WCPI airs special music of reflection, meditation
Today’s edition of “Sunday Showcase,” a locally produced program of classical music which airs each Sunday from noon to 3 p.m., is being described as an appropriate event as the United States and the world approach the first anniversary of the terrorist attack of Sept. 11, 2001.
“Many of the selections are distinctive for their quiet, gentle, thoughtful quality,” said Bill Zechman, one of the volunteer producers at WCPI and host for “Sunday Showcase,” which has been broadcast continuously since the station went of the air more than five years ago.
The program opens with a 19th Century musical setting of Psalm 110 (“O praise God in his holiness; praise him in the firmament of his power ?”) and continues with the Unfinished Symphony of Czech composer Pavel Haas. Haas was working on the piece when he was arrested by the Nazis in September 1941 and deported to the concentration camp at Terezin (Theresienstadt). He perished there, along with thousands of other Jews, in 1944.
Other composers represented in today’s Sunday Showcase include American Philip Glass, Armenian-American Alan Hovhannes, Canadian Linda Bouchard, German Richard Strauss, Latvian Peteris Vasks and Frenchman Gabriel Faure’. Also making an appearance on the eclectic program will be an American musical icon, Ray Stevens (“United We Stand”).