Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

Koussevitzky Champion of American Music

Friday was the 150th anniversary of Serge Koussevitzky’s birth, but I had just finished recording one of my radio shows, and I couldn’t muster the energy and focus to post about it. Even a photo with a link to one of his recordings would have been something, albeit inadequate in proportion to his significance as one of the great champions of modern music and, more specifically, American music.

It’s been calculated that, between 1924 and 1944, Koussevitzky presented 162 American works, 66 of which were world premieres. On his Concerts Koussevitzky, conducted in Paris in the 1920s, he also introduced Ravel’s enduring orchestration of Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition” and Honegger’s “Pacific 231.” As music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, he gave first performances of Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra and Copland’s “Appalachian Spring” suite.

“Kouss” was in on the ground floor at Tanglewood. He mentored Leonard Bernstein and others. When his wife, Nadia, died, he set up the Koussevitzky Music Foundation in her memory, to support and promote living composers. Early Foundation commissions yielded Britten’s “Peter Grimes” and Messiaen’s “Turangalîla-Symphonie.”

Kouss began his career as a double-bassist and blossomed into one of the most important conductors of the 20th century. I was remiss in not acknowledging him on his birthday anniversary. Mea culpa, and happy 150, Serge Koussevitzky!

First recording of “Pictures at an Exhibition”

Broadcast premiere of Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra (with the original wet-noodle ending, soon to be revised by the composer)

Live performance of Sibelius’ Symphony No. 7

Roy Harris’ Symphony No. 3

Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5

Rehearsing the BSO in Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Scheherazade”

Filmed performance of Randall Thompson’s “The Last Words of David”

Playing the slow movement of his Double-Bass Concerto, with piano

10-minute documentary, “The Story of Tanglewood” (1949)

Serge Koussevitzky, holding hat, with (left to right) Olivier Messiaen, Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein (lighting up), and Lukas Foss at Tanglewood in 1949 (photo by Ruth Orkin)

July 30, 2024
Benjamin Luxon Cornish Baritone Dies at 87

The Cornish baritone Benjamin Luxon has died.

Luxon made more than one hundred recordings, many of them devoted to English song. One of my favorites was a recital on Chandos Records devoted to the songs of Peter Warlock. Of course, Warlock being Warlock, a percentage of those songs are about drinking and milkmaids.

As an up-and-coming singer, Luxon joined Benjamin Britten’s English Opera Group and went on to appear in a number of the composer’s productions. Britten conceived the title role of his television opera “Owen Wingrave” specifically for Luxon’s voice.

Luxon sang at Covent Garden, the Glyndebourne Opera Festival, and most of the major European houses. He also performed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. In his quiver of roles were Falstaff, Wozzeck, Don Giovanni, Eugene Onegin, and Papageno.

As a recitalist, his repertoire was broad, ranging from early music to lieder to contemporary song, music hall, and folk music. With tenor Robert Tear, he worked to revive forgotten and dimly-recollected parlor songs. In recital, he was frequently accompanied by pianist David Willison.

Beginning around 1990, Luxon began to experience hearing loss. He retired from singing, but continued to appear as a reader and narrator and to give masterclasses and direct. He lived his final years in the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts, also home to the Tanglewood Music Center, where he had been a frequent guest.

Luxon died on Thursday at the age of 87. R.I.P.

Channeling “MacArthur Park”-era Richard Harris (but in better voice)

“Johnny, I hardly knew ya’”

Peter Warlock, “Captain Stratton’s Fancy”

As Verdi’s Falstaff (1 of 2)

Falstaff (2 of 2)

Vintage music hall

Narrating Stravinsky’s “A Soldier’s Tale” at 82

A Cornish tale

2009 radio interview

“Give Me a Ticket to Heaven”

July 29, 2024
X The Man with the X-Ray Eyes Movie Review

The announcement “Take 2” would be enough to give a cost-conscious director like Roger Corman the night sweats. Nonetheless, we’ll try it again, as Roy and I discuss Corman’s “X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes” (1963), rescheduled from Friday. The “eyes” will have it, when you join us for the next Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner, livestreamed on Facebook, YouTube, etc., this Sunday evening at 7:00 EDT!

https://www.facebook.com/roystiedyescificorner

July 28, 2024
Wolfgang Rihm German Composer Dies at 72

The eminent and prolific German composer Wolfgang Rihm has died. With some 500 works to his name – including operas, orchestral music, and chamber pieces – Rihm is said to have been one of the most frequently performed contemporary composers in Europe.

While no one would ever describe his music as a laugh riot, this is one of his more accessible works, helped along no doubt by the performance by violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter. The piece is called “Lichtes Spiel” (“Light Game,” or “Light Play”) and was composed in 2009. German-speakers might also detect it as a pun on “leichtes spiel” (“an easy job,” or more idiomatically, in English, “child’s play”).

Rihm, who lived with cancer for over a quarter century, died on Friday. He was 72 years-old.

July 28, 2024
French Sea Music Beyond Debussy on The Lost Chord

Claude Debussy wasn’t the only French composer to write music inspired by the sea. This week on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll find refreshment in an hour of “musique de l’eau.”

Jacques Ibert served as a naval officer during World War I. One of his most frequently performed pieces, “Escales” (“Ports of Call”), conjures impressions of three Mediterranean locales: Palermo, Tunis-Nefti, and Valencia. Considerably less well known is his “Symphonie marine,” composed nine years later, in 1931. Ibert refused to allow the work to be performed in his lifetime, though exactly why is unclear.

The music actually derives from a film score (for a short film titled “S.O.S. Foch”). Ibert was the first European composer to write music for a talking picture. He certainly wasn’t ashamed of his output for the cinema. In all, he wrote some 30 film scores.

For whatever reason, the “Symphonie marine” was given its belated premiere shortly after the composer’s death, in 1963, with Charles Munch conducting. We’ll hear the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra conducted by Louis Frémaux.

Joseph-Guy Ropartz (1864-1955) was a student of Théodore Dubois, Jules Massenet, and César Franck. He composed five symphonies, chamber music, and a number of choral works. When his friend, Albéric Magnard, was killed defending his home from German soldiers during the First World War – in retribution Magnard’s house was burned to the ground and his unpublished manuscripts destroyed – Ropartz was able to reconstruct the orchestration of Magnard’s opera, “Guercœur,” from memory, since he had conducted a performance of its third act.

Ropartz was associated with the Breton Cultural Renaissance and an ardent supporter of Breton regional autonomy. He joined the Breton Regionalist Union in 1898.

The central movement of his “Prélude, marine et chansons,” composed in 1928 – actually a quintet for flute, violin, viola, cello and harp – is clearly a seascape. The finale is based on an old Breton folk song, “What noise there is upon the earth.” We’ll hear a performance by the Linos Ensemble.

Another composer with a connection to Brittany was Jean Cras (1879-1932). Cras, who was born and died in Brest, wrote a ravishing opera, “Polyphème” (“Polyphemus”), about a forlorn cyclops, unlucky in love, who wanders off into the sea. Not only was he a productive composer of meltingly lovely music, he was also a career naval officer. And one of distinction. He commanded a torpedo boat in the Adriatic, during the First World War. On one occasion, he sank an enemy submarine, then rescued one of his sailors who had fallen overboard. Clearly he would have written a lot more music if not for the demands of his day job.

Cras’ “Journal de bord” (“Ship’s Log”) was composed in 1927. Like Debussy’s “La mer,” composed in 1903-05, the work suggests the sea at different times of the day and under various conditions.

First: Eight to midnight quarter – swell on the open sea, the sky is overcast, clearing at sunset, nothing in sight.

Second: Midnight to four quarter – beautiful weather, beautiful sea, nothing unusual, moonlight.

Third: Four to midnight quarter: Land ahoy!

We’ll hear the Luxembourg Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Jean-Francois Antonioli.

I hope you’ll get yourself a crusty bread, then join me for “Fruits de mer,” a nourishing repast of French music for the sea, this week 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/

July 27, 2024

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