As the season draws closer and closer this weekly playlist will become a bit more infrequent as we want to focus our efforts on bringing you new (and not all classical) music to your homes. This playlist should update about 1-2 times a month and will coincide with important summer Ravinia dates. Once our 2012 season draws to an end, we will go back to weekly or biweekly updates, with more more specific content. Expect our changes to take place starting next month. Add Ravinia Festival: This Week in Classical Music to your Spotify playlist, and listen to all your favorite works on the anniversaries of their initial premiers. Just click the Spotify logo, or the link above, and enjoy a week of historical moments. We update our playlist every week so there will never be a need to resubscribe! Below is a day-by-day listing of the track selections for this weeks edition of the playlist. We hope you enjoy!
February 20
- 1722: first concert performance of Handel: “Water Music”
- 1881: Bruckner: Symphony No. 4 ("Romantic"), with Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Hans Richter; This was the second (revised) version of Bruckner's original 1874 score
February 21
- 1909: Liadov: “Enchanted Lake” for orchestra, in St. Petersburg
- 1929: Respighi: orchestral suite, "Roman Festivals," by the New York Philharmonic, Toscanini conducting
February 22
- 1881: Bruch: "Scottish Fantasy," Op. 46, in Liverpool, with the composer conducting and Joseph Joachim as soloist
- 1941: Morton Gould: "Latin American Symphonette," in Brooklyn, N.Y.
February 23
- 1854: Liszt: symphonic poem, "Les Préludes," in Weimar, conducted by the composer
- 1945: Villa-Lobos: Choros No. 12 for orchestra, by the Boston Symphony with the composer conducting
February 24
- 1876: Grieg: incidental music for Ibsen's play "Peer Gynt, "as part of a staged production in Christiania (Oslo), Norway
February 25
- 1850: R. Schumann: "Concertstück (Concert Piece)" for Four Horns and Orchestra, by the horn quartet of Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Julius Rietz conducting that orchestra
- 1877: Tchaikovsky: symphonic-fantasy “Fancesca da Rimini,” in Moscow
February 26
- 1946: R. Strauss: Oboe Concerto, by the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra conducted by Volkmar Andreae, with Marcel Saillet as soloist; This composition of this work had been prompted by a chance comment made by the American oboist (and then U.S. soldier) John de Lancie during a post-war visit with the elderly composer in Bavaria that Strauss should consider writing an oboe concerto (Strauss offered de Lancie the American premiere, but the work was given its first U.S. performance in 1948 by oboist Mitchell "Mitch" Miller and the Columbia Concert Orchestra under Daniel Saidenberg; Many years later, De Lancie made a stereo recording of the piece for RCA Victor, which has been re-released on compact disc)