAST) and "conertinos" (NEW PODCAST)
• A pair of modern cantatas, including Carmina Burana (NEW PODCAST)
• A trio of masses (NEW PODCAST)
• Vinyl's Revenge: Ballet suites by Tchaikovsky (PTB) and Prokofiev (PTB).
• Once Upon the Internet - Brahms Violin Concerto with Wolfgang Schneiderhan (PTB), two Schubert symphonies (PTB) and the Kairros Quartet (PTB).
• A special Tuesday Blog dedicated to the Last Night at the Proms (PTB)
• The return of OTF with a look at Schubert's WInterreise (OTF)

I will update this page if programming changes in the coming weeks, and also look for unannounced “repatriated” posts from our PTB and OTF series.

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All of our Tuesday, Friday and ad-hoc posts, as well as OTF and YouTube Channel updates get regularly mentioned (with links) on our Fan Page. If you are a user of Facebook, simply subscribe to get notified so you never miss anything we do!

Project 366 - A Journey of Musical Discovery

I've been teasing this - and preparing this - for a few months now, so here we go this is the grand unveiling of the ITYWLTMT "Anniversary Project".

On the music forums I visit regularly, the question “ How do I get started listening or acquiring Classical Music? “ comes up from time to time, and I’m always amazed at the answers. Music collecting, in a sense, is no different than any other form of collection: stamps, coins, trading cards…  There’s a lot of it that has to do with personal taste, and the level of obsessiveness you dare to attain.

The Myth of the Basic Repertoire

Going back to the question – that is, where to start in building a music library – we invariably come to the question: why not start with the “basics”?

OK… Most households have movie collections, or book collections, or what have you. How many of us built our movie collections by looking for “the basic films”? What is it about a film that would make it a “basic” – a film everybody should own? Is it the awards it won? Is it the popularity it had? Is it the status of the actors or the director? Is there such a thing as a “basic film”, really?

So what then are the “basic repertoire” pieces? Vivaldi’s Four Seasons? Beethoven’s Nine Symphonies? All nine, or just the Fifth?

Awhile back, I acquired a collection of 200 CDs issued as “Great Pianists of the 20^th Century” (I highly recommend it.) You have there almost 100 pianists, playing everything from early music to modern masterpieces. There were some pieces that were featured several times in the lot: Chopin’s preludes, Schumann’s Carnival, several Beethoven and Mozart piano concertos and piano sonatas, some of Johann Sebastian Bach’s works for solo keyboard, and the list could go on for a page or two. If you were to list all the pieces that were programmed “more than once” in that collection, and declared those as being “the basic piano repertoire”, I could probably bring up piece after piece most of us would view as equally important that didn’t make that list!

The concept of “the basic concert repertoire” is a bit of a misnomer – if it exists, then show me the exhaustive list… Or do we not mean that there are “enduring” works and works that may endure, but probably not… There are 500 years of Western Classical Music history, and to pretend that you can build from a defined set of works “outwards” is simplistic at best.

My conclusion? Simply, collecting music should be approached primarily based on taste and affinity with certain styles of works, and build out from there. Like in anything, Classical Music is an acquired taste, and some are sweeter than others, and it is over time (and trying) that one can develop a taste for other aspects of the repertoire.

ITYWLTMT can help in this process - Did You Know That

• We have now shared 218 montages
• We have shared over 70 complete operas with our partners at OperaLively
• We have shared over 200 playlists between Once Upon the Internet and our YouTube channel
• We have 515 posts and counting (between all our platforms)

That's a lot of music! We could easily have a musical playlist to share for every day of the calendar year!

And that's the challenge I am taking on - I plan to dust-up and share old - and new - material in the context of this "one blog a day, every day" concept. We will "package" 366 playlists (call then "listener Guides"), and group them together as we always do in a thematic arrangement.

In a nut-shell that's what Project 366 is all about.

It will take me more than a year to achieve this a a coherent package - and my intention is to package these eventually as eBooks - starting with the first 122 in a set I call "A Journey of Musical Discovery", where I plan to explore the "basic" repertoire by traversing it through all musical genres.

Here is the Table of Contents for Part 1 of the Project

Title	Musical Guides
Starting with the ABC’s	1-2
Journeys with a Purpose - Exploring Musical Genres
Bare Bones	3-6
The King of Instruments	7-10
A few friends	11-19
Team Sport	20-26
The Orchestra - Symphonies and More	27-34
The Concerto	35-41
Sing, Sing, Sing	42-52
Music Takes the Stage	53-62
Do Not Skip This Chapter!	63-67
Journeys without a Purpose - Day Trips through the Repertoire
The Concert Experience	68-76
Themes and Variations	77-81
The Trifecta	82-89
The World of Transcriptions	90-96
Single Works	97-102
What's In a Name	103-108
Pick Your Poison	109-117
Moonlighting	118-122

For your reading pleasure, here are the Yellow Pages associated with the 122 listener guides:

Programming for April - June 2016

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Per our new programming policy, I’m going to steer clear of “commitment dates” for my blog and podcast posts, to give me more flexibility.  So far, this has worked well, and we have kept pretty much to a bi-monthly Blog and Podcast, as well as bi-monthly Tuesday Blogs. Again this quarter, I don't foresee a return to opera posts, but I sense we may resume these in the Fall.

April is when I will be launching Project 366, my long-teased new adventure. Expect that once a month, on a Sunday, I will issue an installment of that project. More on the Project 366 page.

• To launch Project 366, and to celebrate Year 5 of ITYW:TMT< I plan an encore Blog and Podcast of our two-part Musical Alphabet. Montages no. 1 and 2 from the montage series. Few of you may have heard thses, so this will be a fun way to kick off this new project (ENCORE PODCAST)
• To feed Project 366, I plan podcasts that are aligned with the first few installments. These include:
• A podcast of waltzes for piano (NEW PODCAST)
• A Vinyl's Revenge post of Daniel Barenboim conducting the Tchaikovsky and Dvorak serenades for strings (PTB)
• Marie-Claire Alain performing French organ repertoire (NEW PODCAST)
• A podcast featuring all sorts of quartet combinations (NEW PODCAST)
• A podcast featuring "large chamber" combinations - octets and nonets (NEW PODCAST)
• A podcast of music for wind band (NEW PODCAST)
• A nostalgic return for some chamber music at the Gardner Museum (PTB)
• A podcast celebrating Earth Day, featuring Mahler's Song of the Earth (NEW PODCAST)
•  A pair of Tuesday Blogs will explore "the concert experience", with a vintage concert broadcast from the 1980s (PTB) and "Amateur Night" at Harvard University (PTB).
•  More Vinyl’s Revenge – a vintage recording of Richard Strauss favourites conducted by Karl Bohm (PTB) and a vintage recording of some of the incidental music from Peer Gynt featuring Vaclav Neumann (PTB).

I will update this page if programming changes in the coming weeks, and also look for unannounced “repatriated” posts from our PTB and OTF series.

Subscribe to our ITYWLTMT Fan Page on Facebook

All of our Tuesday, Friday and ad-hoc posts, as well as OTF and YouTube Channel updates get regularly mentioned (with links) on our Fan Page. If you are a user of Facebook, simply subscribe to get notified so you never miss anything we do!