Flock to the opera: 100 Pennsylvania sheep make their New York stage debut.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/26/arts/music/a-new-breed-of-opera-diva-sheep.html?_r=0
Category: Daily Dispatch
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NJ Orchestra Couple Connects Through Music
In life and in career, the husband-and-wife team of Daniel Spalding and Gabriela Imreh understand the importance of human connection.
Spalding, formerly on the conducting staff of Romania’s Cluj-Napoca Philharmonic and the Houston Symphony Orchestra, is music director of the New Jersey Capital Philharmonic Orchestra, and Imreh, a concert pianist with an international career. The couple has been living out of boxes in Ewing, where they have made their home for the past 30 years. They are in the process of moving to Trenton, where Spalding conducts the NJCPO, in search of a greater sense of community.
The next concert of the NJCPO, to be held at the Trenton War Memorial on April 2, will be an intimate affair, with a slimmed down orchestra performing “in the round” in the structure’s elegant Art Deco George Washington Ballroom. The program will include works by Rossini, Mozart, Piazzolla, Bernstein and Copland.
The aim is greater immediacy and increased interaction with the audience. You can find out more about it, learn a little bit about the couple’s travails after they met in Romania, and glean some of Imreh’s insights into what it takes to perform American music, in my article in today’s Trenton Times.
http://www.nj.com/times-entertainment/index.ssf/2016/03/classical_music_gabriela_imreh.html
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Nuns and Missionaries Film Scores Picture Perfect
Every once in a while, when faced with the challenge of programming film music for Easter, I try to shake it up a bit, so that I’m not playing Biblical epics every year. With this in mind, the focus on this week’s “Picture Perfect” will be on four scores from films about nuns and missionaries.
“Black Robe” (1991), directed by Bruce Beresford, is based on a novel by the Irish Canadian writer Brian Moore. The film tells the tale of a Jesuit priest who treks through 1500 miles of Canadian wilderness on a mission to convert the native tribes of the Huron and the Algonquin. The evocative score is by Georges Delerue.
The Powell-Pressburger classic, “Black Narcissus” (1947), is one of those amazing films that just sort of sneaks up on you. Psychological and emotional tensions abound in a tale of repressed nuns struggling to maintain their composure in a voluptuous Himalayan valley. Somehow it manages to inspire a kind of awe in the viewer, as the wheels begin to spin off the tracks.
The stunning cinematography is by Jack Cardiff. Incredibly, the entire film was shot in England, mostly on soundstages, at Pinewood Studios. Brian Easdale (of “The Red Shoes” fame) wrote the music.
Audrey Hepburn gave one of her most impressive performances in Fred Zinnemann’s “The Nun’s Story” (1959). A young woman enters a convent of nursing sisters and undergoes many trials in the hopes of becoming a missionary in the Belgian Congo. The film also features Peter Finch, Edith Evans, Peggy Ashcroft, and, in a memorable early role, Colleen Dewhurst. The music was by Franz Waxman.
We’ll conclude with selections from one of Ennio Morricone’s best-loved scores, that for “The Mission” (1986). Jeremy Irons plays a Jesuit priest, who penetrates the South American jungle to convert the native Guarani to Christianity. Robert DeNiro plays a reformed slave hunter. The moving score has received a great deal of exposure over the years through its use in television commercials and by figure skaters, who have made “Gabriel’s Oboe” a recognizable hit.
I hope you’ll join me for music from films about nuns and missionaries this week on “Picture Perfect,” this Friday evening at 6, with a repeat Saturday morning at 6; or that you’ll listen to it later as a webcast at wwfm.org.
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Maundy Thursday: Origins & Passion Week Music
Is it Maundy, or is it Thursday? Why, it’s Maundy Thursday!
“Maundy” is most likely derived from the Latin “mandatum,” as in “Mandatum novum do vobis ut diligatis invicem sicut dilexi vos” (“A new commandment I give you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you”). Or it could come from the Middle English and Old French words “maund” and “mendier,” respectively, after the Latin “mendicare,” meaning to beg.
In any case, we are now entering the holiest days of the Christian calendar. Maundy Thursday commemorates Jesus’ washing of the feet of his disciples, the Last Supper, and the betrayal and arrest of Christ in the garden of Gethsemane.
This morning on WPRB, we’ll have music inspired by the events of Passion Week, when Christians mark the crucifixion and the resurrection of Christ. We’ll have a setting of the Stabat Mater, a poignant work for string quartet inspired by Christ’s reflections in the garden on the eve of his crucifixion, and a symphonic poem inspired by the same.
It won’t all be hardcore, however. We’ll also have music of a more generalized reflective or mystical nature. For instance, later on in this hour, we’ll hear William Alwyn’s gorgeous harp concerto, “Lyra Angelica,” which was popularized by figure skater Michelle Kwan when she used it as the basis for one of her performances during the 1998 Winter Olympics.
I hope you’ll join me this morning from 6 to 11 EDT, on WPRB 103.3 FM and at wprb.com, as we get passionate about Holy Week on Classic Ross Amico.
PHOTO: Early 13th century depiction by an unknown artist of Christ washing the feet of his disciples, located in the Basilica di San Marco in Venice
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Holy Week Music Judas’s Betrayal on WPRB
Not only did Judas betray Jesus, he forgot to bring horseradish to the Last Supper. Have you ever had gefilte fish without horseradish? Thanks a lot, Judas.
Also, he was a lousy kisser.
If you stick around for the remainder of my shift, here’s some of the music you’ll get to enjoy: Ottorino Respighi’s “Church Windows,” Maurice Duruflé’s “Four Motets on Gregorian Themes,” Victor de Sabata’s symphonic poem “Gethsemani,” Karol Szymanowski’s “Stabat Mater,” and Paul Creston’s Symphony No. 3 “Three Mysteries.”
Those and more, as we continue our musical observation of Holy Week for this Maundy Thursday, until 11 EDT on WPRB 103.3 FM and at wprb.com
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