Remotely Close To The King

Did the piccolo player just sneak onto the stage?  The simple answer is: no. But wait. Here’s a little background.

Many are familiar with the famous minuet by Luigi Boccherini, which is from one of his string quintets, I often play another, which shows up in the third movement of his Symphony No. 3 from 1771. He called the movement “minué amoroso,” which means a loving or tender minuet. The symphony is scored for 2 oboes, 2 horns & strings.  Not only does the minuet movement have a charming tune. But midway through, a solo piccolo is heard, while the other wind instruments are silent. Was that the composer’s intention?  Was it a planned “surprise?”

Richard Lawrence, who wrote the program notes for the recording with the London Mozart Players (Chandos 10604), suggests that at least one of the oboists in the orchestra of Prince (Infante) Luis, for whom Boccherini wrote music, also played the flute - and piccolo. It was common in that time for oboists to be flutists as well. So the composer gave the oboist a solo flute spotlight as well.

That wasn’t all that I learned. The Infante Luis was the younger brother of King Charles III, the 18th century King of Spain. I was made aware of that during the days that King Charles III of Britain was visiting the U.S. 

That’s about as close as we got to the King. But we had one of our occasional visits from the “Queen of the classical accordion,” Mie Miki, on the program that same week. 

Central Illinois had a couple of visits from severe storms over the past couple of weeks. Those are always memorable. The day after the second wave of storms, I was brushing up on the current rules for professional baseball games which are suspended due to rain. In times past, games that hadn’t been played beyond a certain number of innings would be played over again at a later date. That seems to have changed so that the games resume from where they left off. And there are some other qualifiers too. 

The reason I looked it up was that there were lots of interruptions during the latter part of Classic Mornings on April 27. I began to pass along more and more weather information. So did the National Weather Service.  Fortunately, we rode out the storms and the storm of advisories until about the last 15 minutes of the program. At that point, Illinois Newsroom’s Reginald Hartwick and meteorologist Andrew Pritchard took control and kept everybody well-informed. 

There were two more pieces I had planned to play.  They were “rained out,” so to speak. So, I went to consult the Classic Mornings Rulebook about programs postponed due to rain. Then I realized there is no such book. But it sounds official, doesn’t it?  I simply decided to open the next day’s program with the two pieces that were rained out. I hadn’t announced them in advance, nor had I even hinted about them. That made for a bit of fun with listeners who were curious about the two pieces.

We had storms both before and after our recent Spring Fund Drive. It was exciting to sense the wave of support making its way across central Illinois during the drive.  And later, I listened to the severe weather advisories making their way across the same towns. It saddened me to think that while I greet one community each hour during Classic Mornings and bring classical music and companionship to all of central Illinois, the storms simply blew through those same places, bringing lots of danger and destruction.  I could only hope that everybody was safe

The flooding from the storms reminded me of a fun trivia question. If I asked you to name the famous city of canals, you might guess Venice or Amsterdam, right? As it turns out, the German city Hamburg has more canals than both Venice and Amsterdam combined, and between 2300 & 2500 bridges – more than any other city on earth. 

That came to mind when I remembered pianist Angela Hewitt’s discovery, which she mentioned in the notes for her first CD of sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti.  It was released 10 years ago. She said that it takes about 34 hours to play the complete keyboard sonatas of Scarlatti – some 555 in all. She added that Beethoven’s complete piano works would only take half that time.  Bach comes close with his keyboard music – harpsichord, that is, but only if you include his organ works. Recently, I played just 2-3 minutes of the 34 hours with a sonata by Scarlatti featuring Hewitt. 

We had more than 250 listeners make gifts during the Spring Fund Drive. And we came very close to the $75,000. goal. Thank you for your support!