Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

Haddon Hall Opera Mother’s Day Breakfast

Perhaps as an alternative to waiting in line at the diner on Mother’s Day, you can cook breakfast for Mom at home and listen to “Haddon Hall.” Sir Arthur Sullivan’s rarely-heard light opera, given its premiere in 1892, will be the featured work on Sandy Steiglitz’s “Sunday Morning Opera.”

“Haddon Hall” is one of the works Sullivan composed without Gilbert, in the wake of the team’s temporary dissolution following “The Gondoliers.” Savoy Opera impresario Richard D’Oyly Carte, no doubt crestfallen at the G & S separation, introduced Sullivan to Sydney Grundy. The result was a mild satire that left audiences accustomed to Gilbert’s barbed observations vaguely dissatisfied.

The opera dramatizes the elopement of Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall in 1563, against her father’s wishes, with John Manners, son of Thomas Manners, 1st Earl of Rutland. The conflict may have been in part religious (the Vernons were Catholic, the Manners Protestant); it was most certainly financial (as the second son of an earl, Manners’ prospects were uncertain). If all this sounds a tad dry to American sensibilities, Grundy moves the action forward a century to about 1660, recasting it against the backdrop of unrest between Royalists and Roundheads. Isn’t that much more interesting?

There’s also a fuming Scottish stereotype in the person of “The McCrankie,” a particularly strict Puritan from the Isle of Rum, who sings to the accompaniment of bagpipes and drinks whisky from a flask, ha ha.

Anyway, the music should be nice. Purportedly, it bears the stamp of Sullivan’s only grand opera, “Ivanhoe,” which had been completed only the year before.

“Haddon Hall” enjoyed a vogue among amateur groups in the 1920s, but has since drifted into obscurity. The 2000 recording features Mary Timmons, Maxwell Smart (no shoe phone jokes, please), and Alan Borthwick. The performance is conducted by David Lyle.

“Sunday Morning Opera” can be heard on WPRB Princeton at 103.3 FM, beginning at 5:30 a.m. The main attraction begins at 7:00. After the opera, in the time remaining, Sandy will celebrate the birthday of Richard Tauber. You can listen online at http://www.wprb.com.

More about “Sunday Morning Opera” here: http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~san/schedule.html

PHOTO: When men were men, and women were women – if only we could tell them apart

May 9, 2015
George Antheil Returns to Trenton

Trenton’s prodigal son returns! I was so excited to be able to write about George Antheil again. Antheil, if you don’t know, was the greatest composer ever to emerge from New Jersey’s capital city.

The self-proclaimed “Bad Boy of Music” (the title of his autobiography), Antheil would practice the piano with such ferocity that he would have to pause periodically to soak his hands in two fish bowls. During his recitals, he would ostentatiously remove a pistol from a silk holster sewn into his jacket and place it atop the piano, to let the audience know up front that he would brook no nonsense.

Of course, he had good reason. His “Ballet Mécanique,” scored for player pianos, airplane propellers, siren and electric bells, inspired one of classical music’s great riots at its Paris premiere in 1926.

This weekend, the New Jersey Capital Philharmonic Orchestra will present a substantial suite from Antheil’s ballet, “Capital of the World,” on a concert which will also feature works on Spanish themes by Emmanuel Chabrier, Maurice Ravel and Manuel de Falla.

Based on the short story by Ernest Hemingway, “Capital of the World” tells of a young waiter who dreams of becoming a matador. Unfortunately, some spirited horseplay leads to tragic results.

Just don’t go into it expecting Antheil the enfant terrible. By the Second World War, his music had taken a turn toward the kind of populism embraced by many American composers of mid-century. Also, he had entered into a sideline of writing for film (“The Pride and the Passion,” also with a Spanish setting, was one of the projects he scored).

The ballet features a prominent part for flamenco dancer. Liliana Ruiz will be the soloist in tomorrow night’s performance. The concert will take place at the Trenton War Memorial, beginning at 8 p.m.

You can read more about it in my article in today’s Trenton Times:

http://www.nj.com/times-entertainment/index.ssf/2015/05/classical_music_nj_capital_phi_1.html

If you missed it, here’s a write-up of an Antheil walking-and-driving tour I took, back in 2013:

http://www.nj.com/times-entertainment/index.ssf/2013/08/early_life_in_trenton_left_mar.html

PHOTO: The Original Trenton Cracker

May 8, 2015
Movie Music with Women’s Names

This week on “Picture Perfect,” we’ll have music from movies with women’s names for titles.

“Rachel, Rachel” (1968) stars Joanne Woodward as a repressed, small-town schoolteacher, who learns to take control of her own life. The film marked the directorial debut of Woodward’s husband, Paul Newman. “Rachel, Rachel” was nominated for four Academy Awards, including those for Best Actress and Best Picture. Newman picked up a Golden Globe and a New York Critics Circle Award for his direction. The lovely Americana score was composed by Jerome Moross.

“Emma” (1996) was adapted from the Jane Austen novel. Gwyneth Paltrow plays the high spirited-though-somewhat-clueless matchmaker, who fails to recognize her own feelings or those of the men around her. Also among the cast are Alan Cumming, Toni Collette, Ewan McGregor and Jeremy Northam. Screenwriter and director Douglas McGrath fell in love with the book while an undergraduate at Princeton University. Rachel Portman wrote the Academy Award-winning score.

Otto Preminger’s film noir, “Laura” (1944), features quite the cast, including Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews, Clifton Webb, Judith Anderson and Vincent Price. The equally impressive theme, which is heard in endless permutations throughout the film, was by Philadelphia-born David Raksin. Outfitted with lyrics by Johnny Mercer, it became the second most-recorded song during the composer’s lifetime, after only Hoagie Carmichael’s “Stardust.”

Finally, “Diane” (1956) takes us back to 16th century France, with a plot concerning Diane de Poitiers (played by Lana Turner), a member of the court of Francis I, who becomes the mistress of the king’s son, Henri d’Orleon (played by a very young Roger Moore). Their illicit love unfolds against the backdrop of Medici intrigue and lust for power. Miklós Rózsa, M-G-M’s go-to-composer for its historical spectacles, wrote the music.

I hope you’ll join me for “What’s in a Name?,” tonight 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: Dana Andrews likes his women stiff, like his bourbon

May 8, 2015
Brahms and Tchaikovsky: Best Frenemies Forever

Brahms and Tchaikovsky were totally B.F.F. – Best Frenemies Forever.

The latter famously confided to his diary, “I have played over the music of that scoundrel Brahms. What a giftless bastard!”

And that’s only the short version.

The two shared the same birthday, May 7 (Brahms born in 1833 and Tchaikovsky in 1840). Unfortunately, that was about all they had in common – Brahms, the great classicist among Romantics, and Tchaikovsky, always heart-on-the-sleeve.

Or so they thought, until the two met on New Year’s Day, in 1888. Surprise! They actually delighted in one another’s company. There was much drinking and backslapping and drinking and hanging on one another’s shoulders and drinking and happy tears and drinking. (Of course, all this took place in spite of Brahms falling asleep during a rehearsal of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony.) In fact, they liked one another so well, they decided to do it again.

However, the two never could reconcile themselves to one another’s music. After a lovely evening with Brahms, during which both men drank and smoked prodigiously, while Adolph Brodsky (the violinist who had introduced Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto) rehearsed with some friends a Brahms piano trio, Mrs. Brodsky asked Tchaikovsky what he had thought of the piece.

“Don’t be angry with me, my dear friend,” he said, “but I did not like it.”

Happy birthday, boys!

PHOTOS: Peter Ilych Tchaikovsky (left) and Johannes Brahms, agreeing to disagree

May 7, 2015
George Perle: Celebrating a Centennial of Sound

You might say he was a Perle among American composers.

Today marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of George Perle. Perle was born on this date in 1915 in Bayonne, NJ, though he grew up on farms in Wisconsin and Indiana.

Fascinated with music from the time he was a child (he was literally transfixed when he heard his aunt play a Chopin etude), his choice of career was pretty much a given. Perle attended DePaul University and took private lessons with Ernst Krenek. Among his own students was retired Princeton University professor Paul Lansky.

Perle fell under the spell of twelve-tone masters Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern and Alban Berg. In 1968, he cofounded the Alban Berg Society with Igor Stravinsky and Hans F. Redlich. Arguably his greatest musicological achievements were his discoveries that Berg’s “Lulu” was not in fact a sketch, but rather three quarters finished, and that Berg’s “Lyric Suite” contains a secret program related to a clandestine love affair.

His own music is influenced by the twelve-tone idiom, though it is weighted to his own purposes, with certain notes of the chromatic scale given precedence to create a kind of synthetic tonality. Perle’s Fourth Wind Quintet was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for music in 1986.

Maybe his music is not for everyone, but if you’re receptive, I think you’ll find it never wears out its welcome.

Happy birthday, George Perle!

Six New Etudes (1984): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxDqR_23Puo

Adagio for Orchestra (1992): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-_PuCrsT9Q

Perle in conversation with David Dubal! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JGa7Jd5uEY

Of course, you can listen to Dubal’s “The Piano Matters” Wednesday evenings at 10 and Sundays at noon at http://www.wwfm.org.

PHOTO: Give Perle a whirl

May 6, 2015

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