Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

Madness and Piano Movie Music

This week on “Picture Perfect,” practice makes psychotic, as we listen to music from movies about madness and the piano.

Laird Cregar plays an unhinged pianist-composer, who, whenever he hears a loud, discordant sound, is compelled to commit murder, in the 1945 film “Hangover Square.” Bernard Herrmann wrote the moody, romantic score, which includes a piano concerto, played by Cregar’s character during the film’s conflagration finale.

Peter Lorre is an unstable musicologist who is haunted by the disembodied hand of a murdered pianist with a penchant for Brahms’ arrangement of Bach’s Chaconne, in “The Beast with Five Fingers,” from 1946. Max Steiner wrote the music. The piano is played on the film’s soundtrack by Victor Aller, the brother-in-law of Felix Slatkin, and therefore Leonard Slatkin’s uncle.

Alan Alda plays a frustrated pianist who falls in with a ring of Satanists, in “The Mephisto Waltz” from 1971. This time, Jerry Goldsmith blends Franz Liszt with amplified instruments and electronics to memorably eerie effect. Five years later, Goldsmith would win his only Academy Award for his music to “The Omen.”

Finally, Hans Conried plays a dictatorial pedagogue in “The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T,” released in 1953, which holds the distinction of being the only feature film written by Dr. Seuss. The film features outrageous production design (including a gargantuan keyboard for 500 enslaved boys) and whimsical songs.

The composer was Frederick Hollander, born in London. Hollander came to fame in Germany as Friedrich Hollander. His best-known international success was with “The Blue Angel,” with Marlene Dietrich, who introduced his song, “Falling in Love Again. With the rise of the Nazis, Hollander fled to the United States, where he worked on over 100 films.

Join me for madness and the piano this week, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, this Friday evening at 6 ET. In case you haven’t heard, the show will now repeat Saturday mornings at 6. (It ought to be a real treat to hear “The Mephisto Waltz” at that hour!) If you’re still not able to listen, you can catch it later as a webcast at http://www.wwfm.org.

October 23, 2014
Franz Liszt and WWFM’s New Broadcast Times

I wasn’t going to break the news until Sunday, but apparently I’m a week off. Beginning this week, WWFM is rebroadcasting its specialty shows at new, more accessible hours.

Where I’m concerned, that means “The Lost Chord,” first aired Sunday at 10 p.m. ET, will now repeat Wednesday at 6 p.m., and “Picture Perfect,” first aired Friday at 6 p.m., will repeat Saturday at 6 a.m. (!)

It ought to be interesting to hear the reaction when listeners get to enjoy Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’ “St. Thomas Wake” during the dinner hour or Jerry Goldsmith’s “The Mephisto Waltz” on their clock radios.

Speaking of the “Mephisto Waltz,” today is the birthday of Franz Liszt (1811-1886), one of the great pianists, of course, but also one of the most innovative musical thinkers who ever lived.

Among his innumerable achievements, Liszt pioneered a technique known as thematic transformation, in which a basic theme is put through incessant permutations and shifting moods to arrive at a kind of structural unity, as an alternative to traditional classical form. He is also credited with the creation of the symphonic poem.

Without Liszt, there would have been no Wagner as we know him. In fact, Romantic music would have had to find its own way. His later music at times anticipates the experiments of Debussy and Arnold Schoenberg.

It was Liszt’s ambition to “hurl my lance into the boundless realms of future.” In that, he certainly succeeded.

Happy birthday, Franz Liszt!

Georges Cziffra performs “Les jeux d’eaux à la Villa d’Este” (“The Fountains of the Villa d’Este”):

Sviatoslav Richter performs “Nuages gris” (“Grey Clouds”):

And don’t forget to tune in tonight at 6 to hear a rebroadcast of “Mad Max,” a belated 80th birthday tribute to Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, on “The Lost Chord.” You can find out more about it at http://www.wwfm.org.

PHOTO: Liszt was seldom listless

October 22, 2014
Sir Malcolm Arnold: A Genius of Light and Darkness

Funny, I was just thinking of Sir Malcolm Arnold yesterday, when his “Four Scottish Dances” came to me in the shower (a dangerous place to reel). Arnold was born on this date in 1921.

He began his career as a trumpeter with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, becoming principal in 1943.

At the outbreak of World War II, Arnold registered as a conscientious objector. However, after the death of his brother, a pilot in the RAF, he was moved to enlist. He never saw action beyond a military band, and eventually he quite literally shot himself in the foot in order to get back to civilian life.

In 1948, he left behind orchestral playing to become a full-time composer. He had an attractive melodic gift, which served him well in the writing of light music and film scores. (He won an Academy Award in 1957 for his work on “The Bridge on the River Kwai.”)

However, he also had his dark side, as passages of his symphonies can attest. He was frequently cantankerous, inebriated and highly promiscuous. He tried to kill himself twice. He was treated for depression and alcoholism, overcoming both, but in the early 1980s he was given a year to live. He actually wound up living another 22 years, during which he completed his Symphony No. 9, among other works.

He died in 2006, one month shy of his 85th birthday. He was a brilliant composer of great facility. (When Malcolm Williamson was named Master of the Queen’s Music, Sir William Walton remarked that the “wrong Malcolm” had been given the job.) For a man with so many personal demons, he wrote reams of perfectly delightful music.

Happy birthday, Sir Malcolm Arnold.

Just in time for Hallowe’en, here’s his “Tam O’Shanter Overture,” after Robert Burns:

And his “Four Scottish Dances”:

Burns’ annotated text here:

http://loki.stockton.edu/~kinsellt/litresources/ayr/tam.html

PHOTO: “Weel done, Cutty-sark!”

October 21, 2014
Happy Birthday, Charles Ives: An American Original

“Are my ears on wrong?” remarked Charles Ives, wondering at how out of step with musical convention his own compositions could be. Yet he soldiered on, writing works of all stripes, tonalities and quasi-tonalities, even atonality, navigating with remarkable certainty for 30 years with very few performances to affirm his chosen course.

I’m not saying anything which hasn’t been said before in declaring he was an American original and one of the great voices of our native music. Ives’ works are imbued with nostalgia and a sense of man’s humble aspirations as part of the great, ungraspable machinery of the universe.

Yowling church choirs stand shoulder to shoulder with cranky, cracker barrel political debates. Mischievous children pull Fourth of July pranks as marching bands turn back upon themselves. Even in the heart of the city, little dramas play out under a starry, infinite sky.

No less than Gustav Mahler – who declared a symphony must be like the world, it must contain everything – Ives embraces in his works the most unassuming folk song or popular tune. He tosses them into a box like so many wheat pennies, bottle caps, campaign buttons and marbles. The box becomes a cornerstone for a whitewashed church with an impossibly tall steeple. The steeple acts as a conveyor of invisible impulses that permeate everything.

Today is the 140th anniversary of Ives’ birth. Join me for a verse of “Happy Birthday,” Ives-style, singing in the key of E-flat while a pianist accompanies us in C Major. Maybe we’ve had a little too much to drink, so we have a hard time keeping together. Somebody decides they’ve started too high, so midway through they take it down an octave. Another hangs on to the last note after everyone else has finished.

Then imagine the sound joining with that of a high school band practicing in the distance. A mail carrier whistles. The strains of a violin emerge from an open window. Someone has on their car radio as they work under the hood. These expressions of humanity blend into a magnificent streamer, unfurled by unseen hands to envelop the earth and continue into the beyond.

Happy birthday, Charles Ives!

Here’s Ives’ “Hallowe’en” (1906): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emPYJGE07y0

One of his songs, “Charlie Rutlage” (1920): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahhLImmYH2Q

“The Fourth of July” (1912): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkM6GQBUrqk

PHOTO: “When you hear strong masculine music like this, get up and USE YOUR EARS LIKE A MAN!” – Charles Ives

October 20, 2014
Vittorio Giannini Composer Spotlight

Today I have a song in my heart for Vittorio Giannini.

Giannini was born in Philadelphia in 1903. He studied at the Milan Conservatory, after which he earned his graduate degree from Juilliard. He then taught at Juilliard, the Manhattan School of Music and the Curtis Institute.

Arguably his most important contribution as an educator was the foundation in 1965 of the North Carolina School of the Arts, which he envisioned as a Juilliard of the South. The school attracted to its faculty such luminaries as Ruggiero Ricci and Janos Starker. Giannini died the year after it opened, in 1966.

He was from a family of opera singers. His father founded the Verdi Opera House in Philadelphia. One sister taught voice at the Curtis Institute of Music and the other sang at the Metropolitan Opera. Giannini himself composed 14 operas, including “Lucedia,” “The Scarlet Letter,” “The Taming of the Shrew,” and one for radio, “Beauty and the Beast.” Two, “Casanova” and “Christus,” remain unperformed.

Not surprisingly, in his day he was known largely for his vocal music, but his Symphony No. 3 for wind band has fared best on disc. There are seven recordings in the current catalogue, from the classic release directed by A. Clyde Roller on the Mercury label to one of the later-in-life, digital recordings of Frederick Fennell.

Daniel Spalding, music director of the New Jersey Capital Philharmonic Orchestra, recorded the Symphony No. 4 with the Bournemouth Symphony, for Naxos. The companion piece is Giannini’s Piano Concerto, with Gabriela Imreh, the soloist.

Apparently the release was a revelation for at least one John Williams fan!

http://www.instantencore.com/buzz/item.aspx?FeedEntryId=39804

Spalding will conduct the NJ Capital Philharmonic this Saturday, Oct. 25, at the Trenton War Memorial. The program will include Ron Nelson’s “Savannah River Holiday,” Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 (with Awadagin Pratt), and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5.

The following week, Spalding will embark on a tour of Russia with the Philadelphia Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra. Among the American-heavy repertoire will be Giannini’s Concerto Grosso for Strings.

Here it is, performed by a Russian orchestra:

BONUS: Rare recording of Mario Lanza singing Giannini’s “Tell Me, Oh Blue, Blue Sky”:

Happy birthday, Vittorio Giannini!

October 19, 2014

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