Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

Belvidere NJ A Victorian Town & Ernest Schelling

Along U.S. Highway 46, there is a sign trumpeting the charms of “Victorian Belvidere… New Jersey’s Best Kept Secret!” (exclamation point theirs).

I had some business in the Poconos this morning that took me right up Route 31 to 46 (with the turn-off, I kid you not, at Buttzville), and I recalled the composer and pianist Ernest Schelling happened to be born in Belvidere. I had never visited his house, and I wondered if it still stood.

So around 7:30, I did a quick Google search on my phone and decided to swing by 333 Water Street to take a photograph of his former residence. It was only afterward, when I was about half a mile away, that it occurred to me I should go back and look for an historical marker. Bingo! It’s right there, on the wall of the front porch. I wonder how many Belvidere residents remember Schelling or have looked up to see his plaque?

To be frank, Belvidere has seen better days. There are a few enticing hot dog joints down the road, and the gas is cheap; but beyond Country Gate Playhouse, which I espied, a cultural anomaly, on Greenwich Street, there never seems to be much to encourage a prolonged stay.

Admittedly, I only ever drive through en route to somewhere else, and passing judgment from the main drag of a locale isn’t always the fairest method of formulating an assessment; but from everything I saw today, even on the back streets (especially on the back streets), this is pretty hardcore flag-and-ammo country – and by this, I emphatically do NOT mean any disrespect to the flag!

It can still be read in the faded glory of some of the architecture that it hasn’t always been the case. Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis.

That said, and with apologies to anyone who read this post before I was reminded, and may have been offended by the omission, I am certain there are plenty of lovely people who live there!

And I’ve never been there for Victorian Day. Click through these photos for a feel.

https://www.facebook.com/belvidereheritage1845/

A book stand is a sure way to thaw my icy heart.

I’ve posted about Belvidere’s most famous musical son a few times over the years. You can learn more about him, with a few samples of his music, here:

https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=901422934110104&set=bc.AbruLS8tjUOVE8o6M0nu0XN-amp7QoELOlc0-fS2H0KTk28CTsYLD7OtnSm_d-bzGj86XJa4Qt9freCznMpmpRKjkjIb5B3_ayaE_wouevm3-OzD6lU7BSFTdwZnGMd3dBXsBWA5pOnyA3EJJN1bfZd9NFHB2w6kvCM339YdCXXLKQ&opaqueCursor=AbqLeAeVbPXUib3OQF4cQVBOyoOMIP_HcoQEkWe22LMVr6zCyijR8weUeqEN0zSaPmXJXJqMmgo8h2__OtVI0Co-vz7nE34AT-qXqEOSArjbVE-rBSBdD17OZIMJRO-5tVJOz_uc0YUbWCCqQf5Hwcs-OFVz_1oYIe9nPaoIYsKpclry61_Mj6De7qxreMdDhAVHuKug1ueKdQ07oAxqDZoviiRkWUAbe8lCcD6uC_L9-3dYZbI2oShSUXF99Pfm2X-sjICWwXeKvejlAzf5ljaknbZO70lFBLj_ij5boZTpZgcG1EALIGcoRHbE6tDg8n-p6Xu8mE1GbM_vf-q5ySPpW7doEZ5KwLBCvgkfM_i9evUxqXUB6f0Wp4T74EwYqG86VosPw7wTKBzM1aNnrj6xT5mXJZ7GjlwEucnbDLGP-ncmRmhAwBmSpa-5MBGgfk4k3av5hn1tsBm-

September 17, 2024
Leonard Rose Documentary NYC Interviews

I was in New York on Thursday for another round of interviews for a documentary being shot by filmmaker H. Paul Moon about the great American cellist Leonard Rose.

Here are some fun photos from the shoot, which took place at Bowery Poetry in the East Village. In various permutations, you’ll find Paul, musicologist Eric Wen (in one shot seen in the chair I usually occupy, asking questions from off-camera), cellist and Rose pupil Sara Sant’Ambrogio of the Eroica Trio, and violist Eric Shumsky, son of the legendary violinist Oscar Shumsky, who was Rose’s close associate and good friend.

There were lots of juicy stories about Toscanini, Glenn Gould, and Isaac Stern, among others, and some anecdotes about Yo-Yo Ma gone wild. I’m guessing not all of these will make it into the movie! This is an ongoing project that will continue to span many months, with more interviews in New York, Philadelphia, and D.C., and perhaps further afield.

All the interview subjects on Thursday were great, of course, but the highlight of the day, for me, surely was the realization that Wen, who is on the faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music, was a regular patron of my Philadelphia book store, back in the 1990s! He just couldn’t get over it. In particular, he treasures a Samuel Johnson facsimile he found there, and he says he and his wife still talk about the shop, despite the fact that it closed in that location all the way back in 2000. (That’s us together in another photo, taken, he says, to share with her.) As you can imagine, it made me feel really good that someone still remembers and values the space and the inventory I curated.

It turns out we have much else in common, including a shared adoration of Erich Wolfgang Korngold!

It was a real pleasure to meet everyone.

September 16, 2024
Richard Arnell Encounters and Musical Mysteries

Last month I attended the Bard Music Festival in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, and then had to move on to a wedding in Vermont.

During my Bard stay, over breakfast at the inn, I met someone with the unusual name of Arnell. His first name, I mean. He was an African American male, probably around 40, a writer from L.A., who was there to see his daughter start school at the college. I only mention his race, because not long after, I was in a convenience store in the mountains of Vermont, and I noticed the name tag on an older white woman behind the register, probably in her 70s. The tag, as by now surely you’ve anticipated, also read Arnell!

Being Classic Ross Amico, I had to ask both of them if they were familiar with the composer Richard Arnell or if, at the very least, their parents were musical.

I first learned of Richard Arnell, born on this date in 1917, from a recording of his Sherlock Holmes ballet, “The Great Detective.” But he was also a renowned symphonist, who spent the war years here in the United States, cut off from his home in the U.K. while visiting the 1939 World’s Fair. Here, he cultivated important friendships with Bernard Herrmann, Virgil Thomson, and Sir Thomas Beecham (who, alongside Sir John Barbirolli and Leopold Stokowski, championed his concert works). He also wrote film music for Robert J. Flaherty and ballets for George Balanchine and Frederick Ashton.

A few years ago, when WPRB 103.3 FM still had five hours a day devoted to classical music, I hosted a marathon tribute to the composer for the occasion of the 100th anniversary of his birth. To this end, I had the support of two of the composer’s younger friends – Patrick Jonathan, who now makes his home in Malaysia, and Warren Cohen, who is music director of the MusicaNova Orchestra, based in Phoenix, AZ. Both of them were very generous with their time, sharing anecdotes, recordings, and, in the case of Jonathan, historical documents. As luck would have it, Cohen actually makes his home in New Jersey, just about an hour away. So he was able to drive down and join me for an in-studio interview.

Here’s a link to our conversation.

MusicaNova is a fascinating organization whose mission it is to present “the greatest music you’ve never heard – yet.” In fact, Cohen has conducted first American performances of a number of Arnell’s major works. The sound file includes a MusicaNova performance of Arnell’s Symphony No. 5 – subtitled “The Gorilla” (!) – and Cohen’s gorgeous arrangement for string orchestra, sanctioned by the composer, of the “Elegy” from Arnell’s String Quartet No. 3.

This season, among its more unusual offerings, MusicaNova will present rarely-heard music by Lou Harrison and Germaine Tailleferre, a world premiere by Manel Burgos de la Rosa, and a work by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor that hasn’t been heard in the United States since 1912! Visit the orchestra’s website, and if you find yourself in the area, treat yourself to a musical adventure.

https://www.musicanovaaz.org/

It turns out neither of my recent Arnell acquaintances came from musical families. How many people have Arnell for their first name? It shall remain one of those great mysteries, why the universe would bother to tantalize me with two Arnells living on separate coasts, encountered over several days, roughly four hours apart.

Verily, it is a case worthy of the Great Detective!

Happy birthday, Richard Arnell.

September 15, 2024
César Franck and His Belgian Legacy

César Franck was a strangely charismatic outsider. A Belgian abroad, he was required to take French citizenship in order to teach at the Paris Conservatory. A renowned organist, his unexpected genius for composition blossomed late.

His enduring fame rests on a handful of fairly late works. He managed to reinvigorate the French symphonic and chamber music traditions through his use of “cyclic form,” with themes throughout generated from a single motif. He also embraced the symphonic poem. In these regards he certainly bore the influence of Franz Liszt. In turn, he himself became highly influential among a generation of French and Belgian composers.

This week on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll examine music by two Belgians who fell under his sway.

Armand Marsick, born in 1877, trained as a violinist at the Liège Conservatory, before studying abroad in Nancy with Franck enthusiast Guy Ropartz. Then he moved to Paris, where he studied with another Franckian, Vincent d’Indy. His career led him to Athens, and then Bilbao, where he founded a conservatory and an orchestra. He returned to Liège at the age of 50, settling in to teach and direct the concert society there. He died in 1959. The bulk of Marsick’s compositional output, which consisted of some forty works, was written between the ages of 23 and 37. We’ll enjoy a symphonic poem from 1908, titled “La Source.”

Guillaume Lekeu was born in Verviers in 1870. He studied with Franck in Paris, then, like Marsick, with d’Indy following Franck’s death. Lekeu, unfortunately, is also remarkable for his very short life. He became ill with typhoid fever after consuming contaminated sherbet at a restaurant, and died in 1894, one day after his 24th birthday. Despite his sadly shortened existence, he managed to make important contacts and to write music of considerable promise. At the time of his death, he had already been composing for nine years, from the age of 15. In 1891 he was recipient of a second prize in the celebrated Prix de Rome competition.

In all, Lekeu composed about 50 works. We’ll hear his Violin Sonata from 1892, written for the great Belgian virtuoso Eugene Ysaye, and his Adagio from 1891, originally composed for quartet and string orchestra. The score to the latter bears an epigraph from a poem by Georges Vanor, “The pale flowers of memory.”

I hope you’ll join me for music by these Belgian followers of César Franck. That’s “Franckly Belgian,” 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 EDT/5:00 PM PDT

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

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

Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

September 14, 2024
Schoenberg’s Lighter Side on Sweetness and Light

This week on “Sweetness and Light,” the focus is on… Arnold Schoenberg?!!! That’s right, the High Priest of Dodecaphonic Music.

Schoenberg was born on September 13, 1874, 150 years ago. But before you scroll to the next post, I hasten to add, there will be no twelve-tone music on the program. Instead, we’ll enjoy the LIGHTER SIDE of this 20th century master.

And contrary to his many somber portraits and photographs, Schoenberg could indeed smile.

We’ll hear arrangements of music by Johann Strauss II and Johann Sebastian Bach, a cello concerto freely adapted from a harpsichord piece by 18th century composer Georg Matthias Monn, and, since Schoenberg regarded himself as the artistic heir of Johannes Brahms, a German folk song setting – directed by Pierre Boulez, no less!

We’re coming up on the 29th anniversary of my professional radio debut on September 28, 1995 (having honed my craft in the bush league of community radio for 9 years before that), so I thought I’d conclude with a Schoenberg cabaret song I programmed on that very first morning. The text is by none other than Emanuel Schikaneder, Mozart’s librettist for “The Magic Flute.”

It’s Schoenberg for people who think they don’t like Schoenberg on “Sweetness and Light,” this Saturday morning at 11:00 EDT/8:00 PDT, exclusively on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Stream it wherever you are at the link:

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

Since yesterday’s post for Schoenberg’s actual birthday got no love, here it is again:

https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=1381350726117320&set=a.883855802533484

Then sample some Schoenberg paintings and drawings:

https://www.schoenberg.at/index.php/en/schoenberg-2/bildnerischeswerk

Schoenberg speaks (one of many such files on YouTube):

PHOTOS (counterclockwise from top): Schoenberg on cello, horsing around with musician friends (including violinist Fritz Kreisler); with Charlie Chaplin; smiling with his daughter; and ready for a match (possibly with his frequent tennis partner, George Gershwin)

September 14, 2024

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