When you hear this magnificent music, you cannot help but start to tap your feet. Last spring, I was invited to teach a class about The Magic Flute in a gymnasium full of K-6th grade students in Akron. A daunting task! However, when I played the overture for these young people, silence fell upon everyone in the room. There is something about Mozart and his music that speaks to both young and old alike.
James Levine has been a favorite of mine ever since I attended the MET on Saturday afternoons as a little boy. The players in the orchestra always give more when Jimmy is on the podium (watch at the end of the overture when he encourages the trombones). Whether it is an opera by Mozart, Verdi, Wagner or even Kurt Weil, the maestro takes music and opera to another level. We have all been blessed by Levine’s significant contribution to classical music over the past forty years.
Enjoy this Tenth Day of Christmas and “leap” around the room as you listen to this masterpiece.
Love One Another – Brian
"Christmas Day" by William Drummond:
Bright portals of the sky,
Emboss'd with sparkling stars,
Doors of eternity,
With diamantine bars,
Your arrays rich uphold,
Loose all your bolts and springs,
Open wide your leaves of gold,
That in your roofs may come the King of Kings.
O well-spring of this All!
Thy Father's image vive;
Word, that from nought did call
What is, doth reason, live;
The soul's eternal food,
Earth's joy, delight of heaven;
All truth, love, beauty, good:
To thee, to thee be praises ever given!
O glory of the heaven!
O sole delight of earth!
To thee all power be given,
God's uncreated birth!
Of mankind lover true,
Indearer of his wrong,
Who doth the world renew,
Still be thou our salvation and our song!
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