Over to Paris this week for a concert by Orchestre de Paris, conducted by Alain Altinoglu and featuring Pianist Romain Descharmes in a program of music by Chabrier, Saint-Saens and Florent Schmitt.

The venerable war-horse Espana by Emmanuel Chabrier opens the concert, followed by a wildly well-received Saint-Saens Piano concerto Number 2, with Pianist Romain Descharmes, who follows with two encores. The concert concludes with the seldom heard (at least here in the U.S.) La Tragèdie de Salomè by the early 20th century composer Florent Schmitt.

A good concert of mostly familiar music done as only a French orchestra can.

The concert is broken up between two players - the Chabrier and the Saint-Saens (and encores) are on the top player and the Schmitt is on the bottom player.

For you note takers:

16 mai 2012
En direct de la Cité de la Musique : Chabrier, Saint-Saëns, Schmitt

Emmanuel Chabrier
España (1883)

Camille Saint-Saëns
Concerto N°2 en sol mineur Op.22 (1868)

Florent Schmitt
La Tragédie de Salomé Op.50 (1907)

Romain Descharmes, Piano
Orchestre de Paris
Alain Altinoglu, Direction
Coproduction Cité de la musique, Orchestre de Paris.

Enjoy.

As an adjunct to the news of this day from Prague and the Czech crisis, there was also significant news regarding the very first Air Raid drill to take place in the U.S. on the night of May 16, 1938.

The site was a small rural community in New York State, which also housed an aircraft plant. The Air Raid, part of a new concept in War, was designed to better acquaint the public with the distinct possibilities that war could come just as easily from the air as anywhere else.

And since Radio was pretty new at this sort of on-the-spot reporting, it was an exciting evening for all parties concerned, and rather festive to the inhabitants of Farmingdale, New York.

So here is that broadcast, complete as it happened over WOR, New York on that night of May 16, 1938 - seventy-four years ago.

A lot has changed since then, to be sure.

On this day in 1946 if you were listening to the radio you would probably be hearing an address by former Treasury Secretary under FDR Henry Morgenthau on the state of housing in Post-War America and where the returning Veteran stood in all of it.

Then as now, Real Estate prices were grossly inflated and there seemed to be little in the way of a remedy for it. Measures were introduced such as the Veteran's Emergency Housing Bill to provide a ceiling for prices in an attempt to curb runaway prices. But, as always, lobbies in Washington were powerful and belligerent and the crisis only deepened.

Henry Morgenthau: “Wyatt’s (Wilson Wyatt, author of Veteran's Emergency House Bill) proposal was simply this; suppose a man owns a house, he would be permitted to sell it once at any price he could get for it. But if the house is again put up for sale after that, that same price would be considered the ceiling so long as the emergency lasts. In other words, if he got $10,000 dollars for the house, $10,000 would thereafter be considered the ceiling price. This would have done nothing, of course to roll the real estate prices back from their present dangerously inflated levels. Mr. Wyatt was just trying to work out a compromise. But the Real Estate lobbies wouldn’t hold still, even for that. They know perfectly well that millions of dollars of Black Market money, a lot of it in the form of $1,000 bills is being poured into real estate speculation. Evidently they are unwilling to put an end to it. As far as the Real Estate lobbies are concerned, Real Estate prices can go on rising till kingdom come. Even if the average American and the Veteran are reduced to living in cellers.”

In trying to remedy a situation that had spiraled out of control, Morgenthau, on behalf of the Truman administration sought to ease the anxieties and express some sort of solution to the problem. This radio address, given on May 16th 1946 was part of a weekly series of addresses Morgenthau gave on Post-War problems.

. . .and I left in the Gallo Wine commercial as a reminder.

News for this day in May 1938 was unsettling. The crisis between Nazi Germany and Czechoslovakia was heating up and the goings on in Prague were taking center stage for the rest of the world.

This broadcast, an English language newscast from Radio Prague on May 16th, 1938 deals with results from the elections held the previous day. Of primary concern was just how influential pro-Nazi Konrad Henlein and his Deutsche Sudeten Party were in securing enough seats in Parliament and how this would eventually effect the proposed land-grab by Berlin.

Negotiations were still going on between England, France and Germany over the Sudeten question, and things would heat up considerably more over the coming weeks before an appeased settlement was brokered by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. The outcome didn't favor the beleaguered Czech people, but it did promise "Peace In Our Time" for the moment.

And that's what happened in Prague, this May 16, 1938.

The rest is history.