Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

Princeton Festival: Opera to ABBA

Opera. Cabaret. Motown. Baroque. Ballet. Bluegrass… no, STRADGRASS. And ABBA?

Beginning this weekend, it will be another tuneful June for the Princeton Symphony Orchestra and friends, as The Princeton Festival gets underway at Morven Museum & Garden, June 6 to 21. For the most part, concerts will take place within a state-of-the-art performance pavilion on the Morven grounds, at 55 Stockton St. (Rte. 206), with a few to be held, as noted, across the way at Trinity Church.

The festival will open on Friday with “ICON: The Voices that Changed Music.” Capathia Jenkins and Ryan Shaw return to the festival stage to celebrate the artistry of Michael Jackson, Prince, Whitney Houston, Gladys Knight, Elvis Presley, Diana Ross, Stevie Wonder, and others, covering songs that helped shape popular culture and define a nation. (Friday, June 6, at 7 p.m.)

Operatic superstar Renée Fleming will appear on Saturday, to perform works by Handel, Puccini, Reynaldo Hahn, and others, including selections from American musical theater. Seating is already at capacity, but feel free to add your name to the waiting list. (Saturday, June 7, at 8 p.m.)

If musical theater is your bag, you’ll also likely be interested in “Sondheim in the City,” presented cabaret-style by Melissa Errico. Errico’s Broadway credits are too many to list. She was nominated for a Tony Award for Outstanding Lead Actress for Michel Legrand’s “Amour” and for a Drama Desk Award for her performance in Sondheim’s “Passion.” She and Sondheim have been very good to one another. Her 2018 album “Sondheim Sublime” was acclaimed by Terry Teachout of The Wall Street Journal as “the best all-Sondheim album ever recorded.” (Sunday, June 8, at 4 p.m.)

Kentucky-born, classically-trained Tessa Lark has basically forged her own genre: Stradgrass. A veteran of her father’s gospel bluegrass band, Lark went on to study at New England Conservatory and Juilliard. Her program will meld violin music by Telemann, Bach, and Ysaÿe with Appalachian and bluegrass licks. (Thursday, June 12, 7 p.m.) The concert will be held at TRINITY CHURCH, a stone’s throw from Morven at 33 Mercer Street.

Of course, opera has always been the centerpiece of the festival. This year’s offering will be Puccini’s “Tosca.” Sardou’s original play (a vehicle for Sarah Bernhardt) is the very definition of over-the-top, but the composer really sells it with some of his most ardent, romantic music. Take the plunge from Castel Sant’Angelo. (Friday, June 13, at 7 p.m., Sunday, June 15 at 4 p.m., or Tuesday, June 17, at 7 p.m.)

To get you in the mood, members of Opera Delaware will join Rochelle Ellis and “Tosca” soprano Tonie Marie Palmertree for a free “opera bootcamp” at Morven’s Stockton Education Center. (Tuesday June 10, 3-8 p.m.) Registration is required.

A few days later, prior to the second performance, a talk, “Exploring Tosca,” will be given by Margaret Cusack and Eve Summer, also at the Stockton Education Center. (June 15 at 2:15 p.m.)

Dance will also be represented as American Repertory Ballet presents “An Evening of Pas de deux” with members of the PSO, conducted by music director Rossen Milanov. Included will be selections from Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake” and Minkus’ “Don Quixote,” alongside Ethan Stiefel’s “Delibes Duet.” (Saturday, June 14, at 7 p.m.)

Festival favorites, the ensemble The Sebastians, will return, to perform an alliterative program, “Baroque Brilliance,” which will include works by Handel, Telemann, and an assortment of Italian composers whose names end in “i.” (Wednesday, June 18, at 3 p.m. & 7 p.m.) AT TRINITY CHURCH

Back to the Morven pavilion, Masters of Soul will appear in a Motown revue, featuring favorites by Gladys Knight & The Pips, Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell, Smokey Robinson & The Miracles, The Temptations, The Four Tops, Diana Ross & The Supremes, Martha Reeves and The Vandellas, Barry White, Sam & Dave, James Brown, and others. (Thursday, June 19, at 7 p.m.)

The concert will cap a Juneteenth celebration that will also include a flag-raising event (1 p.m. at the Municipality of Princeton) and a talk by Rochelle Ellis about Motown’s influence on the Civil Rights Movement (4 p.m. at Morven’s Stockton Education Center).

The Italian Baroque will loom large when violinist Daniel Rowland and cellist Maja Bogdanović join members of the Princeton Symphony Orchestra for “Viva Vivaldi.” But to spice it up a little, the program will also include Osvaldo Golijov’s “Tenebrae” for string orchestra and Max Richter’s “Vivaldi’s Four Seasons Recomposed.” (Friday, June 20, 7 p.m.)

The festival will conclude with a harmonic smorgasbord. Mamma mia! It’s “ARRIVAL from Sweden: The Music of ABBA!” What else do you really need to know? (Saturday, June 21, at 7 p.m.)

Perhaps of added interest, for the first time, same-day $20 “Young at Art” rush tickets will be offered for 18-to-30 year-olds for many (but not all) of the performances. The EXCEPTIONS are June 7 (Renée Fleming), June 14 (Evening of Pas de deux), and June 21 (ARRIVAL from Sweden: The Music of ABBA). Proof of age with a government-issued ID is required.

For those purchasing tickets in advance, boxed picnic lunches from Jammin’ Crepes may be reserved with 48-hours’ notice. These will be available for pick-up from the Jammin’ Crepes booth on Morven’s back lawn one-hour before showtime.

In addition, the festival will be offering a Community Day, free and open to the public. (Sunday, June 8, from 9 am.-3:30 p.m.) Yoga in the Garden will return (movement accompanied by live music), from 9-10 a.m. (registration required). That will be followed by a Festival Farmers’ Market (offering local produce and artisanal products to the strains of an historic band organ), from 10 a.m.-1 p.m. The afternoon will be alive with kid-friendly fun and magic (including musical activities, a student art exhibit, a balloon-a-thon, and yes, a magician), from 12-3:30 p.m.

For more information about concerts, concessions, and more, visit the Princeton Festival website at https://princetonsymphony.org/festival.

If you’re really rarin’ to go, an artists’ roundtable with members of the cast and crew of “Tosca,” including conductor Rossen Milanov and stage director Eve Summer, will be held at Princeton Public Library tonight at 7:00. The event is free and open to the public.

OPENING WEEKEND (clockwise from left): Capathia Jenkins and Ryan Shaw; Renée Fleming; the performance pavilion at Morven; and Melissa Errico

June 3, 2025
Elgar’s Enigmatic Violin Concerto

In 1905, the celebrated violinist Fritz Kreisler remarked to the press, “If you want to know whom I consider to be the greatest living composer, I say without hesitation Elgar… I say this to please no one; it is my own conviction… I place him on an equal footing with my idols, Beethoven and Brahms. He is of the same aristocratic family. His invention, his orchestration, his harmony, his grandeur, it is wonderful. And it is all pure, unaffected music. I wish Elgar would write something for the violin.”

Two years later, Elgar complied, beginning work on a concerto at Kreisler’s request. (In 1909, the piece was formally commissioned by the Royal Philharmonic Society.) The completed work was given its first public performance in 1910 and received immediate, widespread acclaim. Kreisler himself was not disappointed. He declared it “the greatest violin concerto since Beethoven’s.”

Heartbreakingly, plans for Kreisler and Elgar to record the work fell through. The first recording of the piece, using the acoustic process and an abridgement of the score, was in 1916, with Marie Hall the soloist and Elgar on the podium. Later, Hall would advise Ralph Vaughan Williams on the violin part of “The Lark Ascending,” which she would introduce in both versions (first for violin and piano, and then for violin orchestra).

The first COMPLETE recording, made using the electrical process, which allowed for greatly improved dynamic range and realism, was set down in 1929 by Albert Sammons with Sir Henry Wood conducting.

It was record producer Fred Gaisberg’s desire to preserve the concerto with Elgar conducting in better sound, with Kreisler reprising his interpretation, but when Kreisler proved to be elusive, he turned instead to the teenaged Yehudi Menuhin. In the event, Menuhin rose to the challenge and their recording of the concerto has remained in the catalogue since it was first issued in 1932.

The Violin Concerto is not the work of a composer whose legacy was soon to be reduced to, and sadly dismissed as, one of pomp and empire, a relic of the Edwardian era. Rather, it is a confessional work of great tenderness and intimacy.

There have been many theories as to whom the composer might have had in mind in prefacing his score with the Spanish superscription, “Aqui está encerrada el alma de…..” (“Herein is enshrined the soul of…..”). By Elgar’s own admission, the unusual ellipsis of five dots is meant to signify one of his acquaintances. Does it hint at his close friend and confidante Alice Stuart Wortley, married daughter of the painter John Everett Millais? “Windflower” was the affectionate name Elgar bestowed upon her, and he professed that the concerto is full of “windflower themes.”

Or could it be Helen Weaver, a violinist to whom Elgar was briefly engaged, before they were divided by economic and religious objections on the part of her family? When Helen contracted tuberculosis, she departed for New Zealand, and Elgar never saw her again. (It is believed that Weaver is the subject of the penultimate variation, there identified with three asterisks, in Elgar’s “Enigma Variations.” The music quotes Mendelssohn’s “Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage,” with a side-drum played in a manner perhaps suggestive of a steamer’s engine.)

Or, as Elgar scholar Jerrold Northrop Moore suggested, are there actually multiple souls enshrined (Wortley and Weaver in the first movement; Elgar’s wife, Alice, and his mother in the second; and violinist W.H. “Billy” Reed, with whom he worked closely on the concerto, and the composer’s friend and publisher Augustus Jaeger, subject of the “Enigma’s” famous “Nimrod” variation, in the third)?

Elgar, in his ceremonial music and portraits, may have projected an air of self-confidence and respectability, but beneath the veneer of that push-broom mustache and starched collar was an artist of great sensitivity, fundamental melancholy, and jealously guarded privacy.

Raised Roman Catholic in a predominately Protestant country, he rose from lowly origins (his father worked in music sales, his mother was the daughter of a farm worker, and he was largely self-taught as a composer) to become the most celebrated musician in the land as Master of the King’s Music.

It’s interesting that late in life Elgar affected to care more about attending the races than promoting his own music. Perhaps he would be amused to find himself characterized as a dark horse. On paper, he was the ultimate outsider. It’s hardly surprising that emotional and intellectual enigmas would underpin his greatest masterworks.

Happy birthday, Sir Edward Elgar.

Yehudi Menuhin and Elgar in 1932

Tasmin Little and Andrew Davis at the Proms in 2011

June 2, 2025
Sherlock Holmes A Lifelong Literary Love

This short film of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, which has been making the rounds on social media, was sent to me last week by a friend. I must say, I find it absolutely delightful. Doyle confirms, as has often been told, that his most famous creation, Sherlock Holmes, was believed by many to be an actual person – and he has the letters to prove it. If I ever knew Doyle was born in Edinburgh, I’d forgotten it, but surely it is evident in his accent, which you will hear when following the link to the video. I defy you not to smile when he says goodbye and strolls off with his dog.

By coincidence, I have been working my way through the Granada Television adaptations of the Sherlock Holmes stories starring the great Jeremy Brett, who was widely lauded as the definitive interpreter of the character, and rightly so. At any rate, he is the most faithful to Doyle’s vision. The series, produced between 1984 and 1994, aired here in the U.S. on PBS’ “Mystery!”

The first Holmes’ story I ever read was “The Adventure of the Speckled Band,” which I believe was in 8th grade English class. I loved it, as I did just about everything I read that year. This would have included “Great Expectations” and “Romeo and Juliet” (which we students read aloud, taking the various parts). I remember being amazed at how bawdy the latter turned out to be, since it’s always endured in our collective memory as the epitome of romantic love. This led to some lively discussions. That’s what school was like back then. If there were ever any offended students or disgruntled parents, we never heard anything about it. There certainly were never any threats of book-bannings or lawsuits. But maybe I just wasn’t privy to what went on at PTA meetings.

As recently as this past Christmas, I revisited Doyle’s “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle” (included in an anthology of Christmas stories), which I’d forgotten I’d done until viewing the Granada Television adaptation last week.

So Holmes has been a life-long acquaintance, and Doyle’s stories have provided decades of pleasure. By the time we were in our teens, all of my friends and I had acquired, I venture to guess most of us as Christmas gifts, the collected stories, as well as those of Edgar Allan Poe. And we actually read them, and loved them! It’s remarkable that these works, in Doyle’s case written nearly a hundred years earlier (in Poe’s case, more like 150), still held us in their thrall. I wonder if it’s still the case for young people today, when we are told so many no longer read?

Certainly, Poe and Doyle did wonders for our vocabulary. And we all tittered whenever Watson “ejaculated.”

June 1, 2025
Ashcan Classics Making Music with Found Objects

Wait! Hang on to that seashell collection! Don’t get rid of that eraser! Before you take out the recyclables, think twice. Grab a flower pot, a soup can, or a Coke bottle, and pull up a chair. This week on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll be playing a lot of garbage.

So, what else is new?

Well, I’m afraid this week I mean it quite literally. We’ll hear a three-movement “Garbage Concerto” by Canadian composer Jan Järvlepp, selections from “Underground Overlays from the Cistern Chapel” – acoustical experiments employing various permutations of conch, trombone, and didgeridoo, inside a two-million-gallon water tank, no less – rendered by Stuart Dempster and friends, and a short piece for prepared piano (foreign objects inserted between the strings) by John Cage.

That’s “Ashcan Classics,” making music with found objects, on “The Lost Chord,” 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!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

Wish I could give credit to the artist, but I can find no attribution

May 31, 2025
Graduation Anthems on Sweetness and Light

No more stuffing phone booths or goldfish swallowing contests or taking the dean’s car apart and reassembling it in his living room. In the words of the poet: All good things must come to an end.

This morning on “Sweetness and Light,” for graduation season, it’s a hazy recollection of the world of higher education, as we salute another successful batch of cogs about to enter the work force.

Join me for a program of processionals and scenes from campus life – including a shocking number of works based on student drinking songs. Composers represented will include Jean Sibelius, Johannes Brahms, Franz Liszt, Johann Strauss II, Sigmund Romberg, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, and of course Sir Edward “Pomp and Circumstance” Elgar.

Hide the empties from the folks and join me in cap and gown. We’ll be churning out responsible citizens as they reel to the platform to claim their parchment on the next “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:

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

May 31, 2025

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