Seven hours of live music Sunday, from Bela Fleck through New Orleans jazz to Wagner -- all on the radio.

The evening began with the luminous show From the Top (with Christopher Reilly), which features young classical performers from around the country, and great they are, too, giving one much hope for the future of classical music. It's a co-production of the New England Conservatory and WGBH here in Boston, but is nationally distributed *and* recorded before a live studio audience. Last night, Bela Fleck was an unusual guest who performed with several of the youngsters.

Next came the redoubtable Ray Smith's The Jazz Decades, on the air for nearly thirty years and featuring (mostly older) recordings and radio broadcasts. Inasmuch as records in the old days were made essentially live, no editing, they count -- and they sure do get the toe tapping.

After that was River Walk, live jazz from San Antonio with the always hot Jim Cullum Jazz Band, and tap dancing sensation Savion Glover. Again, recorded live before a studio audience. Mercy it was good!

Then came the big surprise: Die Walkuere on Harvard Radio (Sunday Night at the Opera is a longtime feature) from three different sources, all recorded live:

Act 1: Furtwaengler and the RAI, recorded a year before his complete cycle and even better than the Act 1 therein. My GOODNESS!

Act 2: Fritz Reiner and the San Francisco Opera, broadcast live (just this act) on NBC. The singers? Just Kirsten Flagstad, Lotte Lehman, Lauritz Melchoir and Friedrich Schorr. How good was it? I had to put down my reading, which happened to be Robert Philip's Performing Music in the Age of Recording -- which was making the point of how performance practice has degraded owing to studio recordings. How ironic is that?

Act 3: Von Karajan from Bayreuth in 1952, the only act of a complete performance that EMI has ever issued. And you know what? It was really good! Although... I picked the book back up again.

All the preceding was accompanied by the great Mendocino Brewing Co's Blue Heron pale ales and White Eagle IPAs, as well as half a 22-oz. bottle of the way-strong HeBrew Lenny's RIPA (the rest will go down tonight) so who knows? I may be mistaken... a pushover for music when in my cups...

clark

Interesting that at the same day I had dissuasion with a friend in mine (big Wagner fan) trying to formalize for him why I do not “get” Wagner. The best that I was able to come up was that in Wagner the prolog foreplay and rarity of the orgasms is something that distracts me. I mean if we get for instance the best of the “pop” operas, by for instance Puccini or Verdi, then they have a certain listening rhythm. The pressure builds up, builds up, builds up and then a culmination come up. Any act has a number of those rollercoasters that make listening a not only a wile ride across own sensations but also….kind of amusement and enjoyment.

With Wagner is different: he very-very seldom make music, plot or acting to orgasm but rather he very slowly and very lengthy cooks the listener, the question is: for what purpose. I do not deny many musical genius moments of Wagner and I did experience in few occasions the “moments of forth”.  Still, it was a few minutes of 4 hours labor and not directly inspirable.  Do admit that do not know Wagner to like him but what I do know from him make him to respect him but do not like him. If someone is wiling to “help” me then I would be gratefully. Hey, even bought a few years back a book, qithe a nice book: "How do not hate Wagner”…. it did not help….