This morning on KWAX, it’s flowers and chocolate for breakfast. I’ll do my best to indulge your sweet tooth and lend a serotonin boost with a special Valentine’s Day sampler.
Luxuriate with an assortment of decadent Fritz Kreisler violin bonbons, a suite from Lord Berners’ ballet “Cupid and Psyche,” Victor Herbert’s orchestration of Franz Liszt’s “Liebestraum,” Henry Mancini’s arrangement of Nino Rota’s “Love Theme from Romeo and Juliet,” and some romantic reveries by Gilbert & Sillivan, Charles Ancliffe, and Leonard Bernstein.
Better limber up those lips. It will be an hour of musical confections for Valentine’s Day on “Sweetness and Light,” this Saturday morning at 11:00 EST/8:00 PST. Hear it exclusively on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!
There’s no love like doomed love. We all know it’s true. Happily ever after is fine for the neighbors. The rest of us flock to “Titanic,” “Casablanca,” and “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.” The one that got away hangs heaviest on the heart.
In accordance with Gothic convention, nothing’s hotter than when two people love one another so intensely, they destroy themselves, each other, and everyone else around them. If impediments fan the flames of desire, then death is the greatest impediment of all.
This week on “Picture Perfect,” it’s an hour of star-crossed lovers who remain connected beyond the mortal plane.
Join me for selections from “Somewhere in Time” (John Barry), “The Ghost and Mrs. Muir” (Bernard Herrmann), “Always” (John Williams), and “Wuthering Heights” (Alfred Newman).
If you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen. We’ll be fanning the flames of desire on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!
Remember, KWAX is on the West Coast, so there’s a three-hour difference for those of you listening in the East. Here are the respective air-times for all three of my recorded shows (with East Coast conversions in parentheses):
PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday on KWAX at 5:00 PM PACIFIC TIME (8:00 PM EST)
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – ALL NEW! – Saturday on KWAX at 8:00 AM PACIFIC TIME (11:00 AM EST)
THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday on KWAX at 4:00 PM PACIFIC TIME (7:00 PM EST)
Stream all three, at the times indicated, by following the link!
In his prime, Seiji Ozawa was like a breath of counterculture fresh air, assuming the podium in mop top, turtleneck, and love beads. Later, perhaps, he overextended himself, raising a family in Japan while putting the Boston Symphony Orchestra through its paces.
But routine performances cannot take away from a lifetime of achievements.
Ozawa was the first and most prominent Japanese conductor to wow the West with his mastery of the European classics.
As a young man, his talent and tenacity carried him to France (he arrived on a cargo ship, with a scooter and a guitar), where he attracted the attention of then-BSO music director Charles Munch. Munch invited him to study at the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood, the orchestra’s summer home. Ozawa then studied with Herbert von Karajan in Berlin and was taken under the wing of Leonard Bernstein, who appointed him assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic in 1961.
Ozawa’s breakout post was with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, where he was installed, on Bernstein’s recommendation, in 1965. He served as music director of the San Francisco Symphony from 1970 to 1976.
For decades – 29 years, in fact, beginning in 1973 – he was Boston’s music director and enjoyed many successes, both on the orchestra’s home turf and elsewhere. However, the consensus among players, critics, and audiences is that he stayed too long.
During his time in Boston, he remained active on the other side of the globe. He became honorary music director of the Japan Philharmonic (now the New Japan Philharmonic). He also helped found the Saito Kinen Orchestra, named for cellist and conductor Hideo Saito, a principal mentor during Ozawa’s youth.
Other posts included an early appointment as artistic director of the Ravinia Festival, summer home of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, co-artistic director (with Gunther Schuller) of the Berkshire Music Center, and much later, artistic director of JapanNYC.
Ozawa left Boston for the Vienna State Opera, where he served until 2010. Alas, the spirit was willing, but the flesh was weak. Health issues predominated for the rest of his life. He was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in 2010. More recently, he was hospitalized with heart valve disease. His convalescence was complicated by sciatica. It was painful to see such an energetic presence diminished in his later years.
In some respects, he remains underrated. His legacy was marred, no doubt, by his extended tenure in Boston, which lent him high visibility, even as he ruffled feathers and outstayed his welcome. Back in Japan, he received scorn from older players for being too Westernized.
But he excelled especially in contemporary music (including that of his compatriot Toru Takemitsu), the Russian classics, and in opulent orchestral showpieces. He could be extraordinarily adept at managing the large forces required of monumental works such as Benjamin Britten’s “War Requiem,” Arthur Honegger’s “Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher,” and Arnold Schoenberg’s “Gurrelieder.” He led the world premiere of Olivier Messiaen’s “Saint François d’Assise” at the Paris Opera and concert performances of Richard Strauss’ “Elektra” in Boston.
Ozawa died at his home in Tokyo on Tuesday. The cause of death was reported as heart failure. He was 88 years old. R.I.P.
Ozawa conducts gorgeous Gabriel Fauré
Mendelssohn’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” incidental music, with Judi Dench
Introduced by Bernstein on one of his “Young People’s Concerts”
In 1963, as a contestant on “What’s My Line?” – on the same episode with Woody Allen and Peter, Paul and Mary
Conducting the Muppets (with Placido Flamingo)
At Bernstein’s 70th birthday
I was just listening to this yesterday, for John Williams’ birthday – “Tributes! For Seiji”
Takemitsu, with violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter
Ozawa as I’ll always remember him, with the love beads, in a live performance of Arnold Schoenberg’s late Romantic masterpiece, “Gurrelieder”
PHOTO: Ozawa rehearsing the BSO with Jessye Norman in Frankfurt in 1988
It’s 92 candles on the cake for John Williams – a suitable tribute for the brightest light among living film composers.
Williams’ career has spanned some 70 years. I know it’s trite to say, but the man is living history. No, really.
Well before he became a household name in the 1970s, with blockbusters like “Jaws” and “Star Wars,” he worked as an orchestrator and session pianist on such films as “Sweet Smell of Success,” “Bell, Book and Candle, “God’s Little Acre,” “The Big Country,” “Some Like It Hot,” “The Magnificent Seven,” “Studs Lonigan,” “The Apartment,” “Hemingway’s Adventures of a Young Man,” “To Kill a Mockingbird,” “The Guns of Navarone,” “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” “Charade,” “The Pink Panther,” “The Great Race,” “West Side Story,” and any number of other screen musicals.
He collaborated or apprenticed with many of the greatest film composers who ever lived, including Elmer Bernstein, Jerry Goldsmith, Bernard Herrmann, Henry Mancini, Jerome Moross, Alfred Newman, Dimitri Tiomkin, and Franz Waxman.
Of course, he was also composing his own original scores. His first A-list movie assignment was “How to Steal a Million” in 1966. Prior to that, he’d scored some goofy comedies and did TV work. Eddie Cantor once quipped, it takes 20 years to become an overnight success. By the time the wider public began to sit up and take notice of John Williams, with “Jaws” in 1975, that’s about right. By then, he’d already quietly amassed a string of hits and even landed his first Oscar (for adapting “Fiddler on the Roof” in 1971).
Curious to hear Williams’ first film score? While serving in the U.S. Air Force, Williams was assigned to the Northeast Air Command Band and stationed at Fort Pepperell in St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada. There, he was approached by a local production company, Atlantic Films, to score a tourism short in 1952, titled “You Are Welcome.” His contribution consists largely of arrangements of local folk tunes, so don’t go into it expecting the unmistakable “Williams sound” he honed in Hollywood. But it will give you a real sense of history.
Philadelphia-born soprano Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez has died. Fernandez attained international recognition as the obsessive center of the French post-New Wave thriller, “Diva.” In the film, her character captivates an opera-loving courier, whose penchant for bootleg recording places him in the crosshairs of Parisian hitmen.
If you’ve ever seen “Diva,” I’m sure your memory needs no refreshing. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a fatally cool, colorful, “Cinéma du Look” chase movie, featuring Ray-Ban wearing gangsters, impossibly chic lofts in which tenants dreamily roller skate around bathtubs, and Fernandez, adorned like a Greek goddess, singing the big aria from Alfredo Catalani’s “La Wally.” It also happened to be essential ‘80s arthouse cinema.
Worlds away from hipster-punk Paris, Fernandez grew up in Philadelphia at 23rd and Dickinson Streets. Her promise was detected early, at the age of 5, and she was invited to join the choir of Tasker Street Baptist Church. Later, she enrolled at the Settlement School, where she studied voice with Tillie Barmach. From there, she entered the Academy of Vocal Arts. This was followed by a scholarship to the Juilliard School.
Her operatic debut was in “Porgy and Bess” at Houston Grand Opera, a production that toured both the U.S. and Europe. She first appeared in Paris, opposite Placido Domingo and Kiri Te Kanawa, as Musetta in “La bohème.”
She passed up “Luisa Miller” at the Met for “Carmen Jones” on London’s West End. Her performance was recognized with an Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Musical in 1992. Surely another career highlight was a production of “Aida” staged at the pyramids.
It was during her Paris run that Fernandez was approached with the offer to appear in “Diva.”
In the film, she breathed new life into the aria “Ebben? Ne andrò lontana” from Catalani’s “La Wally.” Previously a favorite of Renata Tebaldi, it became Fernandez’s signature for 25 years. The opera itself is seldom performed, probably in large part because it concludes with an avalanche!
I remember reading an effusive review of “Diva” in David Denby’s column in New York Magazine as a teenager and wanting to see it so very badly. I figured I never would, since (1) it was French, (2) it was 1981, and (3) I was 15 and living in the Lehigh Valley. There was no internet at the time and home video availability in those days, I’m sure you’ll recall, was spotty at best. Even if I could find it, the purchase of a foreign film would have been prohibitively expensive.
O me of little faith! I hadn’t banked on the Allentown art house, the 19th Street Theatre (now the Civic Theatre of Allentown). 19th Street was where I could see films like “El Norte,” “Fitzcarraldo,” and “My Brilliant Career,” when, living in a small town, one couldn’t expect to see them anywhere else – unless they happened to turn up later at one of the local universities. It was at 19th Street that I first saw “Diva.”
Then, what do you know, in the mid-‘80s, it became a favorite on WHYY, Philadelphia’s public television station, so I was able to watch it again and again. In the interim, I saw it on the big screen a second time in college and then at Philadelphia’s late lamented Theater of the Living Arts (TLA) on South Street, back in the days when it was still the city’s best movie house. Sadly, it’s now just another concert venue. I used to hit that theater three times a week. $2.50 admission with student I.D.
On weekdays, the double features were changed every other day, with the biggest draws, the cult favorites and crowd-pleasing classics, saved for the three-day weekend.
“Diva” was one fun, sharp-looking movie – a foreign film for people who think they don’t like foreign films. Kind of to the early ‘80s what “Run, Lola, Run” was to the late 90s. I should have known something was up in when I was able to locate the soundtrack at the local mall!
Fernandez held additional degrees in voice and education from the University of Kentucky and Georgetown College. She made Lexington her home, at first shepherding young singers, but becoming disillusioned with their lack of application; so she turned to elementary special education instead, working with children with autism and A.D.D., a pursuit she found deeply rewarding. She directed a children’s choir at Lexington’s Main Street Baptist Church, where she also continued to sing.
Fernandez died in Lexington on February 2 at the age of 75. By coincidence, the director of “Diva,” Jean-Jacques Beineix, was also 75 at the time of his death in 2022.
