Classical Court From Perotin to Prokofiev (and beyond), performed by Caruso to Khatia, it's all here.

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I included it in my own Stereophile "Fantasy Symphony Season" write-in competition example

Posted by John Marks (M) on April 20, 2021 at 15:21:45

In Reply to: One of my absolute favorite pieces of music!.... posted by TWB on April 20, 2021 at 09:18:52:

Comments encouraged!!!

Concert 1
Toru Takemitsu: From Me Flows What You Call Time (1990) (32 min.)
Intermission
Frederick Delius: Piano Concerto (1906) (22 min.)
Ralph Vaughan Williams: Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (1919) (14 min.)
TT: 68 min.

Concert 2
Jean Sibelius: Night Ride and Sunrise (1907) (16 min.)
Alexander Glazunov: Violin Concerto (1904) (22 min.)
Intermission
Jean Sibelius: Symphony 7 (1924) (24 min.)
TT: 62 min.

Concert 3
Roy Harris: Symphony 3 (1938) (16 min.)
Richard Strauss: Four Last Songs (1948) (26 min.)
Intermission
Howard Hanson: Symphony 2, "Romantic" (1930) (32 min.)
TT: 74 min.

Concert 4
Fikret Amirov: Struggle and Immortality from A Tale of Nasimi (1969) (3 min.)
Dmitri Shostakovich: Piano Concerto 2 (1957) (22 min.)
Intermission
George Butterworth: A Shropshire Lad (1911) (11 min.)
Claude Debussy: La Mer (1905) (24 min.)
TT: 60 min.

Concert 5
F.S. Kelly: Elegy in Memoriam Rupert Brooke for Harp and Strings (1915) (9 min.)
Ralph Vaughan Williams: An Oxford Elegy (1949) (24 min.)
Intermission
Morten Lauridsen: Lux Æterna (1997) (28 min.)
TT: 61 min.

Concert 6
Sir John Barbirolli: An Elizabethan Suite (1942) (11 min.)
Edward Elgar: Cello Concerto (1919) (28 min.)
Intermission
Edward Elgar: Symphony 2 (1911) (52 min.)
TT: 91 min.

Concert 7
Modest Mussorgsky: Dawn on the Moskva River, from Khovanshchina (1883) (8 min.)
Sergei Rachmaninoff: Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43 (1934) (25 min.)
Intermission
Gustav Holst: The Planets (1916) (46 min.)
TT: 79 min.

Average TT: 71 min.

My own commentary:

I think this proves that you exclude 12 top-shelf composers, yet still have a captivating symphony season. My season tries to balance pieces most concertgoers may never have heard live (the Khovanshchina prelude) with pieces almost everyone knows (The Planets). And unless I missed something, with only one exception, my entire season is all-20th-century. Yours, of course, does not have to be.

Here are a few observations on how I put together my fantasy season, in hopes that a peek behind the curtain will help you construct your winning entry. Much of the music I program is relatively unfamiliar, and some of that music might be moderately challenging for those stuck in the "Top 100 Orchestral Pieces," but none of my picks are off-the-wall or confrontational. Remember, season has to pull in from audiences whose comfort zone is more likely to be "Your Mozart Minute" or "Drivetime with Dvorák" on their car radio, than Pandora's all-Lutoslawski channel. Assuming such exists.

My season has a definite architecture: it's a big tent, supported by the three "tentpoles" of the piano concerti-simply because piano is by far the most popular concerto instrument. Violin is second, and cello third. Such are the realities. In order to program a season that is not a Quixotic money pit, you have to deal with the realities. One programming goal was to avoid two successive concerts' having the same kind of soloist, i.e., two piano concerti in a row.

The first piano-concerto tentpole is the hardly-ever-heard but very approachable Delius C-minor. The middle tentpole-Shostakovich's second piano concerto-is not heard nearly as much as the purely Mozartean loveliness of its slow movement merits. The third tentpole is the crowd-pleasing Rachmaninoff Rhapsody. That's the payoff at the end of the year for having heard two piano concerti not likely heard before.

Immediately inside the outer tentpoles are the string concerti: Glazunov's warmly Romantic violin concerto, and Elgar's elegiac cello concerto. Bracketing the middle piano-concerto tentpole are works for solo voice-Strauss' plangent orchestral songs-and for choir and orchestra-Lauridsen's Lux Æterna-and for choir and orchestra and speaker-Vaughan Williams' An Oxford Elegy.

In order to keep the audience from fleeing during the first concert's intermission, which would deprive them access to the luminous, floating sound-world of Takemitsu's percussion concerto From Me Flows What You Call Time, I programmed that first, holding the crowd-pleasing Tallis Fantasia until last. Feel free similarly to improvise and to bend the "rules" for the greater good-you will have to think creatively and in such practical and pragmatic terms if you are going to win.

I tried to shape each concert so the pieces would illuminate each other without being clones of each other. Very few people have even heard of Azerbaijani composer Fikret Amirov, but I think the two energetic, bracing brief excerpts from his A Tale of Nasimi make for a perfect curtain-raiser for Shostakovich's second piano concerto, which itself starts energetically. Similarly, George Butterworth's A Shropshire Lad rhapsody is a great setup for the opening pages of La Mer, as Kelly's unknown Elegy is for what follows on that night. I think that Mussorgsky and Rachmaninoff shed light on each other, and also that the playful scintillation of Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini finds pre-echoes in the "Mercury" movement of The Planets.


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john

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