Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

  • WWFM Giving Tuesday Special Concerts & Interviews

    WWFM Giving Tuesday Special Concerts & Interviews

    For those of you who can’t get enough of my interviewing skills, today is your lucky day.

    To mark Giving Tuesday, The Classical Network will salute a number of non-profit organizations that continue to make a difference in our community. WWFM hosts will conduct brief interviews at the top of most every hour, from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., with representatives of the following: HomeFront (9 a.m.), SAVE, A Friend to Homeless Animals (10 a.m.), Breast Cancer Resource Center (11 a.m.), Trenton Area Soup Kitchen (12 p.m.), D&R Greenway Land Trust (2 p.m.), Womanspace, Inc. (3 p.m.), Mercer Street Friends (4 p.m.), Trenton Community Music School (5 p.m.), and Centurion Ministries (6 p.m.). Tune in to learn more and see how you, too, can lend a hand.

    I’ll also be joined in-studio by a special guest, flutist Mimi Stillman, as we present today’s noontime concert, “Dolce Suono Ensemble Goes to the Opera.” The program, which was performed live at Philadelphia’s Trinity Center for Urban Life this past September, will be made up of selections which, in one way or another, are connected to the opera, with works by Weber, Bellini, Meyerbeer by way of Frédéric Chopin and Auguste Franchomme, Carlisle Floyd, Donizetti, Bizet by way of François Borne, and Léo Delibes. There will even be an aria from Bach’s “St. Matthew Passion.” Featured performers will include, in addition to Stillman, soprano Sarah Shafer, cellist Nathan Vickery, and pianist Charles Abramovic.

    After the concert, I’ll share Bruno Walter’s cherished, late-career recording of Beethoven’s “Pastoral” Symphony, a personal favorite, which concludes, appropriately enough, with a song of thanksgiving.

    Join us for Giving Tuesday, all day long. I’ll be with you from noon to 4 p.m. EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and at wwfm.org.

  • Beethoven’s Shadow: Ries Rubinstein & More

    Beethoven’s Shadow: Ries Rubinstein & More

    The shadow of Beethoven looms large over this afternoon’s programming, as we celebrate the birthday anniversaries of Ferdinand Ries (1784-1838) and Anton Rubinstein (1829-1894).

    Ries, a composer of some 300 works, was Beethoven’s friend, secretary and pupil. His volcanic symphonies emulate those of his master. Rubinstein, founder of the St. Petersburg Conservatory and one of the great pianists, was long rumored to be Beethoven’s illegitimate son, so striking were the similarities of their features.

    We’ll hear music by both men – a symphony by Ries and a concerto by Rubinstein – and a work by Beethoven himself, this afternoon between 4 and 7:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and at wwfm.org.

    IMAGES: Beethoven and son (?)

  • Opera’s Dark Side Merry Mount on WPRB

    Opera’s Dark Side Merry Mount on WPRB

    If the long holiday weekend has filled your head with warm and fuzzy notions of Pilgrims sitting down to dine with Native Americans in perfect concord, think again. I am guest host on “Sunday Morning Opera with Sandy” today, and we are listening to Howard Hanson’s “Merry Mount.” An adaptation of the Nathaniel Hawthorne short story, “The May-Pole of Merry Mount,” the work is an at times hallucinatory study in fanaticism, sexual obsession and demonology. Enjoy that with your leftover turkey sandwiches!

    It’s on right now, on “Sunday Morning Opera,” until 10:00 EST, on WPRB 103.3 FM and wprb.com.

  • Riisager’s “Fool’s Paradise” on WWFM

    Riisager’s “Fool’s Paradise” on WWFM

    This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we wrap up the long, gluttonous holiday weekend with Knudage Riisager’s ballet “Slaraffenland” (usually translated as “Fool’s Paradise”).

    Inspired by Bruegel’s painting “The Land of Cockaigne,” the scenario imagines a Promised Land “where roasted pigeons fly around in the air with knives and forks in their backs, and the streets are paved with marzipan and chocolate.” The plot concerns a silly boy who wanders into the country of King Sauce and becomes ill from overindulgence. Along the way, he encounters Robin Hood, the Three Musketeers, Captain Fear, Fountains of Liqueur, Cigarettes, and the Candy Princess.

    Riisager was born in 1897 to Danish parents living in Estonia. He studied music at Copenhagen University and then in Paris with Albert Roussel. Though he was a prolific composer, with some 400 works to his name, including symphonies, concertos, chamber music and songs, he is probably best known, if at all, for his ballet works.

    I hope you’ll join me, even as you’re zoning under the influence of tryptophan, for “Fool’s Paradise” – Knudage Riisager’s “Slaraffenland” – this Sunday night at 10 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and at wwfm.org.

    IMAGE: A very Bruegel Thanksgiving

  • Hanson’s Merry Mount: Puritanism & Opera

    Hanson’s Merry Mount: Puritanism & Opera

    Now that the feasting and the parades are past, it’s time to look beneath the quaint images of idealized Pilgrims to the dark underbelly of Puritan intolerance, fanaticism and repression. But that doesn’t mean the lesson has to be a bitter pill.

    Join me tomorrow for Sunday Morning Opera with Sandy, as once again I sit in for host Sandy Steiglitz to present Howard Hanson’s “Merry Mount.” Hanson cloaks his libretto – by Richard Stokes, loosely based upon Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story, “The May-Pole of Merry Mount” – in the romantic idiom so characteristic of this composer of the “Romantic Symphony” (Hanson’s Symphony No. 2). No expense was spared for the work’s lavish premiere, at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, despite its having been mounted at the height of the Great Depression. No doubt Wrestling Bradford, the Puritan minister originally portrayed by Lawrence Tibbett, would not have approved.

    Coverage of the rehearsals in the New York Times questioned whether the candor and blunt Anglo-Saxonisms of the English libretto would slip past the censors. The plot seethes with sexual obsession and demonology. In fact, a good portion of Act II is set in Hell. Even so, there are stirring melodies and catchy tunes in abundance. The “Maypole Dances” are downright Polovtsian in their colorful excess.

    If the press is anything to go by, the opera was a smash. At its premiere in 1934, “Merry Mount” received no less than 50 curtain calls, with a headline in the Times proclaiming, “Reception of Hanson-Stokes Opera Most Enthusiastic of 10 Years at Metropolitan.” Yet, despite its initial success, the work is never done. It was dropped from the Met repertoire following the 1933-34 season and has rarely been heard since.

    Tastes changed. “Merry Mount” is never going to compete with “Carmen,” but I believe the pendulum has swung far enough that its voluptuous romanticism can again be enjoyed without a trace of Hawthornian guilt. We’ll be listening to a recording made from performances mounted in 1996, with soprano Lauren Flanigan (Lady Marigold Sandys), tenor Walter MacNeil (Sir Gower Lackland), baritone Richard Zeller (Wrestling Bradford), and bass Charles Robert Austin (Praise-God Tewke). The Seattle Symphony & Chorale are conducted by Gerard Schwarz.

    Before the morning is out, we’ll also have a chance to sample from Tibbett’s original characterization.

    Tune in tomorrow to see what all the fuss was about, with “Merry Mount,” on “Sunday Morning Opera,” from 7 to 10:00 EST, on WPRB 103.3 FM and at wprb.com.

    Learn about the historical Merrymount here:

    The Maypole That Infuriated the Puritans

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