Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

Winter Solstice & Holiday Hope

ADVENT CALENDAR – DAY 22

No matter what your personal creed, the real reason for the season is the Winter Solstice, the shortest day, which is why this time of year so many of the world’s cultures pull out all the stops with music, drink, evergreen, gifts and bizarre localized customs like the Yule goat (see my post of Dec. 3). It all goes back to man’s primordial desire to restore the sun and drive the cold winter away.

So whether you set up a crèche, light candles or get liquored up and leap over bonfires, embrace life, family and community and look to the New Year with courage, optimism and appreciation. Christmas is about nothing if not hope. And love, I suppose. Remember that the next few days when you’re tempted to exchange scowls with the person who cuts you off on the way to Christmas shopping. We’re all only human. But sometimes that can be enough.

Welcome Yule!

One of my favorite Christmas traditions:

One of my favorite Christmas albums (click “play all,” though you may have to be on guard to skip the occasional disruptive ad):

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAA2q_i2tCon6CepTgeL0n1UDUim8aueq

This year, the original Revels runs through December 28. Search under “Revels Nationwide” at the top of the page (via the link below) to find the Revels nearest you.

Home

Unfortunately, the Philadelphia Revels, which used to be held in Bryn Mawr, appears to have gone belly-up. Back in the day, back in the day…

http://articles.philly.com/1989-12-15/entertainment/26159564_1_holiday-tradition-dances-christmas

It’s refreshing to see a Twelfth Night celebration scheduled for Boston. Contrary to what many believe (especially radio stations), Christmas does not end on December 25.

December 21, 2014
Liszt’s Christus A Christmas Weekend Listen

ADVENT CALENDAR – DAY 21

I try to make it a point to listen to Franz Liszt’s oratorio, “Christus,” every year, whether I need it or not.

It helps that I love Liszt, of course. Not all of his music – someone so prolific had to turn out a clunker now and then – but he was such a noble, well-intentioned guy. I’ve been a hardcore admirer ever since I read Alan Walker’s biography about 14 years ago. And hearing so many performances of his Piano Sonata certainly didn’t hurt.

Liszt was one of the most original musical thinkers of the 19th century. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that, after Beethoven, Liszt was probably the most influential musician of the 1800s. There was likely no composer who didn’t at some point make a decision to follow or react against him. Liszt wrote a lot of wonderful music, and at least as much that might be construed as a little embarrassing. He was more successful as a musical thinker than he was a consistent executor of his ideas. But Wagner, to name just one, would have been a very different composer without Liszt. And we all know how influential Wagner was.

Liszt’s flamboyance was legendary, but I think his reputation in that regard stemmed mostly from the overwhelming impressions he created in recital, and the crowds’ hysterical reactions to them. Liszt was also an introverted, thoughtful, pious man. He was so pious, in fact, that at one point he wound up taking minor orders and living in a cell in Rome, where he was known as the Abbé Liszt. So his religious works were not mere posturing.

The incredible “Christus” is an oratorio in three parts that is really part oratorio, part loose collection of symphonic poems. Part I, the Christmas portion, contains two purely orchestral movements, which together comprise about half an hour. The concluding “March of the Three Holy Kings” is a corker. It’s also interesting in that one of the movement’s main themes is nearly identical to Wagner’s motif for Wotan. Which came first? Both “Christus” and “Das Rheingold” were written at just about the same time.

I know it’s the last weekend before Christmas, so everyone is likely very busy, but if there is any time to listen to “Christus” it is on a weekend. Maybe you can block out three hours late on your Sunday afternoon. Kick back on the sofa with the Christmas lights on, enjoy the tree, and wallow in this ambitious, romantic music.

Part I: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_KWFIl_XR4
Part II: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcFd4m2wa1M
Part III: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hEdexzXqcI

If you just can’t get enough, here’s Liszt’s “Christmas Tree Suite.”

Some of the movements in the first half incorporate traditional carols (including “Adeste Fideles,” in yet another evocation of the Three Holy Kings). In the later movements, Liszt just kind of dreamily wanders into the future the way only Liszt can. All of the movement titles are listed on the page containing the video.

PHOTOS: Liszt takes the cloth (left); Jesus gets frankincense and myrrh

December 20, 2014
Trenton Princeton Classical Music Holiday Concerts

ADVENT CALENDAR – DAY 20

The concert calendar is nearly as frenzied as the last-minute holiday shoppers.

Here are but four programs of interest, scheduled to take place in the Trenton-Princeton area over the course of this last weekend before Christmas. Hopefully you can find a few hours to enjoy.

My article in today’s Trenton Times:

http://www.nj.com/times-entertainment/index.ssf/2014/12/classical_music_its_not_christ.html

PHOTOS: Bach or Handel for the holidays? Decisions, decisions…

December 19, 2014
Nutcracker’s Dark Side: Hoffmann’s Sinister Tale

ADVENT CALENDAR – DAY 18

If you ever detected a sinister undertow in Tchaikovsky’s ballet “The Nutcracker,” the source material, by E.T.A. Hoffmann is much worse.

Hoffmann’s 1816 story focuses on the Nutcracker’s battle with the evil Mouse King, filtered through the vivid imagination of a doomed dreamer with a perpetual mistrust of adults. It’s Herr Drosselmayer all the way, baby.

It often puzzles me how so many adaptations of Hoffmann’s stories gloss over the sinister and the uncanny elements. “The Nutcracker” has its share of up-tempo numbers. They’re mostly the ones we hear in stores while we’re out Christmas shopping. However, there’s little doubt the composer grasped the inexorable undertow of Hoffmann, since his score conveys plenty of anxiety to counterbalance the twee sweets.

Listen to the bass clarinet slither beneath that glittery celesta in the “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.” And what’s all that creeping around, with the disturbing sforzandi? There’s something desperate and perhaps a little manic underpinning the magic.

Maurice Sendak completely gets it:

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

December 18, 2014
Literary Christmas Movie Music Guide

ADVENT CALENDAR – DAY 19

Remember when movies used to be inspired by books, as opposed to toys and video games?

This week on “Picture Perfect,” we’ll have an hour of music from movies adapted from novels and short stories on Christmas themes, or with memorable Christmas moments.

We’ll begin with Alfred Newman’s score for “O. Henry’s Full House,” a 1952 anthology based on five separate stories of O. Henry, each adapted by a different screenwriter and directed by a separate director. The film is doubly literary in that each of its segments is introduced by none other than John Steinbeck. We’ll be listening to music from the final portion, based on the classic Christmas story, “The Gift of the Magi.”

Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women” features a memorable Christmas chapter, in which the Marches help out a neighbor in need by donating their Christmas breakfast – only to be rewarded later in the day with a feast of their own. “Little Women” has been adapted to film at least five times (reportedly with another on the way). Thomas Newman – son of Alfred – wrote the Academy Award-nominated score for the 1994 version, the one with Winona Ryder and Susan Sarandon.

Miklós Rózsa won his third Academy Award for “Ben-Hur” (filmed three times), in 1959. We’ll be listening to music from the prologue and Nativity scene. General Lew Wallace’s novel, published in 1880, became the bestselling work of American fiction for the next 50 years. Its streak was broken in 1936 by Margaret Mitchell’s “Gone with the Wind.”

Finally, we’ll have a suite from the 1951 adaptation of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.” I can’t even count how many times that one’s been filmed. This particular version stars Alastair Sim as Scrooge. The music was composed by Richard Addinsell – he of the “Warsaw Concerto” fame – and the performance is conducted by David Newman, Alfred Newman’s OTHER musical son.

I hope you’ll join me for a literary Christmas, 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.

December 18, 2014

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