Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

WPRB: Birthdays, Riley, and Remembering Schuller

Already entering my fourth week at WRPB Princeton, and I am grappling with the slavish adherence to birthdays. Obviously being on only once a week, I can’t celebrate everyone, and with my over-reliance on the “major” figures, much music by worthy composers has been passing me by. Failing to acknowledge retired Princeton professor Paul Lansky last Thursday (whose birthday fell on the actual day, no less) may have been the proverbial last straw.

Be that as it may, we’ll touch on what we can tomorrow, though perhaps downplaying the birthday angle more in favor of interesting programming. So we will have music of Terry Riley, who turns 80 today. We’ll also have a work by the impish Kurt Schwertsik, whom I had the privilege to interview at a concert held at Austrian Cultural Forum New York a few years back. Schwertsik turns 80 tomorrow.

Of course, we’ll remember Gunther Schuller, who died earlier this week. And, I don’t know, maybe I’ll even drop in a little James Horner, though I’m planning a more extensive memorial for “Picture Perfect,” to air on http://www.wwfm.org on July 3 at 6 p.m. ET.

Daniel Spalding, music director of the New Jersey Capital Philharmonic Orchestra, will drop by around 10:00 to talk a bit about his orchestra and its appearance in a free concert at Mercer County Park Pavilion, Sunday at 7:30 p.m., as part of this year’s Freedom Fest.

And yes, I’ll be sure to include something by Lansky, since I happen to like his music. I’m reluctant to promise too much and then not deliver, but trust me when I say that I’ll play what I can.

Keep it classy with Classic Ross Amico, tomorrow morning from 6 to 11 a.m., at WPRB 103.3 FM or online at wprb.com.

PHOTO: Keeping it classy with Kurt Schwertsik

June 24, 2015
Father’s Day Sports Music Tribute on The Lost Chord

Happy Father’s Day! This week on “The Lost Chord,” we pay tribute to Dad, with an hour of music about sports.

I realize it’s a possibility that not all dads necessarily like sports, but it’s been my experience that Sunday afternoons and Monday nights have always been off-limits, as far as the family television is concerned. For me personally, that meant that after Abbott and Costello or the Bowery Boys, it was football, golf or “Wide World of Sports,” and that I never saw “MAS*H” during its first run.

Be that as it may, it’s Dad’s day, so we’re going to give him what he wants – an hour of rough-and-tumble, the thrill of victory, and the agony of defeat.

We’ll begin with “Rugby” by Arthur Honegger; after that, we’ll have “Half-Time” by Bohuslav Martinu;” then “Yale-Princeton Football Game” by Charles Ives; and finally, highlights from the baseball opera “The Mighty Casey” by William Schuman.

Combine with a La-Z-Boy and a cold beer, and it’s a recipe for dad contentment. I hope you’ll join me for “Good Sports,” tonight at 10 ET, with a repeat Wednesday evening at 6; or that you’ll listen to it later as a webcast at http://www.wwfm.org.

June 21, 2015
Jacques Offenbach A Master of Operetta

Like Victor Herbert – though born 40 years earlier, in 1819 – Jacques Offenbach was a master of operetta who gained experience as a cellist in theater orchestras. (Herbert even made it as far as the Metropolitan Opera.)

In Offenbach’s case, he finally attained a permanent position at Paris’ Opéra-Comique. Of course, his temperament was such that he was always getting busted down in pay for playing pranks during performances. Once, he rigged everyone’s music stands to collapse in mid-performance.

Nevertheless, he managed to make a favorable impression on composer and conductor Fromental Halévy, who gave him private lessons in composition and orchestration. (Offenbach had left the Paris Conservatory out of boredom a year into his formal studies.)

With the help of Friedrich von Flotow, another future luminary of the musical stage, Offenbach gained access to the salon circuit. In this way, he bolstered his reputation as a performer and a composer. He toured France and Germany, performing with musicians such as Liszt and Anton Rubinstein. In England, he met Mendelssohn and Joseph Joachim.

Upon his return to Paris, he subtly altered his image from a cellist who happened to compose to a composer who played the cello. When the salons began to dry up, Offenbach gained employment as the musical director of the Comédie Française. There, he gained valuable experience actually writing for the stage, though his success did not transfer to the Opéra-Comique. Debussy noted that the musical establishment of the time had difficulty coping with the composer’s sense of irony.

By the time Offenbach finally did crack the Opéra-Comique with “The Tales of Hoffmann,” he was already in the grave. Though he died before putting the finishing touches on his opera, the orchestration was completed by other hands, and the work has not been out of the repertoire since.

Undoubtedly, somewhere in heaven, Offenbach is sawing half-way through the columns of the harps, and enjoying the last laugh.

Happy birthday, Jacques Offenbach!

June 20, 2015
Movie Dads Father’s Day Music Special

This week on “Picture Perfect,” we anticipate Father’s Day with an hour of music celebrating movie dads.

Vito Corleone may not exactly have been a model father, though he did adhere to a particular code of ethics. Besides, what father doesn’t love “The Godfather” (1972)? “The Godfather” was recognized with 11 Academy Award nominations – of which it won three, including Best Picture. However, the awards were not without controversy.

Of course, Brando sent Sacheen Littlefeather to the ceremony to refuse his Oscar based on his objection to the portrayal of Native Americans in television and film. Then there was the matter of the score, by Nino Rota. Rota was nominated, but the nomination was withdrawn when it was discovered that he had used one of the themes in a 1958 film called “Fortunella,” which starred Giulietta Masina and Alberto Sordi. In the end, the Academy turned around and gave Rota the award anyway, two years later, for “The Godfather Part II.”

“Field of Dreams” (1989) is one of those rare films that has the ability to reduce manly men – even those without father issues – to a pool of tears. Phil Alden Robinson’s superior adaptation of W.P. Kinsella’s novel, “Shoeless Joe,” is a male wish-fulfillment fantasy, in which a man finds redemption, and a new understanding of his father, in the enchanted cornfields of America’s heartland. And it’s all brought about courtesy of America’s pastime, baseball. The evocative score is by James Horner, who rides on the shoulders of Aaron Copland. The composer seems particularly smitten with Copland’s “Our Town.”

William Powell plays Clarence Day, the irascible paterfamilias of an upper class family of redheads, in the comedy “Life with Father” (1947), for which Max Steiner wrote the music.

And Gregory Peck plays one of his most memorable roles as defense attorney – and model father – Atticus Finch, in “To Kill a Mockingbird” (1962), based on Harper Lee’s beautiful “coming of age” novel. The book was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1961. Peck won the Academy Award for Best Actor a year later. The score is one of the best-loved of Elmer Bernstein.

Even if your father was a complete creep, there’s plenty to love about this music. I hope you’ll join me for selections for Father’s Day on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, this evening at 6 ET, with a repeat tomorrow morning at 6; or that you’ll listen to it later as a webcast at http://www.wwfm.org.

June 19, 2015
Classical Music Radio Show Princeton Today

Okay, admittedly Stravinsky chucking a koala is click-bait, but I need your love.

Stravinsky conducts Stravinsky. Michelangeli plays Grieg. Symphonic sketches by Paul Gilson, criminally neglected even on his sesquicentenary. Mon dieu, what a show!

We’ll have music by Einar Englund, Charles Gounod, Manuel Rosenthal, Alfredo Catalani, and Lennon & McCarthy as transfigured by Leo Brouwer.

Joining me in the 9:00 hour will be Melissa Bohl of Princeton University Summer Chamber Concerts. PUSCC will present the first of four free events at Richardson Auditorium, tonight at 7:30, when the Aeolus Quartet performs music by Haydn, Bartók and Dvořák. Doors open at 7. Get there early or expect to cool your jets at Thomas Sweet Ice Cream. For more information, look online at http://www.princetonsummerchamberconcerts.org/.

All this and more, when you tune in this morning, from 6 to 11 ET, on WPRB 103.3 FM, or listen online at wprb.com.

Like this post, like this page – or the koala gets it!

June 18, 2015

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