Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

Kids Buttons NPR Mishap A Cautionary Tale

A cautionary tale: kids and buttons don’t mix. (Or perhaps they mix too well?)

http://gawker.com/little-scamp-causes-full-minute-of-dead-air-on-npr-on-t-1773672095

April 29, 2016
Raritan River Music Festival Returns to NJ

Change your music, change your mind. That’s the slogan adopted by the guitar duo of Michael Newman and Laura Oltman for this year’s Raritan River Music Festival.

Now gearing up for its 27th season, the festival has provided a stimulating mix of new music, world music, jazz, folk, and straightforward classical repertoire, in intimate venues across one the state’s most beautiful regions. Concerts this year will take place in Stockton, Lebanon, Stewartsville and Pittstown.

The couple, which has strong ties to the area – they make their home in lower Warren County along the Delaware River – uses their connections as teachers and performers to draw world-class musicians to semi-rural New Jersey.

This year’s festival will include concerts by the period instrument ensemble La Fiocco (at historic Prallsville Mills in Stockton on May 7), the genre-fluid trio BeBimBop (at Stanton Reformed Church in Lebanon on May 14), a trio made up of pianist Thomas Sauer, violinist Carmit Zori and cellist Alexis Pia Gerlach, being billed as the Sauer-Zori-Gerlach Trio (at Old Greenwich Presbyterian Church in Stewartsville on May 21), and The Newman & Oltman Guitar Duo, with soprano Rochelle Ellis (at Bethlehem Presbyterian Church in Pittstown on May 28).

Raritan River Music has always been the robin redbreast of music festivals, arriving well ahead of the traffic snarl of off-season musical attractions that settle in with the haze of summer. You know what they say about the early bird (and there are discounts for advance sales). Get a leg up by reading my article in today’s Trenton Times:

http://www.nj.com/times-entertainment/index.ssf/2016/04/classical_music_raritan_river.html

April 29, 2016
Korngold’s Hollywood Dream: Shakespeare & Film

This will likely be my last Shakespeare post for a while – the 500th anniversary of the Bard’s birth falls in 2064 – so enjoy it. We wrap up our month-long commemoration of the quadricentennial of Shakespeare’s death, on April 23, 1616, by revisiting “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

Erich Wolfgang Korngold went from being one of Europe’s great musical prodigies – his works admired by Mahler, Strauss and Puccini, and performed by Schnabel, Weingartner and Klemperer – to becoming one of Hollywood’s transformative film composers. He is a link from Old World opulence to New World fantasy, his music gracing a number of Warner Brothers’ greatest historical adventures. He was also an opera composer. In fact, his opera “Die tote Stadt” was the runaway hit of 1920.

It was at the invitation of theatrical impresario Max Reinhardt that Korngold came to Hollywood in 1934 for a big screen adaptation of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” The film starred James Cagney, Dick Powell and Olivia de Havilland, in her silver screen debut, with Mickey Rooney an irrepressible Puck.

For the project, Korngold adapted the famous incidental music of Felix Mendelssohn, interweaving material from Mendelssohn’s symphonies and orchestrating some of the “Songs without Words.” Yet the music bears Korngold’s unmistakable stamp, as you’ll hear in the opening fanfare and chorus, crafted from raw material found in the “Scottish Symphony” and marked by plenty of Korngoldian pageantry and swagger.

The composer drew on his theatrical experience, even conducting the actors as they spoke their dialogue in order to get the tempos he desired.

Korngold’s work on “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” led to further offers from Warner Brothers, under terms he couldn’t refuse. In the meantime, the Nazis rolled into Austria, effectively sealing off his return to Europe. Vienna’s loss was Hollywood’s gain. Korngold would become the crown jewel of Warners’ music department. His excellence was recognized with two Academy Awards, for “Anthony Adverse,” in 1936, and “The Adventures of Robin Hood,” in 1938.

I hope you’ll join me, over hill, over dale, for Korngold’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” this Friday evening at 6:00 EDT, with a repeat Saturday morning at 6; or that you’ll listen to it later as a webcast at wwfm.org.

#Shakespeare400

April 29, 2016
Shakespeare Music on WPRB
Fear no more the heat o’ the sun. At least for today in the Princeton area, with increasing clouds, afternoon showers anticipated, and highs in the upper 50s. The musical forecast, however, is for 100 percent Shakespeare.

We’ll round out our month-long, Thursday morning salute to the Bard with the last of four installments commemorating the quadricentennial of his death, on April 23, 1616. Is the date etched into your memory yet? Fret thee not: the next major anniversary will be the 500th anniversary of his birth, in 2064 – by which time, I fancy, many of us will be able to congratulate him in person.

In this first hour, we’ll have musical greatness thrust upon us, with selections from Ernest Chausson’s “The Tempest,” Gabriel Fauré’s incidental music for “Shylock” (after “The Merchant of Venice”) and Sir Alexander Mackenzie’s merry – and extended – overture for “Twelfth Night.”

Those now a-bed shall think themselves accursed they were not here, from 6 to 11 EDT on WPRB 103.3 FM and at wprb.com. The fewer the listeners, the greater the share of honour, on Classic Ross Amico.

Hark, hark! the lark at heaven’s gate sings,
And Phoebus ‘gins arise,
His steeds to water at those springs
On chaliced flowers that lies;
And winking Mary-buds begin
To ope their golden eyes:
With every thing that pretty is,
My lady sweet, arise:
Arise, arise.
- “Cymbeline,” Act II, scene 3
BTW: The birders among you might be interested to know that, according to the Scottish geologist Sir Archibald Geikie, in his 1916 book “The Birds of Shakespeare,” the Bard references all of the following in his plays: the Blackbird, Bunting, Buzzard, Chough, Cock, Cormorant, Crow, Cuckoo, Dive-dapper, Dove and Pigeon, Duck, Eagle, Falcon and Sparrowhawk, Finch, Goose, Hedge Sparrow, House Martin, Jackdaw, Jay, Kite, Lapwing, Lark, Loon, Magpie, Nightingale, Osprey, Ostrich, Owl, Parrot, Partridge, Peacock, Pelican, Pheasant, Quail, Raven, Robin, Snipe, Sparrow, Starling, Swallow, Swan, Thrush, Turkey, Vulture, Wagtail, Woodcock and the Wren.

Interestingly, the House Sparrow gets four mentions – in “Hamlet,” “As You Like It,” “The Tempest” and “Troilus and Cressida.”
April 28, 2016
Shakespeare on WPRB This Morning

Roughly two hours to go in our month-of-Thursdays salute to William Shakespeare.

Yet to come: Frank Bridge’s “There is a willow grows aslant a brook,” his atmospheric reflection on the death of Ophelia; Gerald Finzi’s “Let us Garlands bring,” song settings of some of the Bard’s memorable texts; a suite from Florent Schmitt’s “Antony and Cleopatra,” in a recent recording by the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by JoAnn Falletta; and a special treat from the pen of Erich Wolfgang Korngold – his imaginative arrangements of music by Felix Mendelssohn made for a 1935 film version of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” which starred James Cagney, Olivia de Havilland, and a 15 year-old Mickey Rooney as Puck.

How now, spirit! Whither wander thee? It’s all Shakespeare this morning until 11:00 EDT, on WPRB 103.3 FM and at wprb.com.

If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber’d here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend:
if you pardon, we will mend…

April 28, 2016

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