Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

Forgotten Swiss Music Bloch & Huber

Enough with your jokes about alphorns and cuckoo clocks! Tonight on “The Lost Chord,” we listen to forgotten music from Switzerland.

Ernest Bloch, who is best known for his music on Jewish themes (such as his Hebraic rhapsody “Schelomo”), actually spent most of his life in the United States. He died in Portland, OR, in 1959, at the age of 78.

50 years earlier, while still in Switzerland, he composed his song cycle “Poèmes d’automne.” At the time, he was at work on his opera, “Macbeth,” but was sidelined when he made the acquaintance of a young poet by the name of Beatrix Rodès. He fell instantly in love with her, and set four of her poems within two months. Rodès would eventually become his mistress, though in the end Bloch chose to remain with his wife. It’s said that the texts, even in the original French, are of dubious literary quality.

The composer arranged them to form a kind of progression, in which a woman passes from sadness and desolation, to peace and love, to lamentation for the passing of her beauty, to an air of serenity as she becomes a priestess.

Okay, so it’s not his strongest work, but it is seasonal and interesting to listen to.

Hans Huber, who lived from 1852 to 1921, was the composer of nine symphonies (of which he acknowledged eight), five operas, and a number of concertos for various instruments. His four concertos for piano are somewhat unusual in that, like Brahms’ experiments in the form, they are made up of four movements, with the addition of a scherzo, as opposed to the customary three.

The Piano Concerto No. 3 first appeared on a concert in Basel, in February of 1899, which also included Beethoven’s “Leonore Overture No. 3” and Berlioz’s “Harold in Italy.”

It’s an unusual piece, for, among other things, presenting in the first movement the theme from the work’s finale as the underpinnings of a passacaglia.

I hope you’ll join me for an hour of forgotten music from Switzerland – “Swiss Missed” – tonight at 10 ET. Please note, because of WWFM’s impending “Around the World in 80 Hours” pledge drive, there will be no Wednesday repeats of “The Lost Chord” for the next two weeks. Catch it tonight, or listen to it later as a webcast at wwfm.org.

October 11, 2015
Paul Creston Forgotten American Composer

One of the composers whose music I didn’t get to play the other day during my “Neo-Baroque” show on WPRB was Paul Creston. Which is a shame, since Creston wrote so much finely-crafted music, and none of it is exactly overplayed.

Creston was born on this date in 1906, as Giuseppe Guttoveggio. This is interesting, in that historians believe that this was also the birth date of Giuseppe Verdi (though he always celebrated on the 9th). Creston was born in New York City to Sicilian immigrants. He chose his professional name from a character he played in a high school play, named Cresspino, which led to his classmates calling him Cress. He changed his name legally in 1927, when he married Martha Graham dancer Louise Gotto.

Creston was about as self-taught as a composer could get. He practiced after work on a ten-dollar piano purchased by his family and pored over scores of the Masters at the New York Public Library. From observing his wife, he developed an interest in rhythm and dance. He later wrote a book on the subject, “Principles of Rhythm.”

Allegedly, during the 1950s and ‘60s, he was the most performed American symphonic composer, championed by Toscanini, Ormandy, Stokowski, and Howard Mitchell of the National Symphony Orchestra. How often do we hear his music today?

Among his students was Gerard Schwarz, later music director of the Seattle Symphony. Schwarz returned the favor years later by recording a couple of albums of Creston’s music.

Here’s a piece I was hoping to play the other day, his Baroque-inflected Partita for Flute, Violin and Strings:

Creston was organist at the Chapel of St. Genesius (the patron saint of actors) for over 30 years, from 1934 to 1967. The chapel, located beneath St. Malachy’s Roman Catholic Church in Manhattan, was a primary place of worship for entertainment people since the 1920s. Parishioners included Jimmy Durante, Bob Hope, Gregory Peck, Danny Thomas and Spencer Tracy. This was the church that hosted Valentino’s funeral and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Joan Crawford’s wedding (both occurred before Creston’s tenure). The church’s chimes literally played “There’s No Business Like Show Business.”

Creston considered the writing of music to be a spiritual practice.

“To me, musical composition is as vital to my spiritual welfare as prayer and good deeds, just as good food and exercise are necessities of physical health, and thought and study are requisites of mental well-being,” he wrote. “I believe that everyone should compose and that musical composition should be a required course in our educational system, as well as literary composition – not for the purpose of training composers professionally, as we do not expect to make authors of all students of literary composition – but for the development and joy of creativity.”

Happy birthday, Paul Creston!

October 10, 2015
Riverside Symphonia Concert New Hope PA

Coming up in the 9:00 hour, I’ll be joined by violinist Kinga Augustyn and conductor Mariusz Smolij, who will fill us in on their upcoming concert with the Riverside Symphonia. The program will include violin favorites by Sarasate and Wieniawski, bookended by life-affirming serenades by Mozart and Dvořák. The performances will take place tomorrow night at 8, at St. Martin of Tours Church, in New Hope, Pa.

How good is Augustyn? Check out her recital videos on YouTube. Try this gorgeous Chopin Nocturne to start:

Otherwise, it’s all music of the Neo-Baroque – 20th and 21st century composers looking back to the 18th century – including Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’ wacky reimaginings of the works of Henry Purcell, “Variations on a Theme by Couperin” by Hendrik Andriessen, Paul Dukas’ “Variations, Interlude and Finale on a Theme by Rameau,” and Julian Orbon’s “Concerto Grosso for String Quartet and Orchestra,” among others, this morning until 11 ET, on WPRB 103.3 FM and wprb.com.

If it ain’t Baroque, we fix it anyway, on Classic Ross Amico.

October 8, 2015
Alex North’s Fury Yul Brynner in Faulkner Film

Yul Brynner as Jason Compson? Okay, so the 1959 film version of “The Sound and the Fury” is a mess. But the score by Alex North is wonderful. If you’re a North fan, you’ll want to be on hand this week for “Picture Perfect,” when we present an hour of literary pairings: “The Sound AND the Fury,” “War AND Peace,” “Crime AND Punishment,” and “Sense AND Sensibility.”

You get the picture? Perfect!

I hope you’ll join me for music by Alex North, Nino Rota, Arthur Honegger and Patrick Doyle, written for movies inspired by the writings of William Faulkner, Leo Tolstoy, Feodor Dostoyevsky and Jane Austen, this Friday evening at 6 ET, with a repeat Saturday morning at 6; or that you’ll listen to it later as a webcast at wwfm.org.

PHOTO: [Feigning a Yoknapatawphan accent] “Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera…”

October 8, 2015
Neo-Baroque Music on WPRB Today

If, for you, mention of the Baroque conjures images of recorders and harpsichords and beauty marks and shoes with big buckles on them, you’ve got another thing coming. Sure, if you tune in to WPRB this morning, you’ll get your share of concerti grossi, partitas, toccatas, chaconnes and fugues. However, none of them will have been composed before the turn of the 20th century. A few of them will even be from our own time.

It’s a full morning of music of the “Neo-Baroque,” as we revel in the exuberance and melancholy of autumn, which for me is the most Baroque of the seasons. (Don’t ask me to explain. Maybe I’m just eating too many apples.)

Along the way, we’ll manage to honor Paul Dukas, whose 150th birthday anniversary passed largely unrecognized on October 1, beyond perhaps a few more airings of “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.” We’ll be listening to Dukas’ “Variations, Interlude and Finale on a Theme by Rameau.”

As is often the case, I’m not really sure what else I’ll be playing, but it’s all in the box and ready to go. Among the pieces I would love to include – and sincerely hope I can get to – will be Hendrik Andriessen’s “Variations on a Theme by Couperin,” Paul Creston’s “Partita for Flute, Violin and Strings,” Ilja Hurnik’s “Sonata da camera,” Paul Lansky’s “Semi-Suite,” Julián Orbón’s “Concerto Grosso for String Quartet and Orchestra,” Roberto Sierra’s “Fantasia Corelliana,” Germaine Tailleferre’s “Concerto Grosso for 2 Pianos, Singers, Saxophones and Orchestra,” and, well, whatever else I’ve got on these 60 CDs I’ve toted in.

In the 9:00 hour, we’ll be joined by special guests violinist Kinga Augustyn and conductor Mariusz Smolij. They’ll tell us a little bit about their upcoming appearance with the Riverside Symphonia, of which Smolij is music director. The program will include three violin crowd-pleasers, framed by two joyful serenades of Mozart and Dvořák. The concert will take place tomorrow night at 8, at St. Martin of Tours Church, in New Hope, Pa.

I hope you’ll join me for music of the Neo-Baroque this morning, from 6 to 11 ET, on WPRB 103.3 FM or online at wprb.com. It will be played against a basso continuo of sleep-deprivation and befuddlement, on Classic Ross Amico.

PHOTO: “Heavens, Tobias, what IS he playing?”

October 8, 2015

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