There will be no kings, as it were, on Sunday morning's program, but there will (by sheer coincidence, where yesterday's rallies across the U.S. are concerned) be a queen, however, as we mark the 155th anniversary of the great music hall founded by Queen Victoria in honor of her late husband, Prince Albert: the Royal Albert Hall. Our musical centerpiece will be the massive and rarely heard World Requiem, by English composer John Foulds, written for a special Memorial Concert held at the hall in 1923 to commemorate the dead, of alll nations, who had lost their lives in the Fist World War, from a revival of that work given at the hall in 2007 under the direction of Leon Botstein. The magnificent Royal Albert Hall Organ will be featured in the final (11:00 o'clock) hour of the show, including the finale from Camille Saint-Saen's Organ Symphony, from the 2013 BBC Proms, the world famous annual music festival that has been held at the Royal Albert since 1941.
We'll also showcase Anna Lapwood,—who in 2025 made history by being named the first Official Organist of Royal Albert Hall—with music from her "Midnight Sessions" EP, as she performs, after hours, on the mighty instrument, her own transcriptions of music from film, including several selections from Hans Zimmer's mesmerizing score to Interstellar. Rounding out that final hour will be several of the earliest recordings made by Sergei Rachmaninoff on piano, as we hear several of the pieces of his that he performed at Royal Albert Hall during his appearance there in 1911.
You can hear Sunday on Blue Lake with Foley Schuler every Sunday morning from 9 until noon on Blue Lake Public Radio.
