The Joy of Classical Music Andrew Johnstone

A radio show and podcast created and first aired at Free FM 89.0, a member of the Community Access Media Alliance Aotearoa/New Zealand. Supported by NZ on Air. freefm.org.nz and @freefm89 on Facebook and Instagram

This week we open with Uncle Sam’s Farm: The Prologue – Parts 1 And 2 from Missy Mazzoli's 2018 opera Proving Up.
Also Featured:
American film score composer Alfred Newman
Spanish composer Fransisco Valls
African/American composer William Grant Still

This week's episode opens with the aria Is That You My Love from David Hertzberg’s opera The Wake World, which is based on a story by infamous occultist Alistair Crowleys. Wake World was voted Best Opera of 2018 by the Music Critics Association of North America.
Also featured:
German composer Gottfried Huppertz
Japanese Composer Takashi Yoshimatsu
New York composer Missy Mazzoli.
Mexican composer Arturo Marquez
American composer Kurt Weill

This is the final part of our brief exploration of music inspired by artists and their paintings and that was the aria I Go, I Go To Him from Igor Stravinsky’s opera The Rake's Progress. Stravinsky’s opera is based on a series of eight paintings by English artist William Hogarth which depict the decline and fall of Tom Rakewell, the spendthrift son of a rich merchant.
Also:
British composer Harrison Birtwistle’s Carmen Arcadiae Mechanicae Perpetuum was inspired by Swiss artist Paul Klee's 1922 water colour Twittering Machine
Russian/American composer Alla Pavlova, was so moved at the sight of Vincent’s Starry Night that she wrote a four part symphony called Vincent in homage

This is part two of our brief and fragmentary exploration of music inspired by artists and their paintings and we open with the aria That was You Know I Want To Help You from composer Bernard Rand's 2010 opera Vincent.
Also featured:
Hungarian composer Sandor Veress was so taken by the work of Swiss artist Paul Klee that he wrote a seven part suite called Homage to Paul Klee to express his admiration.
In his 1990 opera Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara took scenes from the life of Vincent van Gogh starting in the mental hospital at Saint-Rémy, where he painted The Starry Night. The story moves back and forth in time through his memories Rautavaara took material from this opera to create his Sixth Symphony, Vincentiana.

The next three episodes are all about music inspired by artists and their paintings and we start with composer Michael Gordon’s Vincent Van Gogh’s Video Opera. From 1991 this opera is based on letters written by the Dutch master.
Also:
Claude Debussy's composition The Sea was inspired by Katsushika Hokusai’s masterpiece The Great Wave Off Kanagawa.
German composer Max Reger wrote four symphonic poems based on works of Swiss artist Arnold Böcklin. The Play of the Waves pays homage to Bocklin’s painting Playing in the Waves.
French composer Henri Dutilleux wrote The Starry Night in 1978 as a response to Van Gogh’s painting which he described as ‘an enormously powerful and disturbing masterpiece.”