Spent a refreshing afternoon today in Finland, thanks to my internet radio and Yle Klassinen. Of course, they’re ahead, so it was really evening for them. The programming is about the furthest thing from the kind of dumbing down that’s sadly become the norm for so much U.S. classical music radio. I had the station on for seven hours today. No single movements. Complete works only. And surprisingly few warhorses. In fact, I think I recognized maybe four pieces. And trust me, I know A LOT of classical music. Fortunately, they post the playlists on their website, which can be translated into English. A good thing, too, as I can’t understand a thing the hosts are saying. But if I listen often enough, I expect I’ll be speaking Finnish in a month. Just got to enjoy my first Sibelius symphony (the Symphony No. 3, with Sakari Oramo conducting) transmitted directly from Finland. Thank you, Yle Klassinen!
Category: Daily Dispatch
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French Orchestrators Behind the Music
Vive les orchestrateurs de musique classique français!
This week on “The Lost Chord,” for Bastille Day, enjoy original works by figures who employed their skills as orchestrators in the service of more celebrated French composers.
Henri Rabaud (1873-1949) was, variously, conductor at the Paris Opéra Comique, director of the Paris Opera, and director of the Paris Conservatory. For a season, he even led the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Though he wrote several operas and two symphonies, as well as choral, chamber and instrumental music, Rabaud’s own original output is very seldom heard. However, his orchestration of Gabriel Fauré’s charming “Dolly Suite,” originally for piano four-hands, endures. We’ll hear Rabaud’s symphonic poem “La Procession nocturne,” inspired by Nicolas Lenau’s “Faust.”
André Caplet (1878-1925) directed the Boston Opera from 1910 to 1914. He was gassed while serving in the First World War, which resulted in the pleurisy that plagued him for the remainder of his short life. Caplet died at the age of 44. His harp quintet, “Conte fantastique,” after Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death” is occasionally heard. But his tenuous grip on fame is really through his association with another composer, Claude Debussy, for whom he orchestrated “Children’s Corner,” “Clair de lune,” “Le Martyrdom de saint Sébastien,” and “La boîte à joujoux.” Today, we’ll have the opportunity to enjoy Caplet’s lovely Septet for Voices and String Quartet.
Henri Büsser (1872-1973) acted as secretary to Charles Gounod. He also became a protégé and friend of Jules Massenet. At Debussy’s request, Büsser conducted the fourth performance of “Pélleas and Mélisande” and numerous performances thereafter. He died in Paris less than three weeks shy of his 102nd birthday! Büsser’s own output includes much music for the stage, including 14 operas, a ballet, and incidental music. Yet his name is kept alive principally as the orchestrator of Debussy’s “Petite Suite” and “Printemps.” He’ll be represented today’s program by “Andalucia,” an original work for flute, on Spanish themes.
Charles Koechlin (1867-1950) had many enthusiasms: medieval music, Bach, travel, stereoscopic photography, communism, pantheism, sports. He was especially interested in early film stars (he wrote works in tribute to Ginger Rogers, Douglas Fairbanks, Charles Chaplin, and Lillian Harvey) and the “Jungle Books” of Rudyard Kipling. Despite enjoying an astonishingly prolific career as a composer himself, Koechlin is associated in most people’s minds with his orchestration of Fauré’s “Pélleas and Mélisande.” He also worked as an orchestrator on Debussy’s “Khamma.”
Koechlin’s series of orchestral works, inspired by Kipling, span most of his creative life. These were composed in a broad array of styles, encompassing impressionism, neo-classicism, polytonality, and even quasi-serialism. We’ll hear the last of his Kipling cycle, “Les Bandar-Log,” ostensibly about a barrel of chattering monkeys, but the term has also come to be used to describe anyone who irresponsibly prattles.
I hope you’ll join me in liberating these overlooked composers from the Bastille of neglect on “French Connections,” 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!
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Napoleonic Wars: Classic Movie Scores
There is a bon mot you may have heard to the effect that England and America are two countries divided by a common language. The observation is sharp and spot-on, so naturally it has been attributed to two of the greatest wits of their day, George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde. Yet these attributions are without verifiable foundation. (The closest Wilde ever came in print: “We really have everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, the language.”)
Similarly, we all know what is meant by “Napoleon complex.” But did you know there is every possibility that Napoleon was not short? Like the commonality of language that divides the English and the Americans (and I know that Shaw and Wilde were Irish), it turns out that there may be some confusion over Napoleon’s actual height on account of two different systems of measurement that happened to use the same terms.
Be that as it may, this week on “Picture Perfect,” with Bastille Day (July 14) right around the corner, we’ll surge to power on the allegedly diminutive shoulders of Napoleon Bonaparte. The focus will be on the Napoleonic Wars – which is to say, movies set, at least in part, between about 1803 and 1815.
There is a lot of unlikely casting in these films. The first English language adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” (1956) stars Audrey Hepburn, Henry Fonda, and Mel Ferrer, with Herbert Lom as Napoleon. Lom is fine; but Henry Fonda? At least the music is by Nino Rota.
Stanley Kramer’s “The Pride and the Passion” (1957) is loosely based on the novel “The Gun,” by C.S. Forester. Forester is best known for the nautical adventures of Horatio Hornblower – also set during the Napoleonic Wars.
The film depicts the story of a British officer (Cary Grant) who is ordered to retrieve a large cannon from Spain. But before he can do so, he must lend assistance to the leader of the Spanish guerillas (Frank Sinatra!) in the transport of the weapon across 600 miles of treacherous ground to reclaim the city of Avila from the French. Further complications arise from their respective feelings for Sinatra’s mistress (Sophia Loren).
The score is by Trenton-born George Antheil, self-proclaimed “Bad Boy of Music.” Antheil achieved lasting notoriety as the composer of the raucous “Ballet Mécanique” in the 1920s. He would later embrace a more conservative language for his symphonies and for his music for the movies. Antheil composed over 30 film scores. “The Pride and the Passion” would be his last.
Ridley Scott’s first feature, “The Duellists” (1977), is based on a story by Joseph Conrad. It relates the tale of an obsessive duellist (Harvey Keitel), who takes it as a personal affront when he is arrested by a fellow hussar (Keith Carradine) for crossing swords with the mayor’s nephew, whom he has fatally wounded. This sets the two men in a kind of combative pas de deux, a series of duels that spans the entire Napoleonic era. The sheer beauty of the film is matched by Howard Blake’s haunting score.
Abel Gance’s “Napoleon” (1927) is widely regarded as one of the towering achievements in all of cinema. I’ve had the good fortune to see it on the big screen twice. However, it was with a new score by Carmine Coppola, the father of Francis Ford Coppola, who financed the film’s revival. The original score was by Arthur Honegger. Honegger was the famed French composer (of Swiss birth), who was one of the members of Les Six, a lose collective of artists that also included Francis Poulenc and Darius Milhaud.
Gance’s epic was gargantuan at the time I saw it, in the 1980s – about four hours long. The most recent restoration, previewed at the Cannes Film Festival in May, brings the running time to 7 hours. That’s still down from a 9 ½ hour version shown in 1927!
The epic is crowned by a grandiose triptych, for which the screen widens to accommodate the simultaneous projection of three reels – an extraordinary innovation for its time. “Napoleon” is full of such touches. Apparently, there had even been a sequence shot in 3-D, which was left on the cutting room floor. If you’re at all interested in the squandered potential of cinema, this is a film which must be seen in the theater.
I hope you’ll join me for music from big movies set during the Napoleonic Wars. It will be a satisfying show by any measure, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, 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!
Frank Strobel conducted an orchestra of 250 musicians in the premiere of the most recent restoration of Gance’s “Napoleon” on July 4 & 5.
250-Piece Orchestra Accompanies ‘Napoleon by Abel Gance’ At Two-Day Restoration Premiere
PHOTO: A brooding Harvey Keitel in the extraordinarily beautiful “The Duellists”
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KWAX Classical Radio Home of Picture Perfect Sweetness and Light
I receive a shout-out in this write-up about KWAX from 2013 (at the link). I hasten to emphasize, the article is 11 years old! Still, the station is much the same, even if some of the shows on its roster have changed. It’s rare that classical music hosts are allowed to choose their own music. All the more reason to cherish the station.
https://northwestreverb.blogspot.com/2013/05/terry-ross-on-kwax-classical-radio.html
This week’s “Picture Perfect” and “The Lost Chord” are ready to go. I’m in the process of recording my Saturday morning show, “Sweetness and Light,” right now. It’s a celebration of Bastille Day, so yes, lots of French music to come (and some Franz Liszt). The current air times for all three shows are posted below.
PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – 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!
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Rushing or Dragging Understanding Toddler Paces
Is she rushing, or is she dragging?
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