Episode 310. Giving Thanks with Roberta Alexander
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If you, like many of us, are struggling to find things to be grateful for this Thanksgiving, I have put together an episode featuring a national (and international) treasure, the exquisite soprano Roberta Alexander. In fact, I could just as easily have entitled this episode “Giving Thanks FOR Roberta Alexander.” Roberta has been featured many times on the podcast and I’m thrilled to bring her to you yet again in a refurbished bonus episode from the summer of 2023. Three works are foregrounded: first is Samuel Barber’s dramatic scena Andromache’s Farewell, which was composed for Martina Arroyo for the inaugural season of the New York Philharmonic at its new home at Lincoln Center. The recording featuring Roberta and conductor Edo de Waart is from the year 1993. There follows a complete performance (one of the finest in my experience) of Aaron Copland’s song cycle Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson, his most extended solo vocal work, heard in a 1990 recording with British pianist Roger Vignoles. And finally, the crowning jewel: a live performance of Roberta Alexander in her youthful prime singing Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs. To my ear, this represents the perfect meeting of composer and artist, a near-ideal rendition of these songs, and one which is not readily available anywhere else on the interwebs. This episode is further interspersed with jewels from Roberta’s 1985 recording of songs by Leonard Bernstein, all of which are exquisitely (as well as sometimes painfully) appropriate at this moment in the history of the United States and provide us with food for thought as we observe with solemnity this iconic holiday.
RECORDINGS HEARD IN THIS EPISODE
All tracks feature Roberta Alexander, soprano.
Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Schwartz: A Simple Song (Mass). Tan Crone [1985]
Leonard Bernstein: My House (Peter Pan)
Samuel Barber, Euripedes (translated by John Patrick Creagh): Andromache’s Farewell, Op. 39. Edo de Waart, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic [1993]
Leonard Bernstein, Richard Wilbur: Candide’s Lament (Candide). Tan Crone [1985]
Aaron Copland, Emily Dickinson: Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson. Roger Vignoles [1990].
I. Nature, the gentlest mother
II. There came a wind like a bugle
III. Why do they shut me out of heaven?
IV. The world feels dusty
V. Heart, we will forget him
VI. Dear March, come in
VII. Sleep is supposed to be
VIII. When they come back
IX. I felt a funeral in my brain
X. I’ve heard an organ talk sometimes
XI. Going to heaven
XII. The Chariot
Leonard Bernstein, Alan Jay Lerner: Take Care of This House (1600 Pennsylvania Avenue). Tan Crone [1985]
Richard Strauss: Vier letzte Lieder, AV 150. Adam Gatehouse, Nationaal Jeugd Orkest [live Concertgebouw, February 1982].
- Frühling (Hermann Hesse)
- September (Hermann Hesse)
- Beim Schlafengehen (Hermann Hesse)
- Im Abendrot (Joseph von Eichendorff)
Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Schwartz: I Go On (Mass). Tan Crone [1985]