Events Feedback
New This WeekAround TownMusicFilmArtTheaterNews & FeaturesFood & DrinkAstrology
  HOME
NEW THIS WEEK
EDITORS' PICKS
LISTINGS
NEWS & FEATURES
MUSIC
FILM
ART
BOOKS
THEATER
DANCE
TELEVISION
FOOD & DRINK
ARCHIVES
LETTERS
PERSONALS
CLASSIFIEDS
ADULT
ASTROLOGY
PHOENIX FORUM DOWNLOAD MP3s

  E-Mail This Article to a Friend
Telstars
WGBH comes to the holiday classical-music rescue
BY JEFFREY GANTZ

So you’ve hit The Nutcracker and Messiah and the Holiday Pops and your favorite Lessons and Carols service, and now you’re looking around for more classical fare, but all the musicians are out doing the shopping they didn’t get done while they were playing and you were listening. Fortunately, you’ve still got WGBH, which will be airing some old but still watchable favorites plus some brand new shows later this month. The festivities kick off at 8 p.m. on Christmas Eve with the Royal Ballet production of The Nutcracker that stars Ivan Putrov as the Nutcracker, Alina Cojocaru as Clara, and Sir Anthony Dowell as Drosselmeyer. That’s on Channel 2; it repeats Christmas Day at 1 p.m. on Channel 44.

Then at 9 p.m. on Christmas Night, Channel 2 brings us the lady of whom the Great Performances folks say, "Next to Jackie O, she’s the most famous widow of the 20th century." Eleanor Roosevelt? Alma Mahler? No, it’s Franz Lehár’s The Merry Widow, in Wendy Wasserstein’s adaptation for the San Francisco Opera. Yvonne Kenny will play "the glamorous and very rich" Anna Glawari, who now that her banker husband has passed away has come to Paris hoping to snag the real love of her life, Count Danilo Danilovitch (Bo Skovhus). The operetta, which premiered in 1905 and was the Titanic (the movie, not the ship) of its time, sports the second most famous waltz ever (after By the Beautiful Blue Danube). This production is sung in English, so you won’t have to worry about subtitles. It will repeat the following day at 1 p.m. on Channel 44.

Next up is Boston Symphony Orchestra music director–elect James Levine. He’ll be here in the flesh the weekend of January 9-11 to conduct the BSO, but if you don’t want to wait, you can catch him leading the Metropolitan Opera in Beethoven’s sublime Fidelio, with Karita Mattila as Leonore/Fidelio and Ben Heppner as Florestan, her political-prisoner husband. This one airs December 28 at 8 p.m. on Channel 2 and repeats December 29 at 2 p.m. on Channel 44.

On to New Year’s Eve, when at 8 p.m. on Channel 2 you can watch new New York Philharmonic music director Lorin Maazel will lead the NYPO in a Live from Lincoln Center Gershwin Gala, with Indra Thomas and Willard White singing selections from Porgy and Bess and the orchestra chipping in with the Cuban Overture and An American in Paris. And don’t put those dancing shoes away just yet, because at 8 p.m. on New Year’s Day Channel 2 will air From Vienna: The New Year’s Celebration 2003, the traditional First Day concert that anybody who’s anybody in Vienna wants to be at. No Bach, Beethoven, Bruckner, or Bartók at this one, though you will hear some Brahms, his Hungarian Dances Nos. 5 and 6. Also on the program: the Weber/Berlioz Invitation to the Dance and the usual assortment of waltzes, polkas, and marches by Johann Strauss Sr. and Jr. And you don’t have to spend all 90 minutes looking at the Vienna Philharmonic: dancers from the Vienna State Opera Ballet will swing and sway through the Volksgarten to the strains of Strauss Jr.’s Hellenic Polka, and members of the Kirov Ballet — which is making its New Year’s Celebration debut — will dance to the Coronation Songs Waltz at the Eggenberg Palace in Graz. And during the Blue Danube waltz (one of the two prescribed — as in, there’d be a riot if they didn’t play it — encores on the program, the other being the Radetzky March), "viewers will travel up-river aboard the Danube’s oldest steamboat into the Wachau, the historically famous wine-growing area." Viewers who decide to get into the spirit of this travelogue by opening a bottle of wine won’t hear any complaints from us.

Any number of famous conductors have led this concert. The most legendary performance was the one with Carlos Kleiber in 1989; it’s available on videotape and DVD. Last year our own Seiji Ozawa was invited to take the podium; that performance was issued on DVD almost as soon as the players had put away their instruments. This year, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, who’s better known for Handel than for hoofing, will have the baton; he may be quirky, but he’s never dull.

One thing that doesn’t change from year to year in Vienna is the presence of Walter Cronkite as your host. And yet, despite this photo that shows him with a baton, Walter has never been invited to conduct. Maybe next year?


Issue Date: December 12 - 19, 2002
Back to the Editors' Picks table of contents.