Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

Cosi fan tutte Last Chance Princeton

Mozart’s “Cosi fan tutte” is a farce with humanity. You have one more chance to see it at The Princeton Festival. The opera concludes its run at the performance pavilion on the grounds of historic Morven Museum & Garden, 55 Stockton St. (Route 206), on Tuesday at 7 p.m.

Did you know that originally Antonio Salieri took a crack at composing it? In 1994, two fragments in Salieri’s hand were discovered in the Austrian National Library. That was before Lorenzo Da Ponte’s libretto was taken up by “the creature.”

Of course, Mozart had an “in,” as he had already collaborated with Da Ponte on “The Marriage of Figaro” and “Don Giovanni.” And anyway, with all respect to Signor Salieri, the subject matter seems much more in line with Mozart’s saucy sensibility. While the Viennese of 1790 were worldly folk, “Cosi” would be given the side-eye in the 19th century, when the opera was deemed risqué or even immoral. If it was done at all, it was presented with tasteful alterations. It was only in the 20th century that the work’s reputation was restored.

Yeah, the characters are knuckleheads – flawed, irrational, and stupid – but they are also capable of great beauty. It’s all right there in the title, often translated, if anyone bothers, as “So Do They All.”

The festival’s final week will continue to embrace a variety of genres. A Juneteenth celebration will culminate in a concert of Black choral music, sung by the Capital Singers of Trenton and friends, under the direction of Westminster Choir College’s Vinroy D. Brown, at the pavilion on Wednesday at 7 p.m. The program will include Robert Ray’s “Gospel Mass.” Earlier, there will be a flag raising ceremony, food, reflection, and fun. For details, visit the festival website at the link below.

On Thursday at 7 p.m., The Sebastians will return for a program of Baroque favorites, with a selection of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, along with works by Telemann and Vivaldi. That concert will be held across the street at Trinity Church Princeton (33 Mercer St.).

On Friday at 7 p.m., back at the pavilion, the Juilliard-trained, genre-defying trio Empire Wild will unpack its signature mix of original music, inventive covers, and twists on the classical canon.

Finally, on Saturday at 7 p.m., Tony Award winning Santino Fontana, star of stage (“Tootsie,” “Cinderella”), film (Disney’s “Frozen”), and television (“Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” “The Marvelous Ms. Maisel”), will bring the festival to an uplifting conclusion with an evening of pops, cabaret, and Broadway, accompanied by the Princeton Symphony Orchestra, again under the performance pavilion at Morven.

For tickets and information about parking, concessions, and more, visit the Princeton Festival website, at princetonsymphony.org/festival.

Video samples:

Behind the scenes of “Cosi fan tutte”

The Sebastians perform Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 6

Empire Wild in 5 minutes

Santino Fontana

June 17, 2024
Harry Ruby Marx Brothers Connection

According to family lore, my stepfather is somehow related to Harry Ruby. Of course, I am proud of this, being an inveterate Marx Brothers fan. With Bert Kalmar, Ruby composed some of the funniest and most enduring songs in the Marxes’ best films, including “Hooray for Captain Spaulding” (from “Animal Crackers,” later Groucho’s signature tune), “I’m Against It,” “I Always Get My Man,” and “Everyone Says I Love You” (from “Horse Feathers”), and “Hail, Hail Freedonia” (from “Duck Soup”). Kalmar & Ruby also received writing credits. (“Animal Crackers” was based on one of their Broadway shows.) Not composed for the films, but nevertheless beloved by Groucho, who continued to sing them throughout his career, were Ruby’s “Show Me a Rose” (again, with Kalmar) and this gem, for Father’s Day.

BONUS: From “Horse Feathers,” Groucho as the college president and Zeppo as his son:

A Marx Brothers Dads & Grads special!

June 16, 2024
Tcherepnin Dynasty: 3 Generations

The classical music world has certainly had its share of dynasties. There are the Bachs. There are the Bendas. There are the Strausses.

The Tcherepnin line, which began in the 1870s, continues to the present day. This week on “The Lost Chord,” on the eve of Father’s Day, we’ll sample wares from the family business, with works from three generations.

Nikolai Tcherepnin (1873-1945), whose father was a strict disciplinarian, who demanded that he study law, became a pupil of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. He himself became a teacher, took a position at the St. Petersburg Conservatory (later becoming its principal), conducted at the Russian Musical Society, the Moscow Philharmonic, and the Mariinsky Theatre, and led the debut performance of Serge Diaghilev’s famed Ballets Russes, beginning a five-year association with the company.

In 1918, he took up over the directorship of the National Conservatory of Tbilisi, the capitol of the Democratic Republic of Georgia. With the Bolshevik takeover of Georgia in 1921, Tcherepnin moved to Paris, where he lived the remainder of his life. There, he conducted, performed as pianist, and founded the Russian Conservatory. He became president of the Belyayev publishing house, a position he maintained until his death.

In 1909, he wrote a symphonic poem, “The Enchanted Kingdom,” a work based upon the same fairy tale that inspired the ballet “The Firebird.” Tcherepnin is said to have been an early contender to write the music for “The Firebird,” after Anatoly Liadov bowed out and before Igor Stravinsky was granted the commission.

We’ll also hear the Symphony No. 3 by Nikolai’s son, Alexander Tcherepnin (1899-1977), whose own path led him from Russia to Paris to China (his wife was the Chinese pianist Lee Hsien Ming) to DePaul University in Chicago.

Alexander’s sons, Serge (b. 1941) and Ivan (1943-1998), became fascinated with electronics. Ivan studied with Leon Kirchner, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Pierre Boulez. In 1972, he became director of the Harvard University Electronic Music Studio, where he remained until his death in 1998.

Ivan’s early music was experimental in nature. He gradually developed a tendency toward modernism and postmodernism. We’ll listen to his “Concerto for Two Continents” – the continents in question being North America and Asia, lands with which Ivan, born to Russian and Chinese parents and raised in the United States, felt a deeply personal connection. The concerto alludes to a number of familiar Russian and American folk and popular melodies. It also employs a judicious amount of electronics, making for some otherworldly effects.

In case you’re curious, the Tcherepnin dynasty continues to flourish with its fourth generation of composers – Nikolai’s great grandsons, Stefan (b. 1977) and Sergei (b. 1981) – but today we’ll only have time for three!

Talent runs in the family. I hope you’ll join me for “Tcherepnin Troika,” 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/

PHOTOS: (top) Alexander Tcherepnin and Lee Hsien Ming with their sons, Ivan and Serge; (bottom left) paterfamilias Nikolai Tcherepnin; and Ivan and Alexander at the piano

June 15, 2024
Father’s Day Music Kebab on KWAX

This week on “Sweetness and Light,” on the eve of Father’s Day, grab a cold one and meet me at the grill. I’ll be assembling a classical kebab for Dad.

The adage, “the family that plays together, stays together,” will be borne out through all-in-the-family performances by Los Romeros (the Royal Family of the Spanish Guitar) and the Shostakoviches (composer father, conductor son, and pianist grandson). Cellist Julian Lloyd Webber, brother of Andrew Lloyd Webber, will play music by their father, William. Proud papa Erich Wolfgang Korngold will unveil his “Baby Serenade,” written for the impending arrival of his son, Georg (future record producer George Korngold). We’ll also hear a setting of a Danish folk song, “Father and Daughter,” by Percy Grainger, and a beloved Giacomo Puccini aria sung by a daughter to her father.

All in all, it will be a more creative, and possibly more gratifying, alternative to the gift of yet another necktie. Lots of music on the menu for Dad on a savory “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/

June 15, 2024
Edvard Grieg A Master’s Melancholy Lyricism

If Edvard Grieg and Mark Twain got into a knife fight, who would win? Twain, probably. But once Grieg sat down at the piano, there would be no contest. Did this guy ever write a bad note?

Celebrated as Norway’s greatest composer, Grieg embraced his native folk music, lovingly elevated it, and infused it with an intriguing delicacy, melancholy, and yes, lyricism. Like listening to a Nordic Schubert, you never know when a cloud will break across the fjords. Or perhaps, more to the point, a sunny jaunt across a field of wildflowers will be disrupted by an encounter with a troll.

The most common criticism leveled against Grieg is that he was essentially a miniaturist. You might as well attack Chopin for being a sloppy orchestrator.

From his letters, we know that Grieg himself was frustrated by his propensity for shorter works. “Nothing that I do satisfies me,” he wrote, “and though it seems to me that I have ideas, they neither soar nor take form when I proceed to the working out of something big.”

Claude Debussy was only too happy to kick him while he was down. He famously derided Grieg’s output as so many “pink bonbons filled with snow.” Yet it has been convincingly demonstrated that Debussy owed more than a little to his Norwegian colleague in the writing of his String Quartet in G minor and in some of his own piano miniatures. What is it about Grieg that so galled the Gauls?

Myself, I could listen to Grieg all day. In fact, I think I will.

Neeme Järvi conducts the four “Symphonic Dances.” I used the second of these as signature music for an overnight show, back when I was starting out in community radio.

Emil Gilels plays a selection of the “Lyric Pieces.” Gilels hedged when asked to make the recording, fearing that no one would buy it. Of course, it went on to become one of the great piano classics.

The husband-and-wife team of Augustin Dumay and Maria João Pires whip up a fair amount of unsuspected passion in the Violin Sonatas. Here’s the full album.

“The First Meeting,” sung by Barbara Bonney

Six Songs, Op. 48

“Solveig’s Song” from “Peer Gynt”

Arturo Benedetto Michelangeli shatters the stereotype of Grieg as “provincial” composer with this volcanic performance of the Piano Concerto in A minor:

PHOTO: Grieg is great! Happy birthday, master!

June 15, 2024

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