Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

Guitar Duo Concert at TCNJ & Princeton

If you’re in the area and you’d enjoy a musical serenade to go along with your peanut butter and banana sandwich, head on over to The College of New Jersey in Ewing for today’s “brown bag” concert.

Laura Oltman, who has taught guitar at Princeton University for over three decades, will join her husband, Michael Newman, who is new to the TCNJ faculty. Newman & Oltman will perform works for guitar duet by Ferdinando Carulli, Johann Nepomuk Hummel and Astor Piazzolla.

In addition, flutist Jayn Rosenfeld will join Oltman for Mauro Giuliani’s Gran Duetto Concertante, Op. 52. The hour-long concert will be held at Mayo Concert Hall in the college’s music building, beginning at 12:30. Bagged lunches are welcome.

Oltman and Rosenfeld will repeat the Giuliani work on Sunday, as part of concert by Richardson Chamber Players, to be held at Princeton University’s Richardson Auditorium, beginning at 3. The predominantly wind program will also include works by Mozart and Francis Poulenc. Oltman will preface Poulenc’s Sextet with a late guitar work, the “Sarabande,” from 1960.

Newman also teaches at Mannes College of Music in New York, and Oltman at Lafayette College in Easton, Pa. The Newman & Oltman Guitar Duo is ensemble-in-residence at Mannes.

Husband and wife will reunite for a Christmas concert at Villa Milagro Vineyards in Finesville, NJ, on Dec. 6 at 6:30 p.m.

To learn more about it – and them – check out my article in today’s Trenton Times:

http://www.nj.com/times-entertainment/index.ssf/2014/11/classical_music_newman_oltman.html

PHOTO: Newman & Oltman: Zing! go the strings of their art

November 21, 2014
Thanksgiving Film Music Family Community Country

This week on “Picture Perfect,” with Thanksgiving fast approaching, we’ll have music from films about family, community and country.

Aaron Copland’s music for “The Cummington Story” (1945) sets the tone. The short semi-documentary, made for the Office of War Information, relates the gradual acceptance of European war refugees into a cautious but fundamentally decent New England community. The score is pure Americana, with some of the material later finding its way into Copland’s Clarinet Concerto and “Down a Country Lane.”

Thank you, amazing YouTube, for making the complete film available online!

James Horner’s music for “Field of Dreams” (1989) is cut from the same cloth, or at any rate it is a square in the same folksy counterpane. Horner clearly wrote the music under the influence of Copland’s “Our Town.” The film itself is a male wish-fulfillment fantasy, in which a man finds redemption and a new understanding of his father in the enchanted cornfields of America’s heartland.

“The Best Years of Our Lives” (1946) tells the tale of the three war veterans struggling to readjust to civilian life. It isn’t easy, but with the support of family and friends, there’s plenty of hope for the future. Hugo Friedhofer wrote the Academy Award-winning score. The orchestrations were by Copland protégé (and composer of “The Big Country”) Jerome Moross.

Finally, Daniel Day-Lewis elevated Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln” (2012) to greatness with one of the most amazing performances ever captured on film. Day-Lewis’ gentle but shrewd Man of Destiny would go to any lengths to hold the country together. John Williams tapped into America’s proud musical heritage, clearly influenced by Copland and Ives, to create a score of stirring nobility.

I hope you’ll join me for these musical reflections of family, community and country this week, on “Picture Perfect.” You can listen to it this Friday evening at 6, with a repeat Saturday morning at 6, or you can catch it later as a webcast at http://www.wwfm.org.

November 20, 2014
Ippolitov-Ivanov & Georgian Music

Today is the birthday of Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov (1859-1935), a pupil of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, who made his name as a musical spokesperson for the Caucasus.

Ippolitov-Ivanov spent his formative creative years in Georgia, as director of the music academy and conductor of the orchestra in Tblisi. Though he would return to Russia to become a professor at – and eventually director of – the Moscow Conservatory, as a well as a prominent conductor of the Russian Choral Society and at Bolshoi Theatre, clearly the music of Georgia had become deeply ingrained. He returned there in 1924 to reorganize the Tblisi Conservatory. His compositional output includes works on Georgian, Armenian and Turkish themes.

His best-known piece, of course, is the “Procession of the Sardar,” from his “Caucasian Sketches.” It climaxes the Suite No. 1, which can be heard here:

A native Georgian composer of whose music I am particularly fond is Zakaria Paliashvili (1871-1933), regarded as the “Father of Georgian Music.” Paliashvili studied composition at the Moscow Conservatory under Sergei Taneyev (a pupil of Tchaikovsky). He then returned to Georgia to collect folk songs, co-found the Georgian Philharmonic Society and head the Tblisi Conservatory.

I discovered his music online a number of years ago, when I encountered a Georgian website that was selling CD-Rs of his operas, including “Abeselom and Eteri,” the posted excerpts from which were absolutely gorgeous. Apparently, Deutsche Grammophon issued some recordings on LP, back in the 1970s. However, I was not about to share my credit card number with an unknown merchant in Georgia!

Unfortunately, just about everything is currently out of print. I did play Paliashvili’s “Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom” on “The Lost Chord” a number of years ago.

Holy cow! Somebody posted one of his operas, “Daisi,” on YouTube!

Zoiks! Here’s a selection from “Abeselom and Eteri!”

And a film version?!!!! No way! I can’t wait to watch this!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlDhjCqCVM0

I’ve got Georgia on my mind.

PHOTOS: Gorgeous Georgians Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov (honorary, left) and Zakaria Paliashvili

November 19, 2014
The Whistler Theme Song & Richard Dix Mysteries

What the hell is the theme to “The Whistler?” The completely counterintuitive signature music, by Wilbur Hatch, is warbled not only at the opening of the classic radio show, but also the start of the oddly enjoyable movie series featuring Richard Dix (a.k.a. Wooden Dix).

Dix couldn’t act his way out of a paper bag (one of cinema’s great mysteries is how he was nominated as Best Actor for “Cimarron” in 1931), but I have to admire his tenacity. He appears in seven of the eight “Whistler” films, playing a different character in each one. For some reason, he retired before the last. At that point, why bother?

“The Whistler” is obviously the poor man’s version of “The Shadow.” Each story follows the formula of a criminal undone by an overlooked detail, fate or his own stupidity. Irony is an essential element. The Whistler looks on as a dispassionate narrator, offering his commentary like a Greek chorus.

Turner Classic Movies: TCM is showing four installments of the series, tonight, beginning at 8 ET, including “The Whistler,” “The Power of the Whistler,” “The Voice of the Whistler” and “Mysterious Intruder.”

Several of the Whistler films were directed by William Castle, who would later earn notoriety for his outrageous showmanship, promoting B-horror classics like “The House on Haunted Hill,” “The Tingler” and “13 Ghosts” by offering life insurance policies or having a registered nurse on hand in the lobby in the unlikely event a viewer would suffer cardiac arrest from fright.

“I am the Whistler, and I know many things, for I walk by night.” What? Does one necessarily follow the other? Am I missing something?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ota-Tsg8IXg&index=2&list=PLr_0xy6Kk9yLeBYW-nz_Cvrf78JZag80D

November 19, 2014
Freezing Winds Excalibur and the Cold Song

Highs today around freezing, with wind gusts up to 30 mph. Here’s the “Cold Song” from Henry Purcell’s “King Arthur.”

Every time I watch “Excalibur” (still, for my money, the best King Arthur movie), somebody else gets famous: Helen Mirren, Patrick Stewart, Gabriel Byrne, Liam Neeson, and now Ciarán Hinds.

Seemingly the one exception is Paul Geoffrey, who played Perceval. Some months back I discovered that Geoffrey is now a real estate agent in Santa Fe, NM.

http://www.realtor.com/realestateagents/Paul-Geoffrey_Santa-Fe_NM_562478_208799473

Maybe if I watch it again…

November 18, 2014

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