A CELEBRATION of Genius the CBC Marks the Tercentenaries of George Frideric Handel and Johann Sebastian Bach
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FEBRUARY 1985 $1.75 A CELEBRATION of GENIus The CBC marks the tercentenaries of George Frideric Handel and Johann Sebastian Bach David Hayes on David Essig = Disaster strikes! _ .- John Julianu's'nerrseries begins . :04(0)," -t Wi'.-- f ¡ - { ' d To Nakamichi, Convenience without performance is unthinkable. - "\, 11~ \ / 7e °h LL-C-)-- Now you have a choice of sides of the cassette auto- I- F I three Nakamichi Auto - w matically. Auto Rec Standby Reverse Cassette simplifies recording decks -each with ----- setup on each side UDAR, Nakamichi's while a Dual -Speed revolutionary Unidirec- Master Fader helps you tional Auto Reverse make truly professional mechanism that elimi- tapes. Direct Operation nates bidirectional azimuth loads and initiates the de- error and assures you of 20- sired function at a touch, and 20,000 Hz response on both - Auto Skip provides virtually con- sides of the cassette. tinuous playback! UDAR is simple, fast, and reliable. 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Record/Play- back Auto Reverse in a 2 -Head Dual -Capstan configuration. RM2132 RX-202 The origin of the '' UDAR revolution. _ O 119 The basic Unidirec- liE ;'a.i '_ i rL1 tional Auto i - 7,_..' {4` ' -Reverse deck that outper- forms the pack. RA DIOoC IDE VOLUME 5, NUMBER 2, FEBRUARY 1985 CUTTING COMMENTS as well as enjoyable. I have also polished delivery with provocative It seems an appropriate opportunity listened without fail to Ideas, and and truly substantial intellectual to let you know how very much my admire it for its objectivity and content_ family, all of whom are adults, and I choice of topics. David Pariser, enjoy the CBC programs. Each time D. M. Ross, Montreal, P.Q. there are reports of cutbacks and Edmonton, Alberta suggestions from certain Ottawa FREE TRADE politicians of even more serious I want to let you know how much I My wife and I are both ardent CBC action, as there are now, I shudder. have enjoyed listening to CBC devotees and eagerly lap up the We would lose our principal source (Radio and Stereo) over the last six goodies that come across the bor- of current events and musical infor- years. I arrived in Canada a carefree der. The other day she said to me, mation and enjoyment. Peter bachelor, now I'm a sober family "What a terrible shame ... we send Growski is my morning friend and man-but regardless of my change them acid rain and they give us the companion, and Stereo in the early in lifestyle, CBC has been a constant CBC!" morning and evening is a constant source of enjoyment and informa- Paul Ascher], source of pleasure. Do continue the tion. It would he a great shame if Sheffield Lake, Ohio excellent work. Mr. Mulroney were to tighten his Edna V. Smith, fiscal belt around your necks. The Vancouver, B.C. radio seems a far more versatile and exciting medium than its glitzier I am just ending five weeks in the cousins, and CBC produces some of hospital and am writing to tell you the best I've heard. As someone that the CBC radio programs have who grew up on what was called been a continuing and pleasurable "the counter -culture" in the United distraction from my illness and States of the 1960s, I was pleased treatment. It will be a national and surprised to discover that Letters to the editor should be sent tragedy if the proposed cuts in the "establishment" radio could be to AIR MAIL, Radio Guide, Box CBC budget reduce the quality of every bit as good as the under- 320, Station A, Toronto, Ontario these programs. The classical ground stations I had listened to in M5W 2J4. Questions should be music on Stereo and on some of the Boston, St. Louis and San Fran- sent to CBC Audience Services at Box Radio programs has been beneficial cisco. You have managed to mix 500, Toronto, Ontario M5W 1E6. Editor 11 Art Director David Macfarlane B. J. Galbraith Listings Editor Art Assistant Dayle Youngs Abbey Trowell Associate Editor Picture Research Sharon Bird Jill Patrick Programming Consultants Production Editor June Graham Brian Kay Lorna Rogers Circulation Manager Linda Litwack Ian McKelvie Helicia Glucksman Circulation Assistant Previews David Palmer Cathleen Hoskins Systems Manager Business Manager . 4 ir. Karen Cheyne Norm Guilfoyle Typesetting Supervisor ¡_ ,,-s.. Business Assistant Gr -- Sharon Daxon Diane Roblin Word Processing Finlayson Marion Olive Barry L. Thomas Associates Limited. Advertising Sales (416) 364-7206 RADIO GUIDE-the guide to CBC Radio and CBC Stereo-is Publishing Services. ISSN 0711-642X. Printed in Canada. POST- published 12 times a year by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. MASTER: please forward all address changes and covers of all For subscriptions please write: RADIO GUIDE, Box 320, Station A, undeliverable copies to Box 320, Station A, Toronto, Ontario Toronto, Ontario M5W 2J4. Annual subscription fee: $15. Newsstand M5W 2J4. Newsstand distribution by the Canadian Periodical price $1.75. Produced on behalf of the CBC by Saturday Night Publishers' Association, 54 Wolseley St., Toronto, Ontario M5T 1A5. 1 RADIO GUIDE looking one at that. When he died, a RAD/O'GUIBE Leipzig newspaper declared his greatest contribution to music to have been biological: the fathering of so many talented sons. Many years ago, Arthur John- stone, the late critic of Manchester Guardian, wrote that "Bach is a Gothic and Handel a Renaissance artist," comparing the St. Matthew HREE HUNDRED Passion and Messiah to Strasbourg Cathedral and St. Peter's, Rome, re- spectively. In defending the analogy, Percy Scholes continued in an archi- ri tectural vein to point out that "Bach's beauty is at once more in- timate and more mystical than Handel's. His interlacing lines, each beautiful in itself, shape themselves into beautiful patterns; they enclose space, as Handel's do, but this is not MAGNIFICENCE their first and most apparent object. Bigness in Bach comes from within THREE CENTURIES AFTER HIS BIRTH, THE him and seems often almost a by- product in his work. Handel often CREATOR OF MESSIAH REMAINS A MUSICAL uses lumps of masonry when Bach would develop delicate decorative PARADOX. UNIVERSALLY PRAISED, HANDEL tracery or crossing ribs of vaulting. Handel plans big mass and space ef- IS A COMPOSER AWAITING REDISCOVERY fects; by means of size and contrast he strikes direct at our feelings where Bach is intent simply on self- expression." BY C 9 But it surely isn't a preference for Gothic over Renaissance artistry WILLIAM LITTLER that accounts for Handel's compara- tive neglect by modern man. While there certainly are difficulties in- LOOK AROUND IN THE off the vinylite presses. volved in staging his operas, there is, concert halls of the western But if truth be told, there is an as Harold Schonberg admitted, no world, he you in Amsterdam, uneven character to these cele- comparable problem where the or- Boston or Geneva, and their names brations, just as there is to the mod- atorios, concerti grossi, harpsichord will gaze back in gilt lettering from ern profile of their honourees. While suites, anthems and cantatas are the ornamental plaster: Bach and Handel is universally praised, it is concerned. Schonberg confessed an Handel. Born in the same year, 1685, Bach who is universally played. In inability to account for the neglect, in German towns less than a hundred his Lives of the Great Composers, pleading simply, "Handel's music miles apart, they have become the Harold C. Schonberg, music critic of awaits rediscovery." This season's inseparable symbols of the Baroque The New York Times, even went so tercentenary events represent an im- age in music. They are the first major far as to describe Handel as a one - portant step along that path. composers on our children's pianos, work composer in standard reper- the chief musical accompanists of toire terms, that work being Messiah. REDISCOVERING HANDEL the Christian year and the con- It was not always thus. Indeed, in the man may be more diffi- tributors of more tunes to the all-time his own day, Handel was generally cult, however. While a consid- hit parade than anyone before them regarded as the foremost living com- erable body of documentation exists and all but a few after them. poser, if not the greatest who ever on this periwigged gentleman's ac- No wonder, then, that in this, the lived. Beethoven, scarcely a man to tivities, we have little evidence of his 300th anniversary season of their overvalue his colleagues, thought he own thoughts, only hints of an emo- birth, candles are being lit inter- had no equal, and Antoine Prévost, tional life and a considerable amount nationally in their honour.