Catches of Recent Days
I’m curious. Do you save newspaper articles, either in a file or a pile? Do you save entire newspapers to remember major events? You have to admit, it’s fun when you come upon them years later.
Do you happen to have the Gazette d’Amsterdam from Friday, December 14, 1725? Oh, I’ll bet you wish you had it! That newspaper was the first to mention the publication of a collection of 12 violin concertos titled: Il cimento dell’armonia e dell’inventione (The Contest Between Harmony and Invention). The first four concertos were depictions of each of the four seasons Yes, Sunday, December 14, 2025 marked the 300th anniversary of the newspaper ad announcing the publication, in Amsterdam, of Antonio Vivaldi’s Le quattro stagioni (The Four Seasons)
Over the years, I’ve pitched stacks of articles and once-treasured newspapers. They were in various shades of yellow. So, I couldn’t imagine that there was even a remnant of the famous Vivaldi edition. I had read about it in secondary sources. There were plenty of those surrounding the tricentennial.
Last week, just for fun, I searched online for the Gazette d’Amsterdam of December 14, 1725. And there it was! No, the ad didn’t jump out at me, as most ads of our time manage to do. It was in small print, and in French. I would have missed it if I hadn’t been told about it. But the historic page had been digitally archived, with no traces of yellow. And I was excited to be able to see it!
I wasn’t as successful several days later when I searched to see if there’s a cuckoo clock which plays a musical phrase from Louis-Claude Daquin’s keyboard piece: Le Coucou. I’d love to have been able to talk about it on Classic Mornings. Instead, I played Trevor Pinnock’s 1983 rendering of “The Cuckoo” on what was his 79th birthday. That was on December 16, which was Beethoven’s 255th and the 250th of French composer François Adrien Boieldieu.
I was in for a surprise when I did a little searching that was prompted by a recording of the String Symphonies of Felix Mendelssohn. The CD features the Northern Chamber Orchestra conducted by Nicholas Ward. According to the fine print on the back cover, It was made in 1995 in the concert hall of the BBC’s New Broadcasting House in Manchester, England. The building had been completed 20 years before – in 1975.
Now for the surprise: The BBC’s New Broadcasting House was demolished in 2011. I found it amusing that Mendelssohn, who died at the young age of 38, had a longer life than the New Broadcasting House - by 2 years. And his legacy has lived on for more than a couple of centuries.
On the occasion of the 80th birthday of harpist Skaila Kanga on January 8, I went searching for the answer to a simple question. I’ve always wondered how she got from Mumbai, where she was born, to London, where she received her music education and began an amazing career. No, I wasn’t interested in whether she traveled by plane or by boat. I wanted to know more about the circumstances of her ending up in London as a child.
According to the bio at her website, her father, a violinist, had studied in India with Mehli Mehta, Zubin Mehta’s father. After further studies at the Paris Conservatory, he became a member of the London Philharmonic Orchestra in 1950. At that time, the family joined him in London. Skaila Kanga had begun piano lessons at age 5. She was around 9 when she moved to London, where she continued those lessons. And it wasn’t until she was 17 that she began to study the harp. The rest is history.
If you have a little time, check out her website just to see her musical credits – yes, orchestras and conductors, but also pop musicians and film soundtracks, not to mention testimonials from all sorts of folks. Actually, you may end up spending more than a little time there, when you begin to realize how many musicians she worked with and how many films she was a part of.
She’s a composer and arranger as well. For the occasion, I played two pieces which she wrote for her long-time collaboration with the late harmonica virtuoso Tommy Reilly: Canzonetta and Merrily-Go-Round.
The day before, January 7, marked the 85th anniversary of the birth of British violinist and conductor Iona Brown. I looked forward to playing once again her recording of The Lark Ascending by Ralph Vaughan Williams, with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields conducted by Sir Neville Marriner
And I look forward to you joining us for Classic Mornings. Tune in Monday through Friday from 9 to noon on Illinois Classical, 90.9 FM or online at will.illinois.edu.
