The Capital Philharmonic of New Jersey has announced that its founding music director, Daniel Spalding, has stepped down. Assistant conductor Sebastian Grand and “several distinguished guest conductors” will take over for the orchestra’s 2024-25 season. No reason was specified for Spalding’s departure.
At least he went out with a bang. His final concert as music director took place in April at Trenton’s Roebling Machine Shop in celebration of the centenary of Trenton-born George Antheil’s “Ballet Mécanique.” Four pianists, a plethora of percussionists, the Plenty Pepper Steel Band, and Trenton Circus Squad combined for a memorable season finale.
Spalding spearheaded the formation of the Capital Philharmonic in 2013. The organization was raised from the ashes of the Greater Trenton Symphony Orchestra – New Jersey’s oldest professional symphonic ensemble – which essentially folded when it couldn’t pay its musicians in 2012.
Spalding directed the Capital Phil for the first ten years of its existence. He is also music director of the Philadelphia Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra, a group he founded in 1991. His recordings are available on the Arabesque, Ariel, Connoisseur Society, Naxos, New World, and Vienna Modern Masters labels.
The Scottish conductor James Loughran has died. Although perhaps not so well known in the United States, Loughran made some fine recordings, including a fondly-remembered cycle of Brahms symphonies. But for fans of the cult composer Havergal Brian, he will forever have their gratitude for having conducted the first commercial recording of any of Brian’s music.
Loughran’s recording of Brian’s Symphony No. 10, with the Leicestershire Schools Symphony Orchestra, was released in 1973, paired with the composer’s Symphony No. 21, conducted by Eric Pinkett, on a Unicorn-Kanchana LP.
Learn more about Havergal Brian in this televised documentary segment, broadcast when the composer was 96 years-old, including footage of Loughran conducting during the recording session. Also, Brian himself speaks!
Brian was a composer of almost superhuman tenacity. Despite encouragement from Sir Edward Elgar and early performances by Sir Granville Bantock and Sir Thomas Beecham, hardly any of his music was ever played. Yet he went right on composing for decades.
By coincidence, today marks the anniversary of the first performance of Brian’s most notorious work, his Symphony No. 1, the “Gothic” Symphony, a work of elephantine scale, so long and so large that it was enshrined in the Guinness Book of World Records. The work received its belated premiere – four decades after it was written – on this date in 1961.
The interest generated by the work spurred a belated reassessment of Brian’s output, with the BBC committed to performing all of Brian’s symphonies. There are 32 of them in all, 20 of them composed after the age of 80. Talk about faith in one’s own ability!
Although in the last year of Brian’s life he was named Composer of the Year by the Composers Guild of Great Britain, recognition came too late for him to see any of his symphonies issued commercially prior to his death in 1972, two months shy of his 97th birthday.
Brian, a contemporary of Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst, emerged from a Midlands working-class background. He left school at the age of 12 and supported himself as a coal miner, a worker for timber firms, and a carpenter’s apprentice – all the while mastering his craft as a composer – until the modest patronage of a wealthy Staffordshire businessman lessened his burden. However, with the outbreak of war in Europe and turbulence in his personal life, the arrangement was not to last, and Brian struggled to keep his head above water. He took menial jobs as he continued to compose, through decades of obscurity and borderline poverty.
It was BBC producer and symphonist Robert Simpson who arranged for a performance of Brian’s Symphony No. 8 in 1954, at which point Brian was already 78 years-old. It was the first time the composer had ever heard one of his symphonies. Simpson continued to use his influence to secure performances of Brian’s music, mostly as radio broadcasts.
This commenced the final chapter of the composer’s most remarkable life as, in his early 80s, he doubled-down and tapped into a well of creative energy that blossomed into an astonishing Indian summer that yielded twenty more symphonies.
The insane demands of the “Gothic,” with its orchestra of 200 players, even before factoring in 500 singers and four brass bands, makes Mahler’s so-called “Symphony of a Thousand” seem like chamber music.
The work falls into two parts. Part I is inspired by Goethe’s “Faust,” and Part II is a gargantuan setting of the “Te Deum.” If ever there was a cathedral in sound, this work would be it. Eat your heart out, Anton Bruckner.
Loughran began his career in the early 1960s, when he worked alongside chief conductor Constantin Silvestri with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. He took up his own music directorships, or the equivalent, when he moved on to the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra (1965-71) and then Hallé Orchestra (1971-83).
It was after an acclaimed performance of “Aida” at Covent Garden that Benjamin Britten invited him to assume the music directorship of the English Opera Group.
Loughran became the first British conductor to be appointed chief of a German orchestra, when he was appointed principal conductor of the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra (1979-83).
Between 1977 and 1985, he conducted the Last Night at the Proms five times. He was also principal guest conductor of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales from 1987 to 1990.
He made his American debut with the New York Philharmonic in 1972.
Loughran died on Wednesday, eleven days shy of his 93rd birthday. R.I.P.
Brian, “Gothic Symphony”
Loughran conducts Brian’s Symphony No. 10
Loughran conducts Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 2, with Garrick Ohlsson the soloist, at Royal Albert Hall in 1978
Loughran conducts Sir Arthur Sullivan, Sir William Walton, and Benjamin Britten
When the sun sets this evening, June 23, you had better be prepared to deal with Chernobog! That’s right, it’s St. John’s Eve – the eve of the Feast Day of St. John the Baptist.
On the eve of St. John’s nativity (observed), St. John’s wort, prized for its miraculous healing powers, is sought, as is the fern flower, believed by some to bring good fortune, wealth, and the ability to understand animal speech.
It’s a time for the lighting of bonfires against evil spirits, and even dragons, which roam the earth as the sun again pursues a southerly course. And it’s a time when witches are believed to rendezvous with powerful forces, such as the Slavic demon that emerges from the Bald Mountain at the climax of Disney’s “Fantasia.”
“Dracula” fans might be interested to know that none other than Bela Lugosi struck demonic poses for Disney animators for several days as a model for the film’s climactic sequence. Ultimately, he would be replaced by Wilfred Jackson. Still, how cool is that?
Leopold Stokowski conducts the Philadelphia Orchestra in his own arrangement of Modest Mussorgsky’s music on the soundtrack. Also, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that that’s Princeton’s Westminster Choir, as “A Night on Bald Mountain” segues into Schubert’s “Ave Maria.”
The master of ceremonies, Deems Taylor, states that the setting is Walpurgis Night (April 30). Deems Taylor is wrong! I’m not afraid to say so, since I’ve pretty much given up on ever receiving a Deems Taylor-Virgil Thomson Award for Radio Broadcast at this point, for as richly deserved as it might be.
Chernobog could care less about Walpurgis Night. He’s kickin’ it up for St. John!
Relive your childhood anxiety here. Click on “watch video clip” at the link.
Today marks the bicentennial of the birth of Carl Reinecke (1824-1910). What, no fireworks? Perhaps there should be.
Reinecke lived an unusually long life for his day. But it is the amount of incident crammed into that life that makes it seem even more so.
A musical prodigy who composed from the age of 7, and performed in public from the age of 12, Reinecke lived and worked in Copenhagen, Paris, Cologne, and Leipzig. He studied with Felix Mendelssohn, Robert Schumann, and Franz Liszt. His concert tours took him all over Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and the British Isles.
He taught in Cologne, Breslau, and Leipzig. Among his pupils were Isaac Albéniz, Max Bruch, Ferruccio Busoni, Mikalojus Čiurlionis, Edvard Grieg, Leoš Janáček, Julius Röntgen, Christian Sinding, Charles Villiers Stanford, Johan Svendsen, and Felix Weingartner. Furthermore, he was music director of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra for 35 years. (The final, seven-movement version of Brahms’ “Ein deutsches Requiem” was among the works he premiered.)
Somewhere along the way, he found time to compose. I mean a lot. Look at the opus numbers on the links below! Operas, symphonies, concertos, chamber music, and instrumental works – some 300 pieces published. As if that’s not enough to make one sit up and take notice, it’s not far into the Opp. 200s that he’s writing in the 20th century. Think about that. I don’t know, it blows MY mind. It really brings home just how short music history is.
At the time of his birth, Beethoven and Schubert were still alive. In fact, he was born the same year Schubert wrote his “Death and the Maiden” quartet. He died the year Alban Berg wrote HIS String Quartet. It was a totally different world.
Toward the end of his life, between 1904 and 1907, Reinecke made some 27 piano rolls, 12 of which document performances of his own music. He was the earliest born musician to have his artistry as an interpreter preserved in any format. Among the other composers whose music he “recorded” were Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schumann.
He died in 1910 at the age of 85.
And where is he now? Flutists, I suppose, still know “Undine.” Pianists may be familiar with the cadenzas he wrote for the Mozart and Beethoven concertos. He also composed a fun “Toy Symphony” I used to enjoy broadcasting around Christmas.
Mostly, however, his works remain cherished secrets for the blessed few, like holy relics preserved in the hearts and libraries of the most devout musical monastics.
You’ll find plenty to enjoy below. Take a few minutes today to celebrate Carl Reinecke!
Flute Sonata in E minor, Op. 167 “Undine” (1882) – the subtitle alludes to a novella by Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué, very popular among the Romantics, that tells the story of a water spirit who marries a knight in order to gain a soul
Flute Concerto in D major, Op. 283 (1908)
Harp Concerto in E minor, Op. 182 (1884)
Piano Concerto No. 3 in C major, Op. 144 (1877)
Violin Concerto in G minor, Op. 141 (1876), composed for Joseph Joachim
Toy Symphony, Op. 239 (first 15 minutes of this LP)
Hupfeld piano roll, c. 1908, of Reinecke and his wife, Margharite, playing selections from his suite “Nutcracker and Mouse King,” composed in 1855 – predating Tchaikovsky’s ballet on the same subject by nearly 40 years
It’s summer. It’s hot. This week on “The Lost Chord,” kick off your shoes, pour a glass of L’Orangerie, and settle in for John McLaughlin’s “Mediterranean Concerto.”
McLaughlin, who’s made his home in Monaco for the past 40 years, is better known as a jazz or jazz fusion artist. His infectious concerto, composed in 1985, is ambitious in scope, about twice the length of those ordinarily devoted to the guitar.
We’ll also hear a work by Malta’s national composer, Charles Camilleri – his “Mediterranean Dances” of 1961.
You don’t have to leave home for a taste of the Mediterranean. Join me for “Mediterranean Muse,” 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
