A Dynamic Duo
By DAVID SPEAKMAN
For The Muncie Star (Page T-15)
Words like “unpredictable,” “impulsive” and “playful” are not adjectives typically used to describe the presentation of classical music on public radio. This might well change at 7 p.m. Tuesday on WBST-FM 92.1, when Bob & Bill premieres as the newest daily addition to Muncie radio.
Bob & Bill – a.k.a. Bob Christiansen and Bill Moorelock – could certainly challenge the way listeners perceive classical music. Bob & Bill combines passion for the music with reverence and unpretentiousness, musical and cultural history with witty interplay.
Bob and Bill build momentum by revealing connections between selection that have no obvious link. And just when you think you’ve discovered the direction they are taking, they will make an unanticipated veer to the left or to the right.
Only 3 years ago, Bob & Bill debuted on Northwest Public Radio as a local program. WBST is proud to bring to the community this show, which has already won a Corporation for Public Broadcasting Gold Award for Best Music Program and a Public Radio Program Director’s Skim Award.
Two Centuries Later
The year that was 1990 went by rather fast, and the classical music world lost two great composers with the deaths of Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copeland.
1991, on the other hand, marks an important milestone in classical music. It is the 200th anniversary of Mozart’s death.
Performance Today plans to commemorate this event with “The Great Mozart Medley Contest,” which will be conducted throughout 1991 from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. weekdays.
Host Martin Goldsmith said, “As the emperor said to Mozart in Amadeus, “Too many notes!” The Great Mozart Medley Contest will feature only the very best notes, in a manner we hope will be both entertaining and rewarding for our listeners.”
Once a month, Performance Today will present a “new” Mozart composition assembled from five brief excerpts of well-known Mozart works, and will ask listeners to submit postcards identifying those excerpt in sequence.
One winner a month will be chosen at random from the pool of correct entries, and will receive a volume of CDs from the Philips Records collection of Mozart’s music. Each winner also will receive a Mozart sampler disc and Compactotheque, an exclusive Phillips Classics guide to Mozart and the Mozart year.
The puzzle medley will be broadcast randomly during the first of the year, and all the year’s correct entries, winners ad non-winners will be eligible for the grand prize drawing of the complete 180-disc Mozart collection issues by Philips for the Mozart bicentennial.
The first monthly competition will be introduced on the air on Wednesday. Entries must be received by the close of business Jan. 21, to be eligible for the January prize. The first winner will be announced on Jan. 25. The other monthly contests will follow a similar schedule.
Goldsmith said, “Although I am not eligible, I hope that everyone else will have fun with this. This is not just for the Mozart buff – but for music lovers everywhere.”
Now before we write off 1990 as done and gone, let’s not forget New Year’s Eve. At 8 p.m. Monday, WVST will air and exclusive simulcast with WIPB Channel 49.
Live from Lincoln Center invites viewers to spend New Year’s Eve with the New York Philharmonic, Music Director Zubin Mehta and soprano June Anderson. A New York Philharmonic New Year’s Eve Gala is an appealing program that allows you to tune your TV to WIPB Channel 49 and WBST to enjoy the stereo sound of this musical delight.
Mehta and the Philharmonic will herald in the New Year with a program of works by Verdi, Johann Strauss Jr., von Suppe, and Meyerbeer.
Anderson, a favorite collaborator with the New York Philharmonic’s late Laureate Conductor, Leonard Bernstein, will be featured in selections by Bernstein as well as in arias from Verdi’s La Traviata.
Hugh Downs will host the broadcast, which takes place at the New York Philharmonic’s home, Avery Fisher Hall at Lincolns Center. The intermission feature will include conversations with Mehta and Anderson.