Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

Wizard Movie Music Picture Perfect

This week on “Picture Perfect,” you’ll be spellbound (I hope), as I present an hour of musical selections from movies about wizards and sorcerers.

Gandalf and Saruman duke it out in Peter Jackson’s frenetic, yet somehow ponderous adaptations of J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings,” films so bloated and poorly paced that anyone who had not read the books probably wondered what all the fuss was about. Its abundant defects didn’t keep the screen trilogy from making over a billion dollars and garnering 30 Academy Award nominations. Three of those were bestowed upon composer Howard Shore. We’ll be sampling from his music to “The Fellowship of the Ring” (2001).

Made for a fraction of the budget, much less self-serious, and arguably way more fun is “The Sword and the Sorcerer” (1982), which holds no pretense to be anything beyond what it is: a schlocky B-movie sword and sandal swashbuckler. However, the composer, David Whitaker, aspired for something greater. Against tremendous time pressures, he turned in a marvelous score, which sounds like Erich Wolfgang Korngold on a shoestring. If this film had been made by George Lucas, Whitaker would be world famous.

After creating one of his greatest scores for Stanley Kubrick’s “Spartacus,” Alex North had his music for Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” rejected – and not in a nice way. (North didn’t find out about it until the lights went down at the film’s premiere.) Fortunately, the composer was able to salvage the best material for “Dragonslayer” (1981). The plot, about a bumbling sorcerer’s apprentice who faces a seemingly impossible challenge, is serviceable at best, but the dragon may yet be the most amazing committed to film. Also, the score is terrific.

Finally, John Williams kicks off another billion dollar franchise with “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” (2001), which in England was released (as was the book) as “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.” Who ever heard of a sorcerer’s stone? I guess the publishers were afraid Americans would be put off by any association with philosophy.

I hope you’ll join me for wizards and sorcerers this week, on “Picture Perfect,” 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.

PHOTO: Saruman vexes Gandalf with the exquisite whiteness of his beard

June 5, 2015
WPRB Summer Classical Music Program Starts Now

A reminder to tune in to WPRB 103.3 FM this morning from 6 to 11 a.m. ET, to enjoy the first of 14 summer programs, hosted by Classic Ross Amico.

Among my guests this week will be Sandy Steiglitz, host of WPRB’s “Sunday Morning Opera with Sandy” (heard Sundays, from 6 to 10 a.m.), who will introduce recordings of baritone Robert Merrill, on this his birthday anniversary. That should take place around 8.

I’ll also be joined by Marvin Rosen, host of “Classical Discoveries” (Wednesdays, 5:30 to 11 a.m.), “Classical Discoveries Goes Avant Garde” (Wednesdays 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.) and “Treasures of Early Music” (Mondays, 5:30 a.m. to 11 a.m.), who will introduce something extra special from his own record collection. Marvin will be flitting around all morning, since he doesn’t sleep.

Richard Tang Yuk will be in to talk about The Princeton Festival at 9. The festival kicks into high gear this weekend. Tang Yuk, the festival’s artistic director, will conduct three performances of Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro,” June 13, 21 & 28, at McCarter Theatre. For more information on the Princeton Festival, look online at http://www.princetonfestival.org.

Today is the 100th anniversary of the birth of American composer Alan Shulman. We’ll mark the occasion by listening to one of his neglected works. Also expect birthday nods, belated, in anticipation, or right on the nose, for Sir Edward Elgar, Carl Nielsen and Yevgeny Mravinsky.

If you tune in bright and early, you may even hear a couple of concert works by composers better known for their achievements in film. The signal is far-reaching, but if for some reason you can’t get it, you can hear the program anywhere via streaming at http://www.wprb.com.

Best wishes to the great Teri Noel Towe, host of Towe on Thursday, who, for just about the first time in seven years, did not have to uproot his life to ride New Jersey Transit on a Wednesday evening.

Keep it classy, folks, and remember I’m just getting my sea legs!

PHOTOS: Shulman enjoys a cigarette for his hundredth birthday; Mravinsky is just plain smokin’.

June 4, 2015
Ross Amico Returns to WPRB! Princeton Airwaves

Classic Ross Amico returns to the airwaves! Beginning tomorrow, and for the next 14 weeks, I will be manning Thursday mornings at WPRB 103.3 FM, broadcasting from a bunker deep beneath Princeton University’s Bloomberg Hall.

The shift will extend from 6 to 11 a.m. ET, though apparently it is not unusual for hosts to turn up earlier and start spinning discs at 5:30. I’m suffering from a “summer cold” at the moment, so we’ll have to see about that.

Tune in for guest appearances by Sandy Steiglitz, host of WPRB’s @Sunday Morning Opera with Sandy (heard Sundays, from 6 to 10 a.m.), and Marvin Rosen, host of Classical Discoveries (Wednesdays, 5:30 to 11 a.m.), “Classical Discoveries Goes Avant Garde” (Wednesdays 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.) and “Treasures of Early Music” (Mondays, 5:30 a.m. to 11 a.m.).

Sandy will help us celebrate the birthday anniversary of American baritone Robert Merrill, and Marvin will introduce a special surprise from his own collection, long out of print and never issued on CD, which I am very excited to hear again after decades.

At 9:00, we’ll be joined by Richard Tang Yuk, who will talk a bit about The Princeton Festival, which begins in earnest this Saturday. Tang Yuk, the festival’s artistic director, will conduct three performances of Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro,” June 13, 21 & 28, at McCarter Theatre. For more information on festival events, look online at http://www.princetonfestival.org.

What else can you expect to hear? I’m still trying to figure that out. But you can bet there will be nods to American composer Alan Shulman, on the 100th anniversary of his birth, and conductor Yevgeny Mravinsky, on the 112th of his.

The signal is strong – it can be heard as far away as Philadelphia on old school analogue radio – but it is also accessible worldwide at http://www.wprb.com.

Join us tomorrow and keep it classy with Classic Ross Amico.

PHOTO: Marvin and me, exuding class

June 3, 2015
Elgar’s Graduation March The Story Behind The Music

Is it by design that Sir Edward Elgar’s birthday coincides with graduation season? In reality, the composer of the “Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1” was a fairly introverted and often melancholy character. In academic circles, he felt inadequate as he was largely self-taught. He was a Catholic in a largely Protestant country. He married a woman “above his station,” for which she was disinherited. Is it any wonder that he preferred animals to the company of people? Yet this perpetual outsider went on to become his country’s most celebrated composer. Funny, how fate works sometimes.

Happy birthday, Sir Edward Elgar (1857-1934).

Rare footage of Elgar conducting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-AmryhlRpI

At play with his dogs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0y5LtycnkoM

PHOTO: He overcompensated with the most impressive moustache in the land

June 2, 2015
Glinka Mravinsky Celebrate on Classic Ross Amico

Today is the birthday of Mikhail Glinka (1804-1857). Thursday is the birthday of Yevgeny Mravinsky (1903-1988). The two meet here, on Classic Ross Amico.

PHOTO: Ruslan gets a head of Chernomor’s big brother

June 1, 2015

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