Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

  • Lincoln’s Legacy in Music on The Lost Chord

    Lincoln’s Legacy in Music on The Lost Chord

    Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States. Above and beyond his own considerable accomplishments, Lincoln has inspired a lot of music. This Sunday on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll honor him on his birthday, with three diverse works.

    Composer David Diamond set the Gettysburg Address as “On Sacred Ground,” a work for mixed chorus, children’s chorus, baritone solo and orchestra. The piece was given its first performance two days before the centenary of Lincoln’s delivery of the actual Address, which he spoke on November 19, 1863. We’ll hear it tonight, to start.

    Then, as a bit of a palate-cleanser, we’ll listen to Paul Turok’s buoyant “Variations on an American Song: Lincoln and Liberty,” also composed in 1963. The melody is based on a traditional Irish fiddle tune, “Rosin the Bow,” which had been outfitted with new lyrics for use in Lincoln’s 1859 presidential campaign:

    “Then up with our banner so glorious,
    The star-spangled red-white-and-blue,
    We’ll fight till our Cause is victorious,
    For Lincoln and Liberty, too!”

    Finally, we’ll return to Gettysburg and music by American composer Roy Harris, who shares Lincoln’s birthday, though born 89 years apart. Furthermore, Harris was born in a log cabin in Lincoln County, Oklahoma. If that doesn’t fill one with a sense of destiny, I don’t know what will!

    In his day, Harris was regarded as one of America’s greatest composers, particularly renowned for his symphonies. His Symphony No. 3 is his most famous work; what we’ll be hearing is the Symphony No. 6, subtitled “Gettysburg.”

    Each movement bears a superscription taken from the Gettysburg Address.

    I. Awakening (“Fourscore and seven years ago…”);

    II. Conflict (“Now we are engaged in a great civil war…”);

    III. Dedication (“We are met on a great battlefield of that war…”);

    IV. Affirmation (“…that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain…).

    It’s all music in honor of the Great Emancipator. I hope you’ll join me for “Lincoln Portraits,” this Sunday night at 10:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and at wwfm.org.

  • Jerome Lowenthal Celebrates 85 Years

    Jerome Lowenthal Celebrates 85 Years

    Today is the 85th birthday of Philadelphia-born pianist Jerome Lowenthal. Now chair of the piano department at the Juilliard School, here he is in 1968 with Leopold Stokowski, rehearsing Rachmaninoff’s “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.”

    And in a more recent interview:

    https://www.livingtheclassicallife.com/26-jerome-lowenthal/2015/10/16/episode-26-jerome-lowenthal#comments-56207791e4b0b077de882b14=

  • Angus Scrimm Tall Man Writer?

    Angus Scrimm Tall Man Writer?

    I find it amusing that the late Angus Scrimm (left), the B-movie actor best known for playing the creepy mortician identified as The Tall Man in five “Phantasm” movies, had an earlier, probably less lucrative career as a freelance writer, providing liner notes (under the name Rory Guy) for albums like this one (right). Scrimm died last year at the age of 89, shortly after filming the last(?) of the series, “Phantasm: Ravager.”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gy3z96Vyh_g

  • Dryden Ensemble: Music & Medicine

    Dryden Ensemble: Music & Medicine

    Okay, so the Philadelphia Orchestra is going to be at McCarter Theatre in Princeton on Saturday night at 8:00. Denis Kozhukhin will be the soloist for Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3, and Stéphane Denève, the orchestra’s principal guest conductor (whose contract has just been extended through the 2019-20 season), will conduct. I know. They don’t need my help. The concert is an automatic sell-out, or should be.

    Instead, allow me to direct your attention to The Dryden Ensemble, which will administer “Le Médicin & La Musique,” a program that’s good for what ails you, in two concerts, on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at Trinity Episcopal Church, Solebury, PA, and Sunday at 3 p.m. at Miller Chapel on the campus of Princeton Theological Seminary.

    Central to the program of medical curiosities will be a musical response by Marin Marais to his own gallbladder surgery, “Le tableau de l’opération de la taille” (“A Description of the Removal of a Stone”), rendered on bass viol and continuo.

    Marais’ surgery was successful, if painful, in an era before modern anesthesia. “They held you down,” says Dryden’s artistic director Jane McKinley. “They also didn’t use alcohol, because they were afraid that it would affect the blood. Because of the particular nature of the surgery, I’m not posting a picture in the program!”

    Not so fortunate was Jean-Baptiste Lully, the most powerful musician at the court of Louis XIV. “Lully had his own issues,” McKinley says. “He was performing his ‘Te Deum’ to celebrate the success of surgery that was performed on Louis XIV and inadvertently hit his foot with the pointed end of the staff that he was conducting with.” It was Lully’s custom to strike the floor with a heavy staff in order to keep time for larger ensembles.

    “So that got infected and turned to gangrene, and he refused to have his toe amputated. Then it spread to his leg. He refused to have his leg amputated, because he wanted to be able to be able conduct his own compositions and to dance – he was a very fine dancer – and he died a little over two months later.”

    The ensemble will perform a piece written in Lully’s memory, “Le tombeau de Monsieur Lully,” by Jean-Féry Rebel. “A tombeau is almost like a funerary tribute to a mentor or composer or writer, and this one is particularly effective,” McKinley says.

    Also on the program will be two works for solo harpsichord, “La convalescente” (“The Convalescent”) by Francois Couperin and ‘L’affligée” (“The Afflicted One”) by his cousin, Armand-Louis Couperin.

    Actor Paul Hecht will provide readings from French medical writings of the 17th and 18th century.

    I prescribe reading more about it in my article in today’s Trenton Times.

    http://www.nj.com/times-entertainment/index.ssf/2017/02/classical_music_dryden_ensembl.html

    Marin Marais’ rolling stone collects no moss in two concerts to be performed by the Dryden Ensemble this weekend

  • Leontyne Price 90th Birthday Celebration

    Leontyne Price 90th Birthday Celebration

    With talent like that of Leontyne Price, the Price is always right. Join me today on The Classical Network, as we celebrate this extraordinary soprano on her 90th birthday.

    We’ll hear a recording of the Verdi Requiem, made toward the beginning of her career, in the late 1950s, opposite Jussi Björling, who was getting toward the end of his (he died three months later). Filling out the vocal quartet will be Rosalind Elias and Giorgio Tozzi. It’s a fascinating document full of great singing and an unusual, mercurial touch lent by conductor Fritz Reiner, who will lead the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.

    Then we’ll have a blistering account of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, Price lending her voice to Schiller’s celebratory text, alongside Maureen Forrester, Philadelphia’s David Poleri, and Giorgio Tozzi, as a possessed Charles Munch shovels hot coals under the players of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

    Finally, a more intimate side of Price will be revealed in the “Hermit Songs” of Samuel Barber, with the composer at the piano.

    All this to follow our noontime concert today, which will feature the Quatuor Modigliani in music of Mozart, Schumann and Dvorak, on a program captured live at the Cathedral Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, Pa., as presented by the Chamber Music Society of Bethlehem.

    At 6:00, it’s “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies. I’ll fill you in on a little more about that on my Facebook page later on this afternoon. Suffice it to say, if you tune in early, I will treat you to a medley of some of Jerry Goldsmith’s best-loved themes on this, the anniversary of his birth. Goldsmith died in 2004.

    It will be a long day for Classic Ross Amico, but worth every minute, from noon to 7 p.m. EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and at wwfm.org.

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