NPR's A Classical Fourth

Classical music staged a two-hour, week-day
come-back yesterday at WETA-FM, due to
the Fourth of July holiday. Even 24/7 news
junkies, I now assume, need some form of
occasional humanistic or spiritual refreshment.

And guess what? WETA and NPR actually
programmed, and celebrated, American classical
music, something WETA and Benjamin Roe, of
NPR, never really knew what to do with. At least
Sharon Rockefeller and her new WETA team have
spared me an autumn of all-Mozart and all-Richard
Strauss evenings on SymphonyCast. I wonder why
they could not simply have provided delayed
broadcasts of Gerard Schwarz's, and the Seattle
Symphony Orchestra's, full "Made in America"
classical music programming.


Anyway, here is the intelligent line-up of
American classical works performed over
a two-hour period yesterday:

Ives/Schuman Variations on America
Ives Symphony #2 (two movements)
Thomson The Plough That Broke the Plain
Copland A Lincoln Portrait
Diamond Symphony #4
Sondheim "What more do I need?" from
Saturday Night
Bernstein/Sondheim "There is a place for us" from
West Side Story
Bernstein Symphonic Dances from
West Side Story
Harrison Elegy to the Memory of
Calvin Simmons
Glass Music from Company