One selection I regret not including in this morning’s “April in Paris” playlist on “Sweetness and Light” is Josephine Baker’s “J’ai deux amours” (“I have two loves, my country and Paris”). Baker died 50 years ago today. Learn more about her remarkable life at the link, which includes access to an hour-long documentary.
Ruth Leon recommends… Josephine Baker: the Story of an Awakening
“J’ai deux amours”
This morning on “Sweetness and Light,” join me for an hour of cherry blossoms and sunshine, birdsong, and café au lait. It’s our annual celebration of spring in the City of Light!
We’ll hear April-and-Paris themed songs by Charles Trenet and Vernon Duke, a suite for four pianos by Darius Milhaud, a jaunty work for trumpet and winds by Jean Françaix (who sounded the “x” when pronouncing his name), a couple of pieces of British Light Music on Parisian themes, and the world premiere recording of George Gershwin’s “An American in Paris,” performed by musicians of the Philadelphia Orchestra (masquerading as the Victor Symphony), with the composer himself on the celesta. It’s music as good as spring itself!
I hope you’ll join me for an hour of cafés and croissants, boulevards, blossoms, and bisous, on “Sweetness and Light,” this Saturday morning at 11:00 EDT/8:00 PST, exclusively on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!
Stream it, wherever you are, at the link:
With Passover and Easter right around the corner, we’re entering the peak season for Bible movies. This week on “Picture Perfect,” it’s an hour of music from epics inspired by the Old Testament – including “Samson and Delilah” (Victor Young), “Solomon and Sheba” (Mario Nascimbene), “Sodom and Gomorrah” (Miklós Rózsa) and “The Ten Commandments” (Elmer Bernstein).
We begin and end with two Cecil B. DeMille productions. DeMille could always be counted on to give his audience a good show. Both “Samson” and “The Ten Commandments” feature sultry temptresses, violent, bare-chested men, and plenty of austere moralizing. The climactic special effects in both films are still sublime.
Tyrone Power was originally cast as Solomon in King Vidor’s “Solomon and Sheba.” However, he died of a massive heart attack during shooting (at the age of 44), paving the way for Yul Brynner to assume the role of the wise king. Brynner, of course, would later become DeMille’s pharaoh Rameses. With Gina Lollobrigida as the Queen of Sheba, you know there has to be an orgiastic dance.
Miklós Rózsa characterized “Sodom of Gomorrah” as “an intriguing subject which developed into a bad picture,” and most critics agreed. Any film that casts Stewart Granger as Lot should be taken with a pillar of salt. Rózsa determined not to score any more Biblical epics after “Sodom,” though his music is nothing to be ashamed of. It possesses that classic Rózsa epic sound, much beloved, thanks to his work on “Quo Vadis,” “Ben-Hur” and “King of Kings.”
Chariots! Tunics! Histrionic acting! It’s going to be epic, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!
Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:
PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – Saturday at 11:00 AM EDT/8:00 AM PDT
THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EDT/4:00 PM PDT
Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!
PHOTOS: Victor Mature’s stuffed lion vs. Charlton Heston’s cotton candy beard
Today is the 90th birthday of Mexican-born conductor Jorge Mester.
Mester is perhaps best-known to collectors as music director of the Louisville Orchestra, where he served from 1967 to 1979 and oversaw first performances of dozens of works by composers from all over the world. These were released on the much sought-after Louisville First Editions label. Mester conducted 72 recordings of new or neglected music during his first stretch in Louisville. For all I know, some of these may now be available through digital streaming (a number of them have been posted to YouTube), but only a handful of them ever made it to compact disc – which means, for decades, the records have been Holy Grails for classical music lovers with adventurous taste.
Of course, it’s also possible you may recognize Mester for having conducted some P.D.Q. Bach concerts. The man appears to have had his lighter side.
27 years after his departure from Louisville, he returned for a second tenure, while the orchestra sought another music director, with Mester also serving on the search committee.
His other posts have included directorships with the Aspen Symphony Orchestra, the Pasadena Symphony Orchestra, and the Naples Philharmonic in Naples, Florida.
He made his conducting debut with the National Symphony Orchestra of Mexico in 1955. In 1998, he became music director of the Mexico City Philharmonic.
He appears to still be active, as music director of the Orquesta Filarmónica de Boca del Río, Veracruz, an ensemble he has conducted since its founding in 2014.
Mester studied with Jean Morel at the Juilliard School (he regards Morel as “the greatest conducting teacher of them all”), with Leonard Bernstein at the Berkshire Music Center, and with Albert Wolff. He himself joined Juilliard’s conducting faculty, and for a time was head of the department. He served at Juilliard for the better part of 30 years.
Mester settled in the U.S. and became a naturalized American citizen in 1968.
I very much enjoyed getting to know him through this interview with Bruce Duffie – conducted during a layover at O’Hare Airport. He comes across as much more congenial than his flawed colleague and compatriot Enrique Bátiz, who died on March 30.
https://www.bruceduffie.com/mester.html
By coincidence, he also refers to the conductor John Nelson, one of his students, who died on March 31.
Happy birthday, Jorge Mester! Many happy returns.
From vinyl: Carlos Chávez’s ballet “Horsepower” and Enrique Granados’ symphonic poem “Dante”
Ernest Guiraud’s “The Fantastic Hunt”
Peter Mennin’s Cello Concerto with Janos Starker
An old favorite: Gian Carlo Menotti’s Piano Concerto with Earl Wild
“An Hysteric Return: P.D.Q. Bach at Carnegie Hall”
Mester speaks in 2020
It was quite a birthday present for Florence Price when one of her arrangements was heard by what was likely the largest audience she would ever enjoy in her lifetime.
On Easter Sunday, on this date in 1939, Marian Anderson, barred from performing at Constitution Hall by the Daughters of the American Revolution, because of her race, sang instead from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, to a diverse crowd of 75,000 people on the mall and a national radio audience estimated in the millions.
The program concluded with Price’s arrangement of the spiritual “My Soul’s Been Anchored in the Lord.” By coincidence, it also happened to be Price’s birthday.
Price, born in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1887, had become the first African-American woman to be recognized as a symphonic composer, when her Symphony in E minor was performed by the Chicago Symphony in 1933. Needless to say, in an era when White American males struggled to find acceptance on Eurocentric classical music programs, Price, as a Black American woman, faced even greater challenges.
The playing field has shifted in recent years, and interest in Price’s music has been on the rise. It’s hard to believe, for a composer of her accomplishments, that dozens of her manuscripts were rescued from her dilapidated summer home, on the outskirts of St. Anne, Illinois, only as recently as 2009.
Price died in 1953.
Who knows what other musical riches are out there, undervalued in their time, awaiting rediscovery?
Anderson sings “My Soul’s Been Anchored in the Lord”
Price’s Symphony No. 1 in E minor
Lincoln Memorial Concert
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