Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

WPRB: Strauss, Messiaen & Princeton Festival

Here’s an idea of what you can expect to hear if you join me tomorrow morning on WPRB.

Once again, we observe birthdays, belated, in anticipation, or right on the nose, including those of Richard Strauss (born 6/11) and Carlos Chavez (6/13). There will be a nod to Carlisle Floyd (6/11), along with the fulfillment of a request made last week for some American music conducted by Leonard Bernstein. I haven’t quite gotten Carl Nielsen (6/9) out of my system. And we’ll see, we may hit one or two others, as well. It’s been a busy week for birthday anniversaries.

Members of the Assisi Quartet, for 15 years resident quartet of Assisi Performing Arts, will drop by at 9:00, to talk a little bit about Olivier Messiaen’s “Quartet for the End of Time.” The ensemble will perform the work tomorrow night, alongside music of Franz Joseph Haydn, on a 7:30 p.m. concert at Bristol Chapel on the campus of Princeton’s Westminster Choir College.

Richard Tang Yuk will be on hand at 10:00, to tell us about The Princeton Festival, now in progress, and this year’s production of Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro.” Tang Yuk will conduct three performances of the opera at McCarter Theatre, on 6/13, 6/21 & 6/28.

Everything is extremely subject to change (I can’t seem to establish a playlist in advance, which makes it challenging since I bring all my own records), but in the best tradition of live radio, we will endeavor to push forward with a modicum of grace.

Tune in tomorrow from 6 to 11 a.m. to WPRB 103.3 FM, or listen online at wprb.com, and keep it classy with Classic Ross Amico.

June 10, 2015
Carl Nielsen Celebrates 150 Years

For you admirers of great Danes, today marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of Carl Nielsen, Denmark’s most celebrated composer.

It would be several decades following his death (in 1931, of heart disease) before Nielsen’s music really started to gain traction abroad. It was Leonard Bernstein who prophesied, “I think many people are in for pleasant surprises as they get to know Nielsen: his rough charm, his swing, his drive, his rhythmic surprises, his strange power of harmonic and tonal relationships – and especially his constant unpredictability – all these are irresistible. I feel confident that Nielsen’s time has come.”

Though Bernstein put his money where his mouth was by turning in one of the great Nielsen recordings (of the Symphony No. 5, in 1962), the composer’s reputation failed to blossom in anywhere near the same way that Bernstein’s other “rediscovery,” Gustav Mahler, had. Even in the pantheon of Nordic symphonists, Nielsen has consistently sat at the feet of Jean Sibelius.

Which is really too bad. Nielsen’s music may be an acquired taste, but it is a rewarding one. There really is nothing else quite like it. The puckish wit, the ambiguities, the quirky juxtaposition of seemingly disparate melodies, harmonies and key signatures, all shot through very often with a sense of hope and optimism that rises above the chaos.

Here’s Lenny, conducting the Danes on their own turf, in what may be my favorite Nielsen symphony, the Symphony No. 3:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5sbcF7p0Pk

Happy birthday, Carl Nielsen!

PHOTO: In his most optimistic gesture, Nielsen wears white to a vineyard

June 9, 2015
Song of Love: Schumann, Hepburn, and MGM’s History

The way it was (at least according to MGM):

For Robert Schumann’s birthday, here’s a clip from “Song of Love” (1947), with Paul Henreid as Schumann, Katharine Hepburn as Clara, and Robert Walker as Brahms. It’s also amusing to see Henry Daniell (as Liszt) playing something other than a villain, for a change. That’s Arthur Rubinstein on the soundtrack.

You can watch the complete movie here:

PHOTO: Roll over, Schumann…

June 8, 2015
Polish Music Hike Vistula Sounds Lost Chord

This week on “The Lost Chord,” we go hiking in the Tatras and drifting down the Vistula, as we enjoy an hour of musical discoveries from Poland.

We’ll hear a Fantasy for Cello and Piano by Aleksander Tansman, who spent most of his career in Paris, with an interlude during the war years in the United States. Here, he met Arnold Schoenberg, wrote film scores, and developed an affection for American jazz. Still, his most enduring influences were those of his Polish and Jewish roots.

Mieczyslaw Karlowicz was one of those hyper-romantic figures whose emotional life was lived at such a high pitch that he seemed fated to die young. His music certainly tends in that direction, occupied as most of it is with ecstasy and death. “A Sad Tale,” his last completed work, is a contemplation of suicide. Karlowicz himself was killed in an avalanche while hiking in the Tatras. He was 32 years-old.

We’ll round out the hour with choral music by Andrzej Koszewski – his “Kaszuby Suite” – steeped in folk traditions of northwestern Poland, and a neoclassical woodwind quintet by Wojiech Kilar, who is probably best known in the West for his film scores, including those for “Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula,’” “The Portrait of a Lady,” and “The Pianist.”

I hope you’ll join me for “Poland Spring” – refreshing musical discoveries from Poland – 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 7, 2015
Aram Khachaturian’s Birthday Sabre Dance & More

Today is the birthday of Aram Khachaturian. You know, the guy who wrote that frenetic tune that makes you want to spin plates on the tops of sticks.

Here he is, conducting (and highly-decorated), with Mstislav Rostropovich the soloist in his “Concerto-Rhapsody”:

And – why not? – music for spinning plates, Liberace style:

PHOTO: The composer “cleaning up nice” for his special day

June 6, 2015

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