On the first Saturday of the month, Jack Moore and I host Discoveries from the Fleisher Collection on WRTI 90.1 FM in Philadelphia and on the all-classical webstream at wrti.org. We also broadcast encore presentations of the entire Discoveries series (now eight years and counting!) every Wednesday at 7:00 p.m. on WRTI HD-2. For a look at all the shows, click here. Read on for a sneak peek about this month's episode!

Saturday, April 3rd, 2010, 5:00-6:00 p.m.

Hugo Alfvén. (1872-1960). “Shepherd Girl’s Dance” from Bergakungen (The Mountain King) (1923)

Alfvén. Symphony No. 4 (1918)

Composers write music about love all the time. Hugo Alfvén—urbane, well-trained, and rising in all the right circles—began one such piece as a young man in his twenties. It so overwhelmed him, however, that 20 years later it had mutated into a craggy three-quarter-hour symphony of four movements played without break, a luxuriant, ardent, and stunning wordless tale of such power that some critics thought it too suggestive for public performance....
[more details here]