Sunday Classics preview: These two Mystery Openings introduce works that I for one can't wait to hear more of

When quizmaster Edward Downes (seen here at far right, next to radio-broadcast producer Richard Mohr, with panelists for this March 1991 Texaco Metropolitan Opera Quiz: l-r, Bruce Burroughs, Speight Jenkins, and Charles Osborne; the photo is from Mr. Burroughs's website) asked a panel to identify either of our Mystery Openings, the quiz usually turned into "Stump the Chumps."

Mystery Opening A


Mystery Opening B

by Ken

I wouldn't push the resemblance too hard, but there is a certain similarity between these two Mystery Openings, isn't there? A certain deep brooding quality? I suppose it's true that "B" turns into a more conventionally tune-y little orchestral prelude, while "A" is clearly leading into, well, something else. As it happens, I think they're both extraordinarily beautiful little pieces in their own right, and audaciously imaginative ways to try to grab the attention of audiences for the very large-scale works they introduce, both of which I happen to love quite immoderately.

They have something else in common, our "A" and "B." But to be fair about it, you have to imagine them reduced to maybe 10 seconds, and played on the piano -- or more precisely, "on the Knabe," as Texaco Metropolitan Opera Quizmaster Edward Downes used to refer to it, invoking what was then the house's official piano when he called on (usually) one of the company's assistant conductors to play a musical example during the second intermission in the years when the Met's Saturday-afternoon broadcasts were an important part of my life. (The broadcasts still exist, and I assume the Opera Quiz as well, though not Texaco, or any involvement in the opera business by the Chevron-Texaco oil behemoth into which it was absorved.)

Over the long period of my listenership, I recall each of these excerpts being played a number of times for identification by that week's panel of experts, and it wasn't till nearly the end of that period that I recaall either one being identified correctly.

If you don't know the pieces, can you at least guess their nationalities? One should be pretty easy, the other maybe not so much.


TO IDENTIFY OUR MYSTERY OPENINGS, AND HEAR
A BIT MORE OF ONE OF THE WORKS, CLICK HERE

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