Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

Horowitz Plays the White House for Carter & More

In 1978, Jimmy Carter invited Vladimir Horowitz to play at the White House. As noted by Jim Lehrer, this was not for some special state occasion, but rather because of Carter’s genuine appreciation for the pianist, whose records he once scrimped to purchase back when he was a young man serving in the U.S. Navy.

It was not Horowitz’s first appearance at the White House. He was invited for the first time by Herbert Hoover in 1931. In 1986, he returned to play for President Reagan. He also allowed some encores to be broadcast from a Carnegie Hall recital, in honor of FDR’s birthday, in 1942.

I provide two links to the Carter recital below. The second is far and away of better quality, but the first includes the president’s opening remarks, which last a little over two minutes.

Carter had an affection for all kinds of music and strove to celebrate it over the course of his presidency. You can tell he held Horowitz particularly dear.

Watch here for the opening remarks:

The actual performance portion in better quality:

January 5, 2025
Norway’s Stage Halvorsen Grieg and Theater Music

If all the world’s a stage, then why not Norway? This week on “The Lost Chord,” I hope you’ll join me in vicariously treading the boards with incidental music by two of the country’s most prominent composers.

Following a lengthy apprenticeship as a violinist, in the course of which he performed in orchestras all over Europe, Johan Halvorsen (1864-1935) developed an interest in conducting. In 1893, the same year he was appointed principal conductor of the Bergen Philharmonic, he worked as conductor of the theater orchestra at Bergen’s National Stage. In 1899, he became conductor of the newly-opened National Theater in Kristiana, a post he would occupy for the next three decades, until his retirement in 1929.

Following his retirement, Halvorsen largely concentrated on writing symphonies and his popular Norwegian Rhapsodies. Until then, his work in the theater, understandably, brought many opportunities to write for the stage. In fact, he composed music for more than 30 plays.

One of those was “Askeladden,” or “The Ash Lad,” a children’s comedy, based on Norwegian folk tales. Askeladden is an unprepossessing young man who succeeds where others fail, generally winning the hand of a princess and half the kingdom. Halvorsen actually composed the music for this particular play in his retirement. In fact, it is his last orchestral score.

Norway’s best-known composer, of course, is Edvard Grieg (1843-1907). Grieg’s suite from the play “Sigurd Jorsalfar,” or “Sigurd the Crusader,” is actually rather famous, yet we seldom have an opportunity to hear the complete incidental music. Sigurd I, King of Norway, reigned from 1103 to 1130. His reign is regarded by historians as a golden age for medieval Norway.

Sigurd became the subject of a play by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, for which Grieg provided music in 1872. The familiar suite was given its premiere 20 years later. Bjornson’s play concerns the brothers, Sigurd and Øystein, joint rulers of 12th century Norway, and the beautiful Borghild, whose love for Øystein is unrequited, but who herself is loved by Sigurd. The composer does his best to lend a third dimension, or at least some pageantry, to the historical tableaux.

Your ticket is reserved for Norway, incidentally. I hope you’ll join me for “A-fjordable Theater,” on “The Lost Chord,” now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:

PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EST/5:00 PM PST

SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – ALL NEW! – Saturday at 11:00 AM EST/8:00 AM PST

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EST/4:00 PM PST

Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

January 4, 2025
Overtures! KWAX Radio’s Sweet Start to 2025

You don’t really hear too many sparkling curtain-raisers by Auber or Suppé or Offenbach, to open concerts anymore, which is a pity. But the music still lives on, at least on drive-time classical radio and during fundraising campaigns. And a little bit this morning, anyway, on “Sweetness and Light.”

I thought for the first show of the new year, it might be fun to listen to an hour of overtures. A good overture always whets the appetite and fills one with anticipation of exciting things to come.

Of course, nostalgic soul that I am, I’ll also be looking back and sharing a few fond recollections. One of the selections I’ve programmed will be from one of the very earliest classical records I ever owned – a spontaneous gift from the collection of a favorite uncle, who noted the enjoyment I received from it while listening to it on his state-of-the-art stereo system, on a Saturday afternoon, probably in the late 1970s. It’s the classic album of Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic in “William Tell” and other favorite overtures.

Hard to believe in this post-CD era that there was actually a time when music-lovers – in the case of my uncle, a classic rocker (before there was such a category) and an audiophile with a soft spot for Richard Rodgers, “Rhapsody in Blue,” and the Moog – would actually listen to an entire album of overtures in a sitting. The practice seems hopelessly antiquated in this era of attention-deficit clicks.

Of course, I can’t go all froth, so in addition to audience favorites by Ambroise Thomas and Gioachino Rossini and crowd-pleasers by Mikhail Glinka and Emil Nikolaus von Reznicek, we’ll experience the full power of the fin de siècle orchestra in works by Carl Nielsen and Edward Elgar.

Think of it collectively as a preamble to your weekend, with hopes for more smiles than tears in 2025, this Saturday morning at 11:00 EST/8:00 PST, exclusively on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Stream it wherever you are at the link:

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

January 4, 2025
Armchair Travel Winter Films Classic Cinema

With the hustle and bustle of the holidays for the most part behind us and temperatures plummeting, January is a great time of year for armchair travel.

This week on “Picture Perfect,” cozy in, but get a world view, as we drift beyond our shores for an hour of wintry scenes from world cinema, with entries from England, Finland, the Soviet Union, and Japan.

Akira Kurosawa’s “Dersu Uzala” (1975) is one of the best of his later films, although it seems to have faded into the shadows of “Kagemusha” and “Ran.” The plot centers on an early 20th century friendship between a Russian explorer and an East Asian trapper and hunter, who acts as his guide. This would be the last of Kurosawa’s works to be recognized with an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. The music is by Isaac Schwartz.

Snow again is in abundance in Finland’s “The White Reindeer” (1952). Set in Lapland, it tells the tale of a lonely herder’s wife, who visits a local shaman and is transformed into a shapeshifting, vampiric hind. The film was honored at the Cannes Film Festival with a special award for Best Fairy Tale Film, and at the Golden Globes as Best Foreign Film. Einar Englund wrote the music.

Sergei Prokofiev’s concert suite from “Lieutenant Kijé” (1934) is very well known, but for some reason the film is not. In fact, it has been widely circulated in program notes that the film was never actually completed, which is false. It has not been available for purchase in the U.S. for as long as I can remember, but you can watch it here:

Why The Criterion Collection has never gotten around to this one, I don’t know, but I’m sure there must be an explanation. The famous sleigh-ride, the “Troika,” begins just before the 45-minute mark. Note that the baritone on the soundtrack is none other than the composer himself, who thought the original singer employed for the purpose too refined.

Finally, we head to the South Pole with Robert Falcon Scott, for “Scott of the Antarctic” (1948). England’s Ealing Studios is probably best recognized for its classic comedies of the 1950s, many of them starring Alec Guinness. There’s not much funny about this harrowing true story, with John Mills as Scott and the most celebrated film score by Ralph Vaughan Williams. Vaughan Williams’ music perfectly reflects the sublime, austere beauty of an impenetrable wilderness. Material from the score was later reworked and incorporated into his Symphony No. 7, the “Sinfonia Antartica” (using the Italian spelling.)

Don’t forget your gloves and a hat! It’s a small world of cold this week, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:

PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EST/5:00 PM PST

SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – ALL NEW! – Saturday at 11:00 AM EST/8:00 AM PST

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EST/4:00 PM PST

Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

January 3, 2025
Post-Holiday Music & Book Finds

I know it’s not Epiphany yet, but with the more intense part of the holiday season now behind us, it looks as if I’ve managed to survive another year. I hope yours have been good ones.

Unfortunately, as previously reported, my laptop was the last casualty of 2024. I’ll have a replacement under my fingers today, but retrieving the old files is an ongoing challenge. For the time being, I’d like to share with you a few of my Christmas gifts.

Yes, I am still very much into physical media. If it doesn’t exist on compact disc or vinyl, it may as well be a live performance in a concert hall, because I’ll probably never listen to it again. Also, compact discs are extremely handy for the kind of work that I do. But enough with the apologies. I like what I like.

For one thing, I happen to be a nut for Franz Liszt’s rarely-heard “Christmas Tree Suite.” Liszt dedicated the work to his granddaughter, Daniela von Bülow, the daughter of Cosima Liszt and conductor Hans von Bülow. Some of the early movements are reflections on familiar carols, but as the suite progresses, the movements become dreamier and more introspective. The work was first performed on Christmas Day in 1881, the day Daniela’s birthday was always observed, though she was actually born on Christmas Eve. I have many recordings of the piece, but this is probably the most recently available, issued on the Naxos label. I have to say, having listened to it only once, it’s not likely to become a personal favorite. I’ll certainly go back and give it another chance, but I feel like Wojciech Waleczek is a little too soporific in his interpretation, especially in the earlier movements, in which the more familiar carols mosey a little more than would be desirable. This is only a first impression, and I may revise my opinion with increased exposure. Certainly, there is plenty of space for interpretive subjectivity as the work becomes more ruminative in the later movements.

The Charles Ives Anniversary Edition is one of the happy tie-ins with the 2024 Ives sesquicentennial celebrations. The five-CD box, released by Sony, and which I haven’t taken out of the shrink wrap yet, contains coveted reissues of plenty of Ives rarities and curios, including an album of the composer performing his own music at the keyboard.

Stefan Jackiw and Jeremy Denk gave an unforgettable concert of the Ives Violin Sonatas here in Princeton, on Ives’ birthday, October 20, in 2020. I didn’t know they had recorded the pieces, but lo and behold, here they are, on a recent Nonesuch release that also includes both of Ives’ piano sonatas. I haven’t listened to it yet, but I am very much looking forward to it.

The book is about the cellist Beatrice Harrison, long familiar to me from her classic recording of the Elgar Cello Concerto, but only recently did I learn of her worldwide fame in connection with a nightingale in her garden with whom she performed impromptu duets over the radio, captivating millions around the world. 2024 marked the centenary of the first of those broadcasts. I wrote a little more about it here before.

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1308616126724114&set=basw.AbpKcq6N8YFve4Jmc47IF0Cpw3fvpPfuJp99zZDC9GqTCc05UIZWWF40UPKTSpStP5FnKyywTPR_Apg0MTFHmuWa-bBfzobP9r2E34kkP0kBcJGADxiqoNs-cQkYkDwh-nq5TLthwzfrBryUuzNKRpsKH8bgFQ41BXVv5tqx28tuYg&opaqueCursor=Abqfx7PZKtgyYK1e-ycBYC3fwkUdUN1tVwtZhSWhhw21BEGeezUx3dp_oHUVvayqMrAGhllJKP5rOZy9rCRvxWW-J2GWQeARLnf2nRIgKsiIIDNwZ9A1n3vDjd1ctZwLp-3E5ntvGe0ZVCPKHDvsygeGqw-mJ3JjQMocERP5ngiYHfLjyleQoI_0mk3KtzGDaeETNMNzhTDhR2fE4_KUdmyq6tdm2Aqk5eh4KiiolC2NipODNhc4ewtZRXbHx1JoAHrOH9_s6PUIDxmObg5nhRJx7IKIq43Gb6qxhuq8zXCNCRHDm_ulO0A0E0XIrRAwI0T84pVfBuTT38neOhGKfrue8ACn6JmZLT_j9vR-72VIk4SbM-J4Z4_AWu885XyUKhiDYfM3TDYnBF6_ij5ukix68kRD0-ezyxHQUQs8qT63tU3wtfu4yBv4FXphxUtKkblmQrHhBkyNFobddVeiBLyV1GyYLVc5CO9iOUyaULNgdPFjt0-Jjz9MGU0Ee0EiNAXV79nZLDZW4ADljpO4rNk2ib2wHdYyUfcNvDUGSgjrSZ_pcUZ9SuB-mgZDLZqec4MHLQ0s7I9zVd8W4rcRiYcd4lRR7Zl3eYlRG6VJG05aZhRRbMn5HrdzB5vK0FCxjw2anELgtPVgpVBPamIvjfQdzKxQXP6q-ybbxhEPhgzN3MMr9aP4PqnkPI90gNcAtVZgLpDnY1MYBLQLjetRC5Y6BSCuM7x2qmwoNUxn6fkqJFHsD9Je_23ZskNflyBEIuM0xSiz2Nt3wZaLjHhuNG4euWb4MrybzkWfOrr_AMZ4pW9XeIZZ8RsOeJPeYtUfNWOVXC_7QCXk2VPICEmaSmG_xJZOn_xKyHfVuZffCAJz2aPR8e8gfpdtQ5bYFkLub28

Not a bad haul, if I do say so myself. I must have been a good boy, after all. Now that the New Year’s festivities have passed, I am looking forward to being back in my burrow until spring.

January 2, 2025

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