“This ship is sinking like a stone and they’re acting like it’s a slight delay in the maiden voyage to New York. No, (not nice people), you hit a (not nice word) iceberg, and you didn’t act in time. It’s been a month since Arthur T was fired and all you did was stay the course and hope that the employees would tire themselves out and return to work. I’ll mention again that one of the current CEOs is Jim Gooch, whose former leadership position was (not nice word x2) RADIO SHACK. Turning this ship around and bailing water isn’t going to get easier with every nightfall.”
A lot has happened since I wrote those articles (and a heck of a lot of people read them). And, most surprisingly, a lot hasn’t happened on the Market Basket side of things.
As protests continued last week outside all 71 stores, everything seemed frozen in time. The new reality – no produce, a dwindling amount of fresh food and generic brand foods, and few shoppers – was setting in. Nothing was happening. Everybody went elsewhere for food, no one bothered to even see what was left at the Basket. The only fresh faces seemed to be the ones coming to experience what the fuss was about, the ones asking questions…
The Original 1966 release of Carmina Burana from Fruhbeck de Burgos and the New Philharmonia Orchestra
Coming back to Boston decades later, I quickly came to understand – and even witness first hand – the special relationship between Frühbeck and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He guest-conducted the orchestra at both Symphony Hall and at Tanglewood every year from 2000 until just last November, and his performances tended to be Big Momentous Events – like conducting the Mahler Symphony No. 2 on Tanglewood’s Opening Night in 2002, opening the Symphony Hall season with the Verdi Requiem that same year, last summer’s All-Tchaikovsky Opening Night at Tanglewood with violinist Joshua Bell. But if I had to pick the most memorable performance of his during my time overseeing the BSO broadcasts, it would have to be his utterly idiomatic and captivating concert performance of Manuel De Falla’s La Vida Breve, with an outstanding mostly-Spanish cast that even included cantaor (Spanish folk singer) Pedro Sanz; flamenco guitarist Antonio Reyes, and the show-stopping flamenco dancer Núria Pomares Rojas
Flamenco dancer Nuria Pomares Rojas
Oh, and on the first half of the program? The Suite Española by Isaac Albeniz, a piece that was originally a suite for solo piano that Frühbeck himself orchestrated half a century ago! And to top it off, the next night he was back on the podium to close out the Tanglewood season with the traditional performance of Beethoven’s 9th.
Part of the Frühbeck de Burgos mystique with the BSO was the fact that he apparently held the record for the longest stint BETWEEN appearances with the orchestra: He made one brief guest appearance with the orchestra in 1971, and wasn’t on the podium again until almost 30 years later! But what a difference a few decades make: legend has it that at the traditional end-of-season poll of the BSO players at Tanglewood, Frühbeck received the highest rating ever of guest conductors after his “return engagement” in 2000. No wonder he was asked back every year after that!
Unfortunately, no video of Frühbeck to share with the BSO, but plenty of audio, including last summer’s Tanglewood Opening Night performance with Joshua Bell, as well as another gem: the following night’s reading of Mahler’s epic Symphony No. 3, with Anne-Sofie von Otter as the shimmering soprano soloist, the PALS Children’s Chorus joining the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, and BSO Principal Trumpet Thomas Rolfs “pulling out the old Posthorn” for an incredible sound on a sweltering summer night.
And thanks to YouTube, you can see a clip of Núria Pomares Rojas together with Frühbeck and the Mariinsky Orchestra in the 2nd act flamenco from La Vida Breve.
And there’s lots of terrific video evidence of Frühbeck’s work with the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra, where he was chief conductor for the past two and a half seasons….including his own arrangement of Granada from the Suite Espanola…
Few in the cartooning world have ever spoken to him. Even fewer have ever met him.
In fact, legend has it that when Steven Spielberg called to see if he wanted to make a movie, Bill wouldn’t even take the call.
So it was with little hope of success that I set out to try and meet him last April.
I was traveling through Cleveland on a book tour, and I knew that he lived somewhere in the area. I also knew that he was working with Washington Post cartoonist Nick Galifianakis on a book about Cul de Sac cartoonist Richard Thompson’s art.
So I took a shot and wrote to Nick. And Nick in turn wrote to Watterson.
What an unexpected delight on Good Friday to see today’s excellent Deceptive Cadence blog from my old my mates at NPR devoted to a program we produced 14 years ago, as part of our ambitious Milestones of the Millennium series.
And I do mean ambitious: We attempted nothing less than to “create a picture in sound of the pivotal events, places, movements, artists and musical works of the past 1000 years” through what amounted to a weekly documentary folded into our ongoing five-day-a-week production of Performance Today. Oh yeah, and also with “build outs” on this newfangled Interwebs thingy.
But wait -there was more! We also entered into a partnership with Sony Classical to create an entire Milestones of the Millennium CD project: “The program series will be accompanied by Sony’s release of historic recordings highlighting the development of music over the past 1000 years. Each Sony Classical compact disc will contain musical choices inspired by the series, with liner notes written by the NPR commentators.”
High concept as hell, balanced by decidedly modest sales in the marketplace. Doubt anyone has the entire collection, but I was surprised to see that after being out of print for quite some time, Sony has now made a few of the titles available as MP3 downloads on Amazon and other sites. And you do see the odd CD copy for sale here and there.
But, back to Bach: Of the entire two years’ worth of productions, this program on Bach’s St. Matthew Passion was one of the very best, hosted by NPR’s Lynn Neary and produced by Jeffrey Freymann-Weyr. It’s a “guided tour” through Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, with commentary from such luminaries as noated Bach scholars Christoph Wolff and MIchael Marissen, tenor Ian Bostridge, conductors Joshua Rifkin,Ton Koopman, and Kenneth Slowik, as well as soprano Ann Monoyios. Take a listen here.
Incidentally, Bach was the subject of the very first MIlestones of Millennium program, which aired January 1, 1999, was Johann Sebastian Bach: The Brook and the Wellspring, a commentary by the Boston Conservatory’s Jan Swafford: “Using the metaphor suggested by the composer’s name (“Bach” is German for “brook”), Swafford explains how Bach emerged from a family of musicians to become perhaps the greatest master and innovator of all time.”
Roedeo Productions 
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