Dvorak, Stephen Foster and Hawaiian Guitar on Fretworks

For the Labor Day weekend on Fretworks, we'll hear the Modern Mandolin Quartet play their arrangement of music by Czech composer Antonin Dvorak written while he was in the United States in Spilville, Iowa in 1893.  They'll perform the first movement of his American String Quartet. For two of the more unusual items on the program, Hawaiian slack key guitarist Moses Kahumoku will play one of his own compositions, Pohakuloa, on a nylon-string classical guitar with an open tuning that gives gives this style of playing its distinctive sound.  The innovative guitarist Bill Frisell will accompany soprano Renee Fleming in a beautiful and haunting setting of the Stephen Foster song, Hard Times Come Again No More. There's also a concerto for guitar and orchestra by the early 19th century guitarist composer Ferdinando Carulli with Pepe Romero, the soloist and the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields led by Iona Brown. Andrew York will play a couple of his own pieces, Reflections and Sunburst, and Manuel Barrueco has his arrangement of the Beatles' A Hard Day's Night. Join me Saturday evening at 7 pm and beginning this coming Wednesday as part of our new schedule, a repeat broadcast of the program at 7 pm here on Classical 101.