Up to Helsinki Finland this week for a live concert from the 2011 Mikkeli Music Festival by the Mariinsky Orchestra of St. Petersburg conducted by Valery Gergiev and featuring pianist Alexander Toradze.

A pretty lively concert, which was recorded direct from the stage at Martti Talvela Hall on July 8th, features a lot of Prokofiev (Cinderella Suite, Piano Concerto Number 1 and extracts from Romeo and Juliet as an encore), Shostakovitch (Piano concerto Number 1 and Symphony Number 6) and Scarlatti as an encore from Toradze.

A little under two hours, so it's on two players - the top player features Prokofiev Cinderella and the Shostakovitch Piano Concerto. And the bottom player features the Prokofiev Piano concerto, Scarlatti Sonata, Shostakovitch Symphony and Prokofiev Romeo and Juliet excerpts as an encore.

Notes:

Festival de Musique de Mikkeli

Un enregistrement du 8 juillet 2011,
Martti Talvela Hall, Mikkeli
Mariinsky Orchestra
Valery Gergiev, direction
Alexander Toradze, piano
Timur Martynov, trompette

Serge Prokofiev : Extraits du ballet
«Cendrillon»

Dimitri Chostakovitch : Concerto
pour piano et orchestre no 1 en ut
mineur, op. 35

Serge Prokofiev : Concerto pour
piano et orchestre no 1 en ré bémol,
op. 10

(BIS) Domenico Scarlatti : Sonate
en ré mineur

Dimitri Chostakovitch : Symphonie
no 6 en si mineur, op. 54

(Bis) Serge Prokofiev : Montaigue &
Capulet, extrait de «Roméo et Juliette»

Remember, it's Anti-Road Rage Wednesday. So . . . . .

Enjoy and put the gun down.

News for this June 22nd in 1941 had everything to do with the sudden Declaration of War by Germany to Russia, setting up an invasion and opening up what was to be known as "The Eastern Front".

News was coming in so fast that NBC, and most other networks, announced they would suspend all their regular programming and devote themselves entirely to the news of the moment. And flustered announcers and analysts rushed to their microphones to deliver breathless updates, sometimes forgetting they were on the air, and other times delivering news off the tops of their heads, without aid of a script.

So here is a one-hour snapshot of that day in history, where very little else went on for June 22, 1941 as heard live over the combined networks of NBC.

Over to Helsinki Finland tonight for a sampling of music by Burning Hearts. A trio that encompasses Dream Pop and Alternative along with a liberal dose of Electronica to keep it all interesting.

Tonight it's Various Lives, off their latest album Extinction.

When you start thinking in terms of Music Without Borders, it all gets very interesting.

And maybe having a listen to Various Lives will keep it all going.

As the War in Europe started to heat up, all eyes were on the border dispute between Finland and Russia, this March 9th in 1940.

With Germany pressing Moscow for a settlement, fighting had broken out while this broadcast was on the air. The French government was optimistic the Finns would successfully repel Soviet aggression, and Hitler sent Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop on a mission to Rome to try and find some resolution.

Meanwhile, German radio was quick to accuse the U.S. of inciting the Finns to carry on their dispute, although in Washington there was no confirmation or denial of those rumors or give any indication they would have anything to do with the conflict now or in the future.

But Capitol Hill had its own set of situations to deal with. Since it was an election year (1940 Presidential elections), squabbles erupted within the Democratic party over a piece of legislation being introduced called The Hatch Act, or as it was referred to, the "Pure Politics Law" and Congresswoman Mary Norton, Labor Committee Chairperson, condemned the Smith committee move to drop the Labor Relations Board and revise the current Labor law. Norton threatened to take the issue before the voters and make it a campaign topic in 1940.

And so went this day, along with much other news for March 9, 1940 as presented by NBC's News Of The World with reports direct from London and Berlin by reporters who seemed to have trouble reading their own copy.

News as it happens. Or news, it just so happens.

March 6th in 1948 got off to a bumpy start. Beginning with reports from Berlin that Communists were infiltrating the West German labor unions. A coup was underway in Czechoslovakia. A Three Power Conference on Post-War Germany was getting underway in London minus the participation of the Soviet Union. Finland was negotiating a Military Alliance Treaty with the Soviet Union in Helsinki. The Western European Alliance Conference was getting underway in Brussels. And the United Nations decided to dump the Palestine Partition situation in the laps of the U.S. and USSR to sort out. A violence resumed in Haifa.

Meanwhile, back in the States - A Filibuster was getting ready over pending Civil Rights legislation in the Senate. Eight Dixiecrats pledged to hold up proceedings by reading everything from the DC phonebook to Webster's Dictionary in an attempt to kill any vote having to do with progress. Also pending was a vote on revisions in the Marshall Plan.

And Harry Bridges was ousted as President of the CIO with calls for his deportation back to Australia. Such was the love in that room.

All this, and it was only the morning news via John Cameron Swayze and The NBC News Of The World.

Something of an obscured footnote in history, but no less important, was the Soviet Invasion of Finland beginning in early December of 1939. If anything, it gave the Soviets an idea of just how ill-prepared they were to fight a war especially a Winter War and just how formidable an adversary the Finns were. Subsequently, the Soviet Union suffered a devastating morale blow to their credibility and the Finns gained a healthy respect from the rest of the world. The conflict finally ended in March of 1940 when a treaty was signed.

Here is an early report from December 9th, as broadcast by Teresa Bonney, who was a freelance photo-journalist working in Finland at the time. She gives details of the invasion and the evacuation of U.S. citizens from Finland in wake of the fighting.

An interesting report on a conflict somewhat overlooked during the early stages of World War 2.