Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

Unusual Composers on WPRB This Week

If you wake up this morning with an appetite for unusual and neglected repertoire, here are some of the composers whose music you can expect to hear between 6 and 11 a.m. ET, when you set your dial to WPRB 103.3 FM, or listen online at wprb.com: Walter Leigh, Lalo Schifrin, George Walker, Henry Holden Huss, Pavel Haas, Kurt Schwertsik, Harry Partch and Terry Riley, all of whom had or have birthday anniversaries this week. We’ll also do a make-good on retired Princeton professor Paul Lansky, whom I am ashamed to say I missed last week. The late Gunther Schuller and James Horner will also be remembered.

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. I’ll also be bringing some of Dan’s recordings of American music with the Philadelphia Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra.

Be there, or be… zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

PHOTO: Slappin’ the roosters awake with Classic Ross Amico

June 25, 2015
Christopher Lee A Musical Tribute

Well, as you undoubtedly know by now, the great Christopher Lee died on June 7, at the age of 93. This week on “Picture Perfect” – after making allowances for the 40th anniversary of “Jaws” and the observance of Father’s Day – we finally get around to honoring him, with music from four of his well-over-200 features.

Lee, of course, is best remembered for his work in a number of lurid horror classics produced by Hammer Films. Of these, his portrayal of Count Dracula is justifiably celebrated. “Taste the Blood of Dracula” (1970) may not have been the strongest installment in the series, since it barely had any reason to be a vampire movie (the Count avenges one of his servants who dies at at the hands of thrill-seeking gentlemen); but it could be argued that it had the strongest music, by Hammer house composer James Bernard.

Though Lee could never truly be said to have gone out of fashion, he experienced a remarkable late-career resurgence, becoming part of Tim Burton’s repertory company, giving a lovely turn as a bookseller in Martin Scorsese’s “Hugo,” and playing Count Dooku in the otherwise execrable “Star Wars” prequels – which almost succeed in making Peter Jackson’s “The Lord of the Rings” movies look good by comparison. Lee plays the power-hungry Saruman the White, who raises Orcs from muck and makes Gandalf spin on his ear like Curly Howard. Peter Jackson being Peter Jackson, he even managed to work Saruman into his heavily-padded screen adaptations of “The Hobbit.” We’ll be listening to music from the second “Rings” film, “The Two Towers” (2002) in which Saruman has to deal with irascible walking trees roused by his environmental crimes.

“The Wicker Man” (1973) has to be one of the bleakest movies ever made, with an absolutely unforgettable ending. Lee plays one of his most disturbing roles as Lord Summerisle, who cheerily presides over legions of antlered mummers in his squash-colored turtleneck and blazer, while Britt Ekland haunts police officer Edward Woodward’s fever dreams. Paul Giovanni wrote the whacked out, folk-inflected score.

My favorite Lee role has to be that of the aristocratic occultist, the Duc de Richelieu, who combats the forces of darkness in “The Devil Rides Out” (1968). Lee takes it all very seriously – knit-browed, goateed and stentorian – even as he confronts the Goat of Mendes (“The devil himself!”). The villain, a black magician by the name of Mocata, is played by Charles Gray of James Bond and “Rocky Horror” fame. Richard Matheson’s screenplay is far superior to the Dennis Wheatley’s novel – or maybe Lee just makes it seem so. Again, the music is by James Bernard.

I hope you’ll join me, as we remember Christopher Lee, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, 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 http://www.wwfm.org.

PLEASE NOTE: A tribute to the late James Horner will follow, on July 3 and 4.

June 25, 2015
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

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