“Tristan und Isolde,” Prelude (WAGNER) Performer: Chicago Symphony Orchestra/Reiner Chicago Symphony Orchestra: From the Archives, Vol. 3 (Special Edition (LP))
Sabre Dance (KHACHATURIAN) Performer: Orchestre de l'Opera de Paris/Sebastian Urania UX 107 (LP)
The Seasonings (P. D. Q. BACH) Performer: John Ferrante, tenor An Hysteric Return: P. D. Q. Bach at Carnegie Hall (Vanguard VMD 79223)
Tidbit Time
La Boheme (PUCCINI) Performer: Unknown Personal collection
The "If at First You Don't Succeed, Fail, Fail, Again" Suite
The Spanish Inquisition Performer: Monty Python The Instant Monty Python CD Collection (Virgin 7243 8 39821 2 7)
Promo (recorded): This week on A Prairie Home Companion, it's our annual joke show.
Jokes like Martha Stewart's new recipe for tuna casserole, it serves six to eight. Single women are skinnier. Why? Because they come home, they see what's in the fridge, they go to bed. Married women come home, they see what's in the bed, they go to the fridge. Women use twice as many words every day as men do. Why? Because they have to repeat everything. Those jokes and more this week on A Prairie Home Companion. Saturday night at six on WUGA.
[music]
And now, Schickele Mix. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Schickele.
Wait a minute, wait a minute. I've got the wrong fader up here. Okay, here we go. Here's the theme.
[theme: Mozart, Symphony No. 24]
Hello there, I'm Peter Schickele, and this is Schickele Mix, a program dedicated to the proposition that all musics are created equal. Or as Duke Ellington put it, if it sounds good, it is good.
And how good it is to acknowledge the fact that our bills are paid by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, by the National Endowment for the Arts, and by this noble radio station, whose commitment to excellence is firm yet flexible enough to accommodate me in one of its studios, long enough to produce this high-aiming yet charmingly vernacular slice of edutainment, Which is then distributed into the wild blue yonder by PRI, Public Radio International.
You know how employees often buy or make funny signs and hang them on their walls? Certainly one of the classics is the cartoon you often see in copy centers. It shows the staff rolling on the floor with laughter and it says, You want it when? Well, another sign you see a lot says, We never make mistakes.
And Mistakes is spelled M-I-S-T-E-A-K-S and that's the name of today's show. We never make mistakes. I know it's not such a great radio title because you know you can't see how the word is spelled over the radio but trust me right right here on this log it's M-I-S-T-E-A-K-S.
What we're going to do is, we're going to check out some musical goofs, ranging from the barely noticeable to the well-nigh incredible. A few years ago, my son and I were wondering what the chord changes were in the bridge of one of the early Beatles songs. I can't remember why, but we got out the recording, and listening very closely, we discovered that our Paulie plays the wrong bass note at one point.
I think the bridge happens twice and he does it correctly one time, but the other time he plays a note that isn't in the chord and it's obvious that he didn't mean it. You know, back at the beginning there, the Beatles would record a whole album in a couple of days. But the point is that I had never noticed it before. I suppose I might have thought that it sounded a bit muddy there or something. Now here's another example of what I'm sure was a slip-up, but I'll bet almost nobody ever notices it.
This is the beginning of one of my favorite songs, Nashville Cats by the Lovin' Spoonful. It starts with the refrain.
[music: Sebastian, "Nashville Cats" (Hums of the Lovin’ Spoonful); The Lovin' Spoonful]
Okay, now, let's hear that refrain again, and this time, notice that the drummer stops for a beat at the end of each phrase. On the words water, dew, babies, and two, he interrupts the rhythm and then continues.
[music: Sebastian, "Nashville Cats" (Hums of the Lovin’ Spoonful); The Lovin' Spoonful]
Okay, that's the first time the refrain occurs. Now here's the third time it occurs. Same thing. The drummer stops at the end of each phrase.
[No speech for 27 s.]
Okay, now, here's the second time the refrain occurs, and this time, the drummer forgets. He plays right through the end of the first phrase, and then he remembers, and does it right on the other three phrases. Watch out, Mr. Drummer, you're on candid microphone.
[music: Sebastian, "Nashville Cats" (Hums of the Lovin’ Spoonful); The Lovin' Spoonful]
Now, that has got to be a goof. You can't tell me that when they were working on that song in the studio, somebody said, Hey, I've got a great idea. Out of the 12 times that thing happens in the song, let's have the drums not stop just on the 5th time, but do it on all the others. Okay, so if I'm right, why did they leave it?
Were they out of recording time, or nobody noticed, or maybe they did notice, but didn't care? The Lovin' Spoonful played a real laid-back, good-timey kind of music, and hey, as the saying goes, consistency is the hemoglobin of small minds. Like I said, it's one of my favorite songs, and I'll bet I heard it at least 50 times before I ever noticed that little percussional lacuna, or actually it's the opposite of a lacuna. A lacuna is a gap, and the drummer was supposed to leave a gap, but he didn't. So it's more like an anti-lacuna, as in anti-matter, or anti-pope, or anti-Mame.
Oh, all right, all right, there goes the irrelevancy alarm. Can't even have a little fun around here. Anyway, the bottom line is that it's a great cut. Even if I'm right, that for a moment there the drummer fell asleep at the sticks, as it were, Does it lessen your enjoyment of the song? Not mine.
[music: Sebastian, "Nashville Cats" (Hums of the Lovin’ Spoonful); The Lovin' Spoonful]
Nashville Cats by the Lovin' Spoonful. You know, I usually run into John Sebastian a couple times a year. I'm going to try to remember to ask him about that next time. Here's another, even more minute slip-up that I find quite endearing. First, let me play you the refrain of a song called Rainmaker, done by members of the Solstice Assembly. Notice that they sing the refrain twice.
[music: Rowan (Bug Music), "Rainmaker" (Under the Drawbridge); Solstice Assembly]
Okay, now here's that refrain later in the cut. This time, the guy singing bottom harmony forgets that they repeat the refrain, so he's missing at the top of the repeat. But he doesn't wait for the second word to come in. He comes in on the "er" of Rainmaker. Listen to the guy on the bottom.
[music: Rowan (Bug Music), "Rainmaker" (Under the Drawbridge); Solstice Assembly]
What I love about that, and the reason I'm glad they left it in, is that we've all been to concerts that feature harmony singing, and the performers sort of wander around when they're not singing, you know, particularly if they play the guitar or something like that. And every once in a while, one of them all of a sudden goes like, oops, and has to rush over to the mic, getting there just in time, or maybe even two syllables late. Let's hear the whole song.
[music: Rowan (Bug Music), "Rainmaker" (Under the Drawbridge); Solstice Assembly]
I'll bet you guessed the name of that song. Rainmaker, performed by Ed Norman, John Newland, and Mona Scheiber, members of the Solstice Assembly. Now, you may think that I'm nitpicking in pointing out these little mistakes. And of course, I am. But I hope I've made it clear that I'm not necessarily being critical. All I'm saying is, even on recordings, you know, everybody thinks, hey, they can edit so much on studio recordings that people can sound better or at least more consistent than they do live.
And it's true, especially something like a really out of tune note. They'd never want to leave that on a recording because it would make you cringe to hear it. But things do occasionally slip by It's particularly tricky with classical music, because no matter how much liberty a performer may take with rhythm, and that's usually expected, nobody wants a piece to sound like a sewing machine, the notes themselves are supposed to be what's on the paper, what's written in the score. I know, sometimes soloists are expected to do some ornamentation, but in general, you're supposed to play it like it's writ.
Here's part of the Spanish dance from Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite. This is Ansermet and the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande.
[music excerpt: Tchaikovsky, “The Nutcracker,” “Chocolate”; L'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande/Ansermet]
Sounds nice. But if you know the Nutcracker very well, you will have noticed that something's missing. Here's another recording, Ashkenazy with the Royal Philharmonic, and I'm going to count out the measures. I'll say one, two, three, and where I would say four, you'll hear the oboes go,
Then both phrases repeat, although the orchestration makes it a bit harder to hear the oboes. Okay, now concentrate on those low oboes. The first entrance is on the downbeat of the fourth bar, and the second is right after the downbeat of the third bar.
[music excerpt: Tchaikovsky, “The Nutcracker,” “Chocolate”; Royal Philharmonic Orchestra/Ashkenazy]
Alright, now let's go back to the Ansermet recording. I'll count it out again, but you won't hear any oboes in that fourth bar, because they've miscounted their rests, and when they do come in, they're a bar late, and they stay that way throughout the whole passage. Now I'm going to only count the 1, 2, 3 bars the first time now. And if you listen carefully, you can hear those oboes being a bar late.
One, two, three.
[music excerpt: Tchaikovsky, “The Nutcracker,” “Chocolate”; L'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande/Ansermet]
If you don't know the piece that well, and I certainly wouldn't have noticed it if it hadn't been pointed out to me, the mistake doesn't stand out because, as it happens, the notes the oboes play still fit in the harmony even a bar later. And also the oboes in the Ansermet recording aren't as present anyway. They're not as loud, so you don't notice it as much. But it is surprising, not only that the goof wasn't caught, but also that it happened in such a warhorse, a piece that you'd think the members of the orchestra had played a million times.
Now here's a truly astounding one that got away. This is part of a Beecham recording of Ein Heldenleben by Richard Strauss. First, we'll hear the CD reissue. Notice especially how the whole orchestra cuts off together at the exciting climax.
From A Hero's Life by Strauss on a CD reissue. Now, let's listen to the same performance, the same place, the same performance, by Beecham and the Royal Philharmonic on the original LP issue.
The upper strings get a measure off early in the excerpt, resulting in some orchestration that is very thick even by Straussian standards, and some very strange imitative writing, and some harmonies that seem decades ahead of their time. And when it comes to the climactic cutoff, remember when the whole orchestra stops together? The violins and violas saw a way for a full measure after everybody else has stopped. And this was released.
Beecham and the Royal Philharmonic, playing part of Strauss' Ein Heldenleben, the one we just heard was the original LP, on which I assume some tape editor used the wrong take. It's hard to imagine that being the only take. Then when it was released on CD, they fixed it up. Either they went back and used the proper take for that section, or who knows? Certainly not me.
Hey, I'm Peter Schickele, and this show is Schickele Mix from PRI, Public Radio International.
Now me, of course, I never make mistakes, but when I do, I'm glad there are good tape editors around. Editing can be the performer's safety net, but as we've seen, it can also be the performer's nemesis. I'm going to play two recordings of the prelude to Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. This begins with one of the most famous phrases in 19th century music, followed by a modified repetition a step higher.
I'll play both right from the top. Here we go. First, a CD with Solti and the Chicago.
[music excerpt: Wagner, “Tristan und Isolde,” Prelude; Chicago Symphony Orchestra/Solti]
And now, an LP of Reiner and the Chicago.
[music excerpt: Wagner, “Tristan und Isolde,” Prelude (Chicago Symphony Orchestra: From the Archives, Vol. 3); Chicago Symphony Orchestra/Reiner]
That's right. The whole first phrase is missing on the Reiner recording. It's just not there. Now, there's no way that could have been Reiner's fault. He didn't stand up there on the podium and say, Listen gentlemen, these beginning phrases are so similar, let's just leave the first one out. Here we go, pick up to the fifth bar. My theory is that in this piece, the rest, the silence, between the first and second phrases, is so long that somebody who was working on the tape, perhaps the editor for instance, got done with his work, rewound the tape with the gate half closed, Heard that silence, stopped the tape, put some leader on it, and sent it off.
Still, it should have been caught somewhere down the line. You know, if you listened to that opening with the volume way up, I'll bet you could hear the sound of heads rolling.
Sometimes a performance is released that is so abysmally bad that you have to wonder, did they only have time to do one take? Or did the conductor feel that the orchestra had already reached the apogee of its abilities, And that a good performance, even a competent performance, was a chimera that it would be fruitless, if not reckless, to pursue.
The Sabre Dance by Khachaturian features an infamous tune with a fast oompa-oompa-oompa-oompa-oompa accompaniment. Now, oompas are easy to do on the piano. The left hand does the ooms, and the right hand does the paas.
But in an orchestra, it's usually split up, with some instruments doing the ums, and the others doing the pas, which, at fast tempos, are much harder to play by themselves. What happens in this performance is, well, it's sort of like a Steve Reich shifting phase piece. The paas get closer and closer to the ums until they're almost simultaneous.
And then, twice during the piece, there's this sort of lurch, a sort of desperate gear shift, as the orchestra tries to get back on track. If you were going to do a car movie performance analogy, it would be Edsel, Plan 9 from Outer Space, and this rendition of the Sabre Dance.
[music: Khachaturian, "Sabre Dance"; Orchestre de l'Opera de Paris/Sebastian]
The Sabre Dance from the Gayane Ballet Suite No. 2 by Khachaturian, played by an orchestra under the baton of a conductor. I'll withhold names to protect the guilty. But hey, everybody makes the occasional mistake. And the next one I'm going to trot out involves one of my favorite singers, John Ferrante. He performed in P. D. Q. Bach concerts for 20 years and defined the sound of P. D. Q. Bach's preferred vocal type, the bargain counter tenor.
John is now in that great choir in the sky, but I can't resist telling a story on him, even though he's not around to get back at me. The second P. D. Q. Bach album was recorded live in Carnegie Hall, and just one performance was recorded, so there were no alternate takes available. On one of the recitatives in the grand oratorio The Seasonings, John's voice unexpectedly cracked on the word soothsayer.
[music excerpt: P. D. Q. Bach, "The Seasonings" (An Hysteric Return: P. D. Q. Bach at Carnegie Hall); John Ferrante, tenor]
Now, every time I heard John Ferrante sing the seasonings after that, he cracked his voice at the same spot. This artistic decision had a double benefit. It got a laugh, and it made people who knew the recording assume that he'd always done it on purpose. Now, what about leaving imperfections on recordings? It's not as easy an issue to decide as you might think.
If the seasonings weren't comedy, John would have been understandably distraught at the lack of an opportunity to correct that place. Extensive editing may lead to performances that are, probably for most performers, unnaturally perfect, And yet to leave major boo-boos in is not exactly honest either, in this sense.
I used to have an old recording of the violist William Primrose playing the Brahms E-flat major sonata, and there was one glaringly out-of-tune note in it. Now, if I listened to that recording 25 times, that note was out of tune every single time. But if I had gone to hear Primrose play that piece in concert 25 times, it might have happened only once.
Of course, other things might have happened in other places, but it's not unreasonable to want a recording to represent the best you could ever perform the piece, technically speaking. I find myself reminded of A Hard Day's Night, the Beatles' first movie. In these days of grunge rock, it's easy to forget that one of the things that made the Beatles so refreshing was that they hadn't had their teeth capped. They looked like real people.
Now, it was great that they didn't Hollywoodize themselves, dentally wise speaking, but I think it's a safe bet that if, on one of the days of shooting that movie, John had shown up on the set with a huge pimple on his nose, A pimple he didn't, after all, usually have, he wouldn't have said no to a bit of make-up. That has got to be one of the greatest analogies in the history of musicology.
John Kirkpatrick once wrote about the Scarlatti harpsichord sonatas with the incredibly virtuosic hand crossings. He said that the sense of danger and effort was an important part of the pieces, which it certainly is, And that when he occasionally did a performance in which he got every single one of those notes, he felt a bit of a letdown. Well, that may be true, but on the recordings I've heard of Kirkpatrick playing Scarlatti, all the notes are right.
It is easier to accept mistakes, that is to get used to them, on live recordings where the audience is audibly present, than on studio recordings. For a Tidbit Time today, I've got an old recording fragment that might be called A Singer's Worst Nightmare. This serious rendition of an aria from La Boheme has been circulating underground for years. Several people have played it to me, and none of them knows who it is.
Though I know nothing of the provenance of this gem, I'm convinced that it was not done for comedic purposes, I can't imagine any real singer doing what you are about to hear to his voice. This must be from the 1920s anyway. We're talking basement fidelity here. But be patient.
[music excerpt: Puccini, "La Boheme"; Unknown]
A vocal train wreck of mythic proportions. This can happen, you know, even to decent singers. I've heard a more recent example that took place on a broadcast from a major American opera house. It has to do with going for it, I think. Like it's no accident that Babe Ruth, the king of home runs, was also the king of strikeouts. Maybe what I love best of all about this tape is that the guy goes right on as if nothing has happened.
Let's hear it again, and I'll let it play a little bit farther this time.
[music excerpt: Puccini, "La Boheme"; Unknown]
Every time I hear that, it just, I mean, I dissolve. I fall apart.
And I think it's not only because it is so funny, but also there's a nervousness, I think. Any performer, I mean, that could be me. I was climbing Teewinot once, one of the mountains in the Tetons in Wyoming with my father. And I was above him and he was on the rope. I was belaying him. You know, his weight wasn't on the rope. It's just for safety. But he dropped his glasses and they fell so that they were lodged on the rope, sort of between the rope and his shirt.
And the only way he could grab the glasses was to let go of the rock. In other words, I was going to be having his weight on the rope. And I can remember he told me that, and we talked about how we were going to do it. It wasn't his full weight, but some of his weight. And I can remember I started laughing, and I felt so embarrassed and so sort of ashamed, but it was obviously the laughter of nervousness.
That was an unknown but immortal singer, steering his voice unsuccessfully through the perilous shoals of Puccini's La Boheme. Even if I did know his name, I'd probably withhold it. But I'm afraid the FCC won't let me get away with that when it comes to the host of this program. His name is Peter Schickele, and the show is Schickele Mix, from PRI, Public Radio International.
The drama critic John Lahr has written, Great comedy is cruel, and therefore is written by the young. Well, I'm not sure that it's always cruel, nor that youth has a monopoly on cruelty. It certainly is true that most of us will laugh at somebody slipping on a banana peel, but only if we know that he's not really hurt. The Marquis de Sade may have tapped into a primal place that sex and violence have in common, but if you find his books in the library at all, they're not going to be in the section with Dave Barry and Erma Bombeck. Let's face it though, it is funny to see somebody get things hopelessly bollixed up. This suite has three numbers in it. I call it the If at first you don't succeed, fail, fail again suite. And I guarantee that it will be ten of the silliest minutes you've ever spent.
[music: "The Spanish Inquisition" (The Instant Monty Python CD Collection); Monty Python]
Monty Python (recorded): One of the flay rods has gone out of skew, apparently, on the treadle.
What on earth does that mean? I don't know. Mr. Wentworth told me to come and say there was trouble at the mill, that's all. I didn't expect a kind of Spanish Inquisition.
Nobody expects a Spanish Inquisition. Our weapon is surprise. Surprise and fear. Fear and surprise are two weapons. Our fear and surprise and the ruthless efficiency are three weapons. Amongst our weapons are fear and surprise and ruthless efficiency and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope. Amongst our weapons are fear, surprise, ruth... Amongst our weaponry are such elements as... I'll come in again.
Well, I didn't expect a kind of Spanish Inquisition.
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition. Amongst our weaponry are such diverse elements as a fear, a surprise, a ruthless efficiency, an enormous fanatical devotion to the Pope, and a night out with the naval... It's no good, I'm sorry. Cardinal Biggles, you'll have to say it. What? You'll have to say, our chief of weapons are... I couldn't say that. I didn't
expect a kind of Spanish Inquisition.
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition. I know, I know. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition. In fact, those who do expect it... Our chief weapon is, um, surprise and, uh... Stop, stop, stop there. All right, all right. Our chief weapon is surprise, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Now, Cardinal Fang, read the charges.
One pen for a full sketch, 24p for a quickie. What'll you have? Sketch, please.
[music]
[music: P. D. Q. Bach, Echo Sonata for Two Unfriendly Groups of Instruments (P. D. Q. Bach On the Air)]
Announcer (recorded): And the top of the morning to all of you out there from all of us up here at W-O-O-F, Hoople, North Dakota. Now, I don't want to bore you with a lot of useless chit-chat this morning when I could be doing it with a lot of useless music, so let's get started right away with some P. D. Q. Bach.
And we like to do this number for Arthur and Bob and Cliff and David and Esther and Fiona and Gerard and Herb and Irene and Josie and Catherine and Larry and Molly and Norman and Olaf and Phil and Quentin and Ralph and Steve and Tom and Ursula and Vince and Warren and Zena and Yvonne and Zeke. So let's listen now as we hear I Virtuosi di Hoople performing the Echo Sonata for Two Unfriendly Groups of Instruments by P. D. Q. Bach. Schickele number nine.
[No speech for 28 s.]
Excuse me, folks. We seem to have the tape on backwards or something. Let's give it another try. All right, now we will hear the PDQ Bach Echo Sonata for two unfriendly groups of instruments.
Let's see. Better, but it still doesn't sound quite right. Let's see, that would work in this... I think I must have... Let's try rewinding and starting all over again.
Okay, now let's hear P. D. Q. Bach's Echo Sonata for Two Unfriendly Groups of Instruments.
[No speech for 33 s.]
Is that in the piece, or... I can't remember.
Oh, I guess that's it. Well, folks, you have just heard P. D. Q.
Uh-oh. Well, folks, I'm afraid the tape has broken on me here. I'll have it fixed in just a jiffy. It sure is a heck of a way to start the morning, isn't it?
Okay. There. Now we're ready to hear P. D. Q. Bach's Echo Sonata for Two Unfriendly Groups of Instruments.
[No speech for 25 s.]
Hey, what's that? What is that noise? I don't know. What's that?
What do you mean there's a station break in here?
[sung: station jingle]
Well, folks, we've had a little trouble with one of our machines, and the west wall is blown out, so I think we'll have a word from our sponsor.
[music: Jones, "The Man on the Flying Trapeze" (Spiked: The Music of Spike Jones); Doodles Weaver]
Announcer (recorded): As the crowd roars to the center ring, steps our fractured baritone.
Are you in voice, Winstead?
Doodles Weaver (recorded): I believe I am in voice.
Recording: Professor?
Doodles Weaver (recorded): Oh, once I was wappy, once I was sappy, a sap I was once, once I was happy, but now I'm your lorn, a lorn I'm found now, a scion line, a nylons are free, now I'm forlorn. Ooh!
Doodles Weaver (recorded): Like an old goat, oh no, not a goat, that's an animal. Like an old coat that is torn and intact, teetered and tumped, tattered and tipped, tapped with a toupee, ripped.
Doodles Weaver (recorded): Left in this wide world to sleep and to snore, to weep and to mourn, betrayed by a jade in her means, no, be mean by a trade for some jeans, oh, be jeaned by a teen with some jade, oh, betrayed by a maid in her teens.
Doodles Weaver (recorded): He floats by his hair. Oh, not by his hair, that would hurt. Speaking of hair, a man came up to me today and said, Doodles, your hair is getting thin, and I said, well, who wants fat hair? How's that, Schiller?
Doodles Weaver (recorded): He floats through the air with the eightest of grease, with the latest of fleas, with plates full of cheese, no, no, with the birds and the bees, he can't miss.
Doodles Weaver (recorded): The manning young bear, the daring young mare, he's not a horse, that's silly, he'd break his neck. The fanning young dan, the danning young fan, he's an awful old ham, he's a young fellow about my age. You know, a funny thing happened, a man came up to me, Doodles, did you leave home? I said, I left home. He said, did you put the cat out? I said, I didn't know he was on fire. Ha, it's a killer.
Doodles Weaver (recorded): The daring young man on the flapping trapeze, a treesing tri-flaps, a trying flip-flip, a flipping tri-flop, a fapping tri-flop, a horizontal bar.
Doodles Weaver (recorded): His grations are actual, no, his actions are horrible. No, he's very good. All girls he doth please, but my wuv he hath lowed in a stay, no, the dove's in the hayloft away, no, I'm on the road to Mandalay. No, hey, hey, hey, no, no. Did you hear about the owl who married a goat? They had a hootenanny. How's that, killer?
The If at First You Don't Succeed, Fail, Fail Again Suite. Monty Python and the Spanish Inquisition. The Echo Sonata for Two Unfriendly Groups of Instruments by P.D.Q. Bach. And Doodles Weaver, trying to make it through The Man on the Flying Trapeze with the help of Spike Jones.
You know, sometimes when I wonder how anybody can be as silly as I am, I listen to some of those old Spike Jones sides and look at some of those old 40s movies. Those were silly times. Doodles Weaver. You know, I mentioned on another edition of Schickele Mix, and it was said sort of jokingly that Doodles Weaver was related to Sigourney Weaver, but I think that's true. I think I read that someplace. So, Sigourney, if you're listening, please get in touch with me about that. I'd be curious.
Meanwhile, you know, we've had a lot of short little snippets on this show, ferreting out these stupid little mistakes that nobody would have noticed if I hadn't pointed them out. So let's go out with a nice chunk here. We heard a little bit of The Nutcracker in one of the trickiest to hear mistakes before, where you had to just really be able to zero in on those oboes.
Let's hear the waltz of the flowers to go out on. What do you say? We'll hear that with the Ashkenazy version, Vladimir Ashkenazy conducting the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.
[music excerpt: Tchaikovsky, “The Nutcracker,” “Waltz of the Flowers”; L'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande/Ansermet]
And that's Schickele Mix for this week. Our program is made possible with funds provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, by the National Endowment for the Arts, and by this radio station and its members. Thank you, members. And not only that, our program is distributed by PRI, Public Radio International. And special thanks to Ken Gene [?] and Leslie Gerber for their recordings.
We'll tell you in a moment how you can get an official playlist of all the music on today's program with album numbers and everything. Just refer to the program number. This is program number 113. And this is Peter Schickele saying goodbye and reminding you that it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that certain je ne sais quoi. You're looking good. See you next week.
[music excerpt: Tchaikovsky, “The Nutcracker,” “Waltz of the Flowers”; L'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande/Ansermet]
If you'd like a copy of that playlist I mentioned, send a stamped, self-addressed envelope to Schickele Mix. That's S-C-H-I-C-K-E-L-E, Schickele Mix. Care of Public Radio International, 100 North Sixth Street, Suite 900A, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 55403.