Today is the birthday of my good friend and steadfast companion for Mahler concerts at the Philadelphia Orchestra, composer Robert Moran. A pupil of Darius Milhaud, Luciano Berio, and Hans Erich Apostel, Bob’s experimented with all kinds music, from city-encompassing performance art “happenings,” to collaborations with Philip Glass, to commissions from Houston Grand Opera, Scottish Ballet, and Trinity Wall Street. Throughout his career, he’s often been fascinated by spatial effects in music. This is one of his more recent works, “Solenga,” from 2023:
Bob, if you see this, I’ve been trying to contact you. My computer died the other week and my email account is now over the storage limit, so I can’t write. I’ve been trying to phone, but of course you don’t have voice mail. (Come to think of it, neither do I!) But you can call me, text, or private message me on Facebook, if you are so moved. There’s a dinner invitation in it for you. Happy birthday!
An aria from Bob’s Beauty and the Beast opera, “Desert of Roses”
Selections from “Trinity Requiem,” for the tenth anniversary of 9/11
Flying high over Albania
“Alice” for Scottish Ballet
Looking groovy and introducing his “Lunchbag Opera” for the BBC
“Buddha Goes to Bayreuth,” Part 1
“Buddha Goes to Bayreuth,” Part 2
“Modern Love Waltz” by Philip Glass, arranged by Robert Moran for accordion and cello
From the repertoire alone, how could this weekend’s concerts of the Princeton Symphony Orchestra not stand as a highlight of the current season? And positing that, I take into account the bigger brand name orchestras in the adjacent metropolises of New York and Philadelphia. Rossen Milanov will conduct Tchaikovsky’s vertiginous, broody, and magnificent “Manfred Symphony” at Princeton University’s Richardson Auditorium in two performances, this Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 4 p.m.
This music is Romantic with a capital R. The quintessential Byronic hero, Manfred is weary but indomitable, an unconquerable superman, tormented by unimaginable suffering. Haunted by mysterious guilt (in connection with the death of his beloved), he wanders the Bernese Alps, longing for extinction, and meets his fate defiantly, rejecting all authority, corporeal and supernatural. And as you know, it doesn’t take much to get Tchaikovsky to seethe most eloquently.
It will be very interesting to see how the group tackles this foray into the sublime, which requires a large orchestra with organ. (Richardson’s was removed years ago.) The work was originally scheduled for the ill-fated pandemic season of 2019-20, then coupled with Reinhold Glière’s Harp Concerto. If it could be thus, and it were not a madness and a mockery, I might have been most happy!
But I will definitely be content with Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto, one of the loveliest works of the composer’s neoclassical period, to be heard on the reconstituted program’s first half. Temperamentally, the concerto is worlds away from Tchaikovsky’s Alpine awesomeness, but its prismatic reflections on Baroque airs can be quite seductive, with the spirit of Bach flitting around the composer’s crystalline heart. Leila Josefowicz, last heard here in Alban Berg’s concerto in 2016, will return to Princeton as the work’s soloist.
The concerts are being presented in celebration of PSO music director Rossen Milanov’s 60th birthday. In the spirit of Manfred, I defy the solace of both cake and conviviality! However, I confess, I can’t wait to hear this program.
For tickets and information, visit princetonsymphony.org.
IMAGE: John Martin, “Manfred and the Witch of the Alps” (1837)
It was on this date 70 years ago that Marian Anderson made her Metropolitan Opera debut, as the sorceress Ulrica, in Verdi’s “Un ballo in maschera” (“A Masked Ball”), making her the first African American singer to appear in a solo role on the Met stage.
Anderson, whose talent was described by Arturo Toscanini as “a voice one hears once in a hundred years,” was already in her late 50s, at the far end of a singing career that had already made her a household name and a reluctant symbol for social justice. Her legendary recital from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial took place on Easter, 1939 – nearly 16 years earlier – after she was shut out of performing at Constitution Hall by the Daughters of the American Revolution because of her skin color. Ironically, this only served to increase her exposure. The audience gathered on the National Mall was estimated at 75,000, with millions listening to the live radio broadcast in their kitchens and living rooms across the nation.
Anderson’s belated appearance at the Met may have signaled a new era, but progress was slow, and the administration was careful about which singers it sent to tour in certain areas of the country.
It would be churlish of me to observe that, in order for a Black woman to make it on stage at the Met, she had to be dressed like Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. Because it is opera, after all, and everyone dresses like that.
The first male African American soloist appeared on the Met stage only a few weeks later. Baritone Robert McFarrin sang Amonasro in Verdi’s “Aida.” McFerrin was the father of “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” singer Bobby McFerrin, to give you an idea of how recent this history is.
Now it’s not unusual to see Black singers in whatever role. Opera is fantasy, after all. Everything is heightened. It shouldn’t matter if different cultures and social strata are inexplicable melting pots. In the past, no one thought twice if a white Canadian sang Otello or an Italian woman sang Cio-Cio-San or if the principals were a mix of French, German, Irish, and American.
The core of opera is great singing. And no matter how outlandish the plots or settings or costumes or make-up, the most enduring examples of the form deal in emotional truth. It’s one of the few arenas in which all men and women are received with an enthusiasm commensurate with their talent.
I can hardly hear myself think, with twelve drummers drumming!
While I am generally all for extending Christmas for as long as possible, we have come finally to the twelfth day, the Feast of the Epiphany, and the official close of the season. At least in the West. For the Orthodox, today is Christmas Eve.
For the rest of us, this is traditionally the day to take down the Christmas tree and all the festive decorations and to let the tree spirits go about their business. Our wise forebears believed that it is bad luck to take down the decorations earlier. Taking them down later is equally unlucky, so that if you miss the date, you’re supposed to leave everything up for the rest of the year. Ignore this advice at the peril of your crops! (If you ask me, the bylaws need to me emended to include a clause against putting out decorations before Thanksgiving.)
I hope La Befana, the Christmas witch, was good to you and that you’re not one of those nuts who pounds a drum in frigid water. I’d rather climb out of a warm bed to find a gift in my shoe.
In case you missed it yesterday, here again is the last section of Respighi’s tone poem “Feste Romane” (“Roman Festivals”), titled “La Befana.” It’s often given in English as “Epiphany,” but it’s really named for the Christmas witch, whom Italians embrace as part of their January 6 celebrations.
However you choose to celebrate, I hope your Epiphany is a festive one!
Who likes it when Merlin shows up in the Christmas story? We all do, of course!
One of my favorite Christmas pieces is Rutland Boughton’s “Bethlehem,” a choral drama adapted from the 14th century Coventry Nativity Play. Composed in 1915, and written very much in the English pastoral idiom, the work incorporates settings of familiar carols, such as “O come, all ye faithful” and “The Holly and the Ivy.”
Taking a page from Richard Wagner, Boughton composed a cycle of five operas on Arthurian themes and started a Glastonbury Festival, in the style of Bayreuth. Alas, neither the operas nor the festival, as it was originally conceived, have endured.
In Boughton’s “Bethlehem,” the shepherds bear gifts of a penny whistle, a hat, and a pair of warm mittens. The Three Wise Men hobnob with Herod, Zarathustra, and, yes, Merlin. If you gravitate toward the music of Ralph Vaughan Williams, you’re bound to fall under the work’s disarming spell.
For years, I was unable to share any audio from the piece, due to Hyperion Records’ justifiably Draconian practice of not allowing any its recordings on YouTube. But the company is now in other hands, so here it is, finally, as a playlist – albeit with the tracks posted separately, so prepare to have to skip an occasional ad.
BONUS! “March of the Three Holy Kings” from Franz Liszt’s “Christus”
IMAGES: (top) Detail from Edward Burne-Jones’ “Adoration of the Magi;” (left to right) Twelfth Night holly man; banging the drum in Bulgaria; and Befana the Christmas witch
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.
