The New Criterion

Jay provides a program of songs and arias about spring: a variety of composers and languages. And performers. Maria Callas and Ella Fitzgerald are among them. This is a wonderful category of music: rhapsodic, hopeful, giddy, appreciative. Spring it up. Argento, “Spring,” from “Six Elizabethan Songs” Hahn, “Le printemps” Strauss, “Der Lenz” Wagner, “Du bist der Lenz,” from “Die Walküre” Rachmaninoff, “Spring Waters” Saint-Säens, “Printemps qui commence,” from “Samson et Dalila” Hoiby, “Always It’s Spring” Rodgers & Hammerstein, “It Might As Well Be Spring”