< World Premiere > EDWARD ELGAR : Violin Concerto, Op. 61 Thursday 10 November, 1910 – Queen's Hall, London London Symphony Orchestra, cond. Edward Elgar Fritz Kreisler, Violin solo “The solo part is one of the most exhausting in the repertoire – a veritable compendium of bravura violin techniques, in which Elgar, despite all his inside knowledge, sought the help of W. H. Reed, later to become Leader of the London Symphony Orchestra. Reed and Elgar (at the piano) gave a run-through to a select group of listeners before the first performance proper. Kreisler also made small suggestions that were incorporated in the published score. In his interview, Kreisler had ranked Elgar with Beethoven and Brahms. Elgar met the challenge, and his 'Violin Concerto' combines the singing quality of Beethoven’s with the symphonic drama of Brahms’s.” — Adrian Jack

< World Premiere > FERRUCCIO BUSONI : Piano Concerto, Op. 39 Thursday 10 November, 1904 – Beethoven-Saal, Berlin Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra & Choir of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche, cond. Karl Muck Ferruccio Busoni, Piano solo Breitkopf & Härtel, 1906

< World Premiere > THOMAS DANIEL SCHLEE : Carnet poétique, Op. 39 (for unaccompanied SATB div. choir) Tuesday 6 November, 2001 Chapelle Notre-Dame-des-Anges, Paris Ensemble Vocal Français, cond. Gilbert Martin-Bouyer Editions Henry Lemoine, 1997 Texts: “Gabardine de l’Hymette” by Patrick Frégonara

<World Premiere> SVEN DAVID SANDSTRÖM : Drei Rilke Gesänge (for unaccompanied SSATBB div. choir) Sunday 5 November, 2017 – Christians Church, Copenhagen Mogens Dahl Chamber Choir, cond. Mogens Dahl Germans Musikförlag, AB, 2017 (GE13236)

< World Premiere > ERNST PEPPING : Der 90. Psalm (for unaccompanied SSATBB choir) Sunday 4 November, 1934 – Wuppertal, Germany Bachverein Barmen, dir. Gottfried Grote B. Schott's Söhne, Mainz, 1934 (BSS 34061)

< World Premiere > THEA MUSGRAVE : By the River (for unaccompanied SATB div. choir) Sunday 1 November, 2020 – Snape Maltings, Suffolk National Youth Choir of Great Britain, cond. Ben Parry Text: Mary Ursala Bethell (1874-1945) Novello & Company, Ltd. 2019 (Nov297479) “Make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life. An individual human existence should be like a river small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past rocks and over waterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end, without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being.” — Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

< World Premiere > WERNER WOLF GLASER : Motette über Sprüche des Angelus Silesius (for unaccompanied SATB div. choir) Wednesday 1 November, 2006 – Tjernigov, Ukraine Dmitri Bortnjanski Chamber Choir, dir. Otfried Richter Edition Suecia, Stockholm, 1990 (SUE 367) “... In his extensive output, Glaser developed a modernist tonal language, based on his studies under Paul Hindemith. His confident handling of melody and his inspired treatment of form bear witness to the fluency of his inspiration and to his attainment of a personal style of craftsmanship. Momentum and elaboration techniques were among the guiding starts of his imagination. His distinctive characteristics also included a sense of expressionist gesture. He prefered to achieve the expressive quality of his music by short, strict means instead of allowing the tonal material to overflow. Glaser greatly valued the capacity of the musical language for conveying intensity in pared-down, controlled figures.”

< World Premiere > PETER MAXWELL DAVIES Strathclyde Concerto No. 10 : Concerto for Orchestra Wednesday 30 October, 1996 – City Hall, Glasgow, Scotland Scottish Chamber Orchestra, cond. Peter Maxwell Davies Boosey & Hawkes Ltd., 1997 (HPS 1312) "The Concerto for Orchestra ends the cycle of ten 'Strathclyde' concertos, which I have written for the principals of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra over a period of several years. It extends virtuosity to all members of the orchestra — even back-desk players find themselves suddenly spotlit, playing chords alone in the first movement." — Peter Maxwell Davies (1934–2016)

Wake The Fuck Up America! Oakie's Blog Sunday 20 August, 2023 The attendants started to arrive taking their seats in the large amphitheater. Pretty soon they were all seated. The man takes a good look at the class composition, and says, "This is a Gen Ed HSI class so if you are looking for A&C that's two buildings down." The inevitable three or four dickheads discretely got up and left the room.  "Very well, welcome to Histories, Societies, Individuals class, today's subject is both an introduction and a wake up call, so get your notebooks ready, and for fucks sake try to learn something today.", looks at one particular blonde placing a book on her retractable tray. "What the fuck is that?" She stopped and said, "The end of histo...", he cut her off, "Never mind, just put it away. Take fucking notes." He sat on the desk and looked at the audience, taking a deep breath. "Let us begin."   America, today, is faced with a serious challenge that threatens her very existence as a free and democratic society, and before any of you even THINK about the Republic argument, just know that ALL the so called "Western Democracies", to name just those, are democratic republics, with the exception of a few monarchies, which themselves are democratic parliamentary systems. So you can take the "this is a republic, not a democracy" bullshit and shove it back in your asses. Now, what threatens us the most as a functioning democracy is not some stupid orange moron, that can easily be defeated through elections, or thrown in prison by virtue of the excellent work of the likes of Alvin Bragg, Fani Willis, or Jack Smith, who are making sure he spends the rest of his miserable existence locked in a box, watching the banks seize all he used to own. No. That's not the real threat. The real threat today is indoctrination. The wilful, relentless, focused effort to substitute what we used to call History, and reality itself, by a doctrine based in fiction, lies, and unadulterated Nazism. They started it by warping the significance of facts. Suddenly facts could have alternatives, like mirror images that were nothing like the real fact, but actually a complete distortion, a fake, a lie, an illusion. It's a kind of magic, only dark magic. That's how it started, and as the plot suggests, this was aimed at "mature audiences", and don't laugh at the sarcasm. Sure, most of those willing to believe these warped figures are just plain dumb bastards who have no idea why the Sun keeps showing up in a different place on the horizon every morning, and believe that if they keep walking long enough they will fall off the flat Earth they live in; but disabuse yourselves of the notion that they and ONLY they were the targets.    People like you. People supposedly better positioned than you, college graduates, highly skilled professionals, politicians, lawyers, doctors, you name it. They all bought it. Are they stupid? No. But they saw the opening, and went for it, like a damn seagull trapped in a stairway, seeing an apartment door open. That was their way out. Out of the closet they had been hiding in for years, out from under the rock they were rotting at, out of the fucking bushes nobody bothered to trim anymore. Suddenly it was alright to be who they really are. Nazis. Out of the blue, as part of the "enhanced reality" program, there were good people on both sides! There was a case to be made for the Germans who believed in the final solution, lets hear them out, please, because "freedom of speech". Why not? What harm could come of normalizing the alternatives to the end of Nazism? What if Hitler had won the war? Is there not a case to be made we would all be better off today? Lets hear "both sides", why don't we. The program went on to deny any election result that was not suitable to the needs of the patriotic citizens, AKA Christo-Fascists, AKA Christian Nationalists, AKA fucking Republicans. We are fighting this fight in the courts right now, and whether the results will impact the future in a constructive way or just throw more shit on the pile of dung that is today's American political landscape, it's too soon to tell. What we do know, is that the circus is in town, and lo and behold, the long lines of precognition endowed liberals waiting to buy popcorn for the expected spectacle the greatest show on earth provides are growing. Why didn't P.T. Barnum think of this? Oh, wait, he did! So here we are, happy as can be, in anticipation of the fucker’s mugshot, we will place as screensaver on our computers and phones. What the fuck are you giggling about? I got news for you, folks. This is a distraction! Wake the fuck up! The idea that all these brainless maggots, that fill reels and reels of news, and make great candid camera reality episodes, see Trump as their savior and lord, and that they will die for him, and give him all their money, are the be-all and end-all of our problems is just another illusion. They are not. They are just the vessel, at the moment directed to "save their president". Do you believe that if Trump had a chance in hell of making it through his current ordeals, the fuckers that really matter, the ones with the real power and money, wouldn't provide him the best legal council in the world, along with the best doctors to cut his edge and make him behave, and push through this thing like a breeze? The reason they don't is because this is exactly what needs to happen, so that the real agenda can be pushed under the radar, while the news cycles revolve around a sad, pathetic, washed up fuck who has zero power and only has words to say. Sure, dangerous. Sure, let's not forget to cage him for life. But hold on a minute. What's that? That's the problem. In many red states around the country, legislative initiatives are taking place by the thousands. You heard me right. Thousands. Many of them already in place. And they cover everything under the Sun that can possibly affect the interests of the few who seek to control us. And they tell you who they are when you look at their wish list: transgender bans, gay bans, LGBTQ+ bans, voting rights bans, environment action bans, regulation bans, Union bans, democratic rules bans, establish procedure bans, precedent bans, anything but Christianity bans, migrant bans, abortion bans, and the cherry on top: Book bans. The same exact list, with some chronological adaptations, the Nazis had in the 1930s. They even go as far as using the same projection tactics the Nazis used in Germany back then. They accuse you of wanting to ban free speech, democracy, freedom, country, religion, the fucking guns. And when they achieve their goal, they will turn around and do all those things themselves. This is all too familiar and it's no joke. People like Marc E. Elias, and others, are doing what they can on the legal front to stop them, but they are thousands, everywhere, all at once. We could use a little help from Michelle Yeoh on this one. Then, of course, we have a fascist Supreme Court, that is not reassuring, even if some cases they will either not touch or, if they have to, decide more favorably to the old rule of law. But that is not going to last long. The minute they have full cover from the White House and Congress they will go ballistic on us, and may God have mercy on our souls. But we have some time. We can still make changes in the Supreme Court, if the 2024 elections work out really well for the Democrats and the people that will actually do something about this are elected. But again, this is just the low hanging fruit. Since forever, elites in power have tried to keep the populace educated to a minimum degree, so they can control the field. This started with the Bible, and you probably have a small idea how the Church reacted to the printed version of the thing, but let's just say Gutenberg was not in the invitation list to Vatican parties. Through the ages, advances in education have been met with discreet but resolute attempts to make them stall, if not stop. The idea of private schools where the illuminated elites could learn, while the plebeians were reduced to broken public schools are but echoes of the time when the Bible was only accessible in Monasteries and the good word was transmitted down stream by selected few. Both Democrats and Republicans have delved in these efforts in the past, from voucher schools to no child left behind, the purpose was always the same. Keep the lower classes dumb.   Well, welcome to the XXI Century in America, where dumb is no longer enough. Now they are after the real deal. The conversion en masse of public schools into Hitler-Jugend like factories. What is happening today in Florida is not the product of the Nazi genius of Ron DeSantis, don't make me laugh, he is but a schmuck. The ones funding all these public school conversion programs are the problem. They are cunning and focused and they provided the country with exactly the right kind of distraction for them to execute the plan: the Trumpian Circus. And it is a master plan. It starts with pokes. Poke, don't say gay. Poke, no transgender sports. Poke, no gender neutral bathrooms. Poke, the ten commandments in all schools. Did it work? Are we really allowing this to happen? Awesome, they say. and POKE, and POKE. And poke by poke, they arrived at the banning of books. The crown jewel of Nazism. And that went through as well! They lost their shit.   For once, they jumped the gun and now we can all see what they are really after. Organizations like Moms For Liberty and PragerU are pushing hard to have their own approved material adopted in public schools as the norm, teaching scores of children things like slavery had its benefits and better enslaved than dead, and the environmentalists are communist extremists who want to terminate your way of life, and other crap that makes any educated person vomit. But herein lies the problem. If they succeed in turning public education into a broad spectrum homeschooling steroid enhanced system, soon the "educated people" will be "them". What you know as an educated person today is already an endangered species. If this program succeeds, it will disappear from the face of the Earth, starting right here in America. The new Motherland, with millions of indoctrinated morons attending college, and yes, our military academies too. This is it, people. Close your fucking books and take a good look around. The answer to your questions is not written yet. You must write it yourselves. So stop reading so much, start observing more and write it down, what you know must be done, and share it. Warn everyone. This is the fight of your lives. And nobody has written about it yet. It is up to you now. Make it count, or we are all fucked. Class dismissed.

< World Premiere > DMITRI SHOSTAKOVITCH : Violin Concerto No. 1, Op. 77 Saturday 29 October, 1955 – Philharmonic Hall, Leningrad Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra, cond. Yevgeni Mravinsky David Oistrakh, Violin solo Boosey & Hawkes Music Publishers Ltd., 1957

< World Premiere > AARON JAY KERNIS : Glorious Majesty (for unaccompanied SATB div. choir & soli) Sunday 27 October, 2013 Central Lutheran Church, Minneapolis, MN VocalEssence Ensemble Singers, cond. Philip Brunelle Associated Music Publishers, 2013 (AMP 8278) ... this 9-minute setting of Psalm 104 is described by the composer as “overflowing with the glories of creation, earth, and the heavens.” 'Glorious Majesty' is a work of contrasts, with sections performed by both large and small groups of singers, as well as shifting moods and harmonies, “to highlight the distinction between passages in the text that praise God and those that praise God's creation.”

< World Premiere > KAIKHOSRU SHAPURJI SORABJI : Fantasia Ispanica, KSS55 (1933) Friday 26 October, 2001 Great Hall, King’s College, London University, England Jonathan Powell, Piano

A letter from mental health professionals on Trump’s dangerous psychopathology — As mental health professionals, we have an ethical duty to warn the public that Donald Trump is an existential threat to democracy. His symptoms of severe, untreatable personality disorder—malignant narcissism—makes him deceitful, destructive, deluded, and dangerous. He is grossly unfit for leadership. Trump exhibits behavior that tracks with the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual’s (DSM V) diagnostic criteria for “narcissistic personality disorder,” “antisocial personality disorder,” and “paranoid personality disorder,” all made worse by his intense sadism, which is a symptom of malignant narcissism. This psychological type was first identified by German psychologist Erich Fromm to explain the psychology of history’s most “evil” dictators. Detractors object that we mental health professionals cannot render such a diagnosis without first examining the patient, citing the “Goldwater Rule.” We believe that we have an overriding ethical duty to warn the public of the danger this individual poses. History has taught us that in such circumstances, saying nothing is never the more ethical choice. Since the Goldwater Rule was adopted, the field has modernized the DSM diagnostic system, which relies exclusively on “observable behavioral criteria.” For many years, we’ve all observed thousands of hours of Trump’s behavior, reinforced by the observations of dozens of individuals who have interacted with him personally. Using the DSM V, it is easy to see that Trump meets the behavioral criteria for antisocial personality disorder. Even a non-clinician can see that Trump shows a lifetime pattern of “failure to conform to social norms and laws,” “repeated lying,” “reckless disregard for the safety of others,” “irritability,” “impulsivity,” “irresponsibility,” and “lack of remorse.” Because of their sadism, malignant narcissists often derive joy from inflicting suffering on others because they disregard the emotions and wellbeing of other people—especially their perceived enemies. For example, according to first-hand accounts, Trump watched the violence he unleashed on January 6 for three hours on TV with “glee,” watching his favorite parts “over and over” on “rewind.” To make matters worse, Trump appears to be showing signs of cognitive decline that urgently cry out for a full neurological work-up, including an MRI and neuropsychological testing. These symptoms include: a dramatic decrease in verbal fluency, tangential thinking, diminished vocabulary, overuse of superlatives and filler words, perseveration, confabulation, phonemic paraphasia, semantic paraphasia, confusing people (not just names), as well as exhibiting deteriorating judgment, impulse control, and motor functioning (including a wide-based gait). We suspect the results of such an evaluation would be disqualifying. If, as we suspect, Trump does have organically based cognitive decline, it will only get worse over time, grossly degrading his already impaired judgment, impulse control, memory, attention, reality testing, and capacity to process information, while dramatically exacerbating the symptoms of his toxic personality disorder. People suffering with mental illness are no more likely to be dangerous than the general population. Malignant narcissism is the very rare exception. Without question, malignant narcissists have been history’s most grandiose, paranoid, and murderous leaders. Inevitably, they escalate until they are completely out of control, ultimately destroying themselves and the nations they lead. As mental health professionals we feel a desperate duty to warn our fellow citizens of this imminent catastrophic public danger before it’s too late. https://www.psychopac.org/open-letter/

< World Premiere > JAN CARLSTEDT : Missa in Honorem Papae Ioannis Pauli II (for unaccompanied SSAATTBB choir) Thursday 21 October, 1993 Uppsala Academy Chamber Choir, dir. Stefan Parkman Musikaliska Konstföreningen, Stockholm, 1995

< World Premiere > LENNOX BERKELEY : The Hill of the Graces, Op. 91, No. 2 (for unaccompanied SSAATTBB choir) Monday 20 October, 1975 BBC Singers, cond. John Poole J & W Chester, 1977 (JWC 55062) Text: Edmund Spenser – 'The Fairie Queene', Book VI, Canto X

< World Premiere > PHILIPPE HERSANT : Le Plasir Originel (Mystère Hystérique) (for unaccompanied S Mz A Ct T Bar B soli) Saturday 19 October, 2002 La Chapelle Largeau, France (Festival Eclats de Voix) Les Jeunes Solistes, dir. Rachid Safir Gérard Billaudot Éditeur Paris, 2008 (GB8381) Text: Edmond Haraucourt “L'Eden” (from 'La Légende des Sexes Poëmes Hystériques', 1882)

<World Premiere > ALEC ROTH : I Will Move Thee Sunday 18 October, 2015 – St. Alban Cathedral, England St. Alban Cathedral Choir, dir. Andrew Lucas Edition Peters Ltd. London, 2015 (EP 72743) Text : George Herbert (1593–1633)

< World Premiere > TORSTEN RASCH : ... in der Hülse von Schnee (for unaccompanied SSAATTBB choir) Thursday 16 October, 2014 Kammermusiksalle, Berlin Philharmonie, Germany RIAS Kammerchor Texts: Friedrich Hölderlin Faber Music Ltd., 2014

<World Premiere > KENNETH LEIGHTON : Laudate Pueri (Psalm 112) (for 3 unaccompanied SATB choirs) Saturday 13 October, 1973 – Norwich Cathedral, England Choirs of Ely, Norwich, & Peterborough Cathedrals, cond. Michael Nicholas Novello & Company Limited, 1973

< World Premiere > ANDERS ELIASSON : Breathing Room: July (for unaccompanied SSAATTBB choir) Wednesday 10 October, 1984 Main Hall, Royal Swedish Academy of Music, Stockholm Swedish Radio Choir, dir. Eric Ericson Edition Reimers AB, 1990 (ED 101106) May Swenson's English version of Thomas Tranströmer's poem 'Andrum Juli', included in the collection entitled Mörkerseende (1970), provides the starting point for Anders Eliasson's composition for unaccompanied mixed choir, 'Breathing Room : July'. Not that Tranströmer's poetry demands musical interpretation; Eliasson's music does not purport to add anything to the original text. Nor is 'Breathing Room : July' a choral composition in the traditional sense. Tranströmer's poem serves, in Eliasson's own words, "as a key to that big room". In 'Breathing Room : July', Eliasson penetrates behind the words and tries to capture what is beyond and between them. The words are illuminated from many different angles at once. If anything one is entitled here to speak of holistic music, of states and processes at work in different strata of time and space which are superimposed on each other. The text is treated contrapuntally and freely, certain important words are highlighted, sticking in the mind and moving with the music in any direction whatsoever. Words and music move in a living water, in its swell, ripples and currents. Internal and external reality are mingled. Tranströmer's poem consists of three four line verses. Eliasson's choral composition, of considerable length in relation to the text material, also has three clearly distinguishable, interconnected parts - movements, one is tempted to say. The vigorous middle section is surrounded by external episodes in a quieter tempo. In this way the work describes an arc. Anders Eliasson points out that the fact of voices conveying the music is really of little interest - it "just happens" to have become a vocal composition. In fact 'Breathing Room : July' is instrumentally, symphonically conceived.