Cuban master Leo Brouwer is 85 today. This week, the Newman & Oltman Guitar Duo performed a recital of his works at Schwob School of Music in Columbus, GA, including several pieces composed specifically for them. You’ll find more information and videos of Newman & Oltman’s commercially-released Brouwer recordings at the first link. Then, at the second, an archived video of the actual concert. Thanks, Laura and Michael, and happy birthday, Leo Brouwer!
Info and recordings:
Brouwer concert:
Anyone else plan to be in attendance when Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Tuba Concerto is performed in Princeton this weekend?
The work will appear on two concerts by the Princeton University Orchestra, on Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m. Wesley Sanders (’26) will be the soloist. Also on the program will be Robert Schumann’s Cello Concerto, with Kaivalya Kulkami (’26), and Peter Ilych Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, with Daniel Lee (’27). Michael Pratt will conduct.
Looking ahead, there’s more English music in the offing for the spring, when Edward Elgar’s milestone oratorio “The Dream of Gerontius” will be performed on April 19 & 20.
All concerts will be held at Richardson Auditorium in Alexander Hall on the campus of Princeton University. I last heard the students play “Ein Heldenleben” there last season and was suitably impressed.
View the rehearsal clips on the Princeton University Orchestra Facebook page. Then, for tickets and information, visit music.princeton.edu/events/
PHOTO: Vaughan Williams, looking as miserable as you would imagine, being serenaded by the tuba. The composer wrote the first ever concerto for the instrument in 1954. A late and unusual work, the piece was dedicated to Philip Catelinet, principal tubist of the London Symphony Orchestra. “Glorious John” Barbirolli conducted the premiere. These are the forces heard on the work’s first recording. Give a listen, and I’ll see you at Richardson.
Happy birthday to classical music’s most renowned “leap baby,” Gioachino Rossini, born on this date in 1792. Rossini shared with young Frederic of the “The Pirates of Penzance” the most ingenious paradox of celebrating a birthday every four years. So, despite the fact that 232 years have passed since his natal day, if we go by actual birthday anniversaries, it’s really only been 56.
Rossini’s furiously productive operatic career spanned less than 20 years, in which he amassed 39 lucrative works for the stage. He retired a wealthy man at the age of 37. He spent his last 35 years living the good life and composing when and what he wanted, including the occasional sacred work and a fair amount of salon music – what he wryly termed his “sins of old age.”
I can tell by your furrowed brow that you’re trying to check my math. Before you quibble, you had better have a look at this, posted four years ago, because I’m certainly not going to take the trouble to explain it myself.
Happy birthday, Gioachino Rossini! You may look 232, but your music doesn’t sound a day over 56.
Can you believe I’ve got all eight operas composed by Bedřich Smetana? (Actually nine, if you count the fragment “Viola.”) I remember picking most of them up off a clearance rack at the late, lamented Tower Records Classical Annex at 6th & South Streets in Philadelphia. That had to be a good quarter-century ago. Maybe 30 years. I thought I was missing a few, but I see I mopped up “The Kiss” and one or two others at Princeton Record Exchange in 2012.
“The Kiss” (which I only finally just got around to listening to this week) often gets painted with the same brush as “The Bartered Bride,” but every one of Smetana’s operas is actually quite different. When he’s not busy folk-dancing, the composer is clearly besotted with Wagner. He, in turn, influenced others – not only Dvořák (also a Wagnerite), but also Leoš Janáček, who must have heard “Libuše,” and Richard Strauss, who wanted to hear “The Two Widows” whenever he visited Prague.
“The Devil’s Wall” trades village weddings for a cosmic struggle between God and Satan. But don’t worry, it’s a comedy too. You’ve got to hand it to Smetana, he was stone deaf, but he kept right on composing.
Is it true, a portion of this work was used in “Spider-Man: Far from Home?” Bizarre. Now Google tells me “Dalibor” was used in an episode of “Gotham” (which employs characters from the Batman mythos). I guess the Prague connection to comic book entertainment extends well beyond “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.” A few artsy young ex-pats must have spent their gap year over there enjoying the cheap beer.
Smetana established a Czech national sound in music. The 200th anniversary of the composer’s birth falls this Saturday. Although there were many aspects of his life that were actually quite miserable, even by “great composers” standards, I’ll be honoring him on KWAX with some of his lighter music on “Sweetness and Light” (Saturday morning at 11:00 EST/8:00 PST).
Okay, I just watched the Spider-Man clip, and it’s basically a bunch of kids rolling their eyes about having to go to the opera. Even at their age, I would have so been there. Come on, it’s “THE DEVIL’S WALL.” What teen wouldn’t be eager to check out anything with a title like that?
Honestly, the actual music, as heard in the movie, is so brief, I don’t know how anyone unfamiliar with the work would have been able to identify it. I guess superhero movies have trained people to sit through the end credits. What happened to the overture, I wonder? It just starts with people singing. I suppose the filmmakers wanted to convey that this is OPERA.
I concede there’s every possibility the kids’ antipathy is intended to be humorous, a depiction of what a stereotypical young person’s reaction might be to the prospect of having to sit through a four-hour opera (more like three-and-a-half, allowing for two 30-minute intermissions), as the rest of the city is partying in the streets for Carnival. But more likely it’s Hollywood pandering to the shot-and-beer crowd.
Anyway, there goes my brief, belated curiosity about “Spider-Man: Far from Home.” I would love to see a mainstream movie in which young people attend a cultural event and find themselves opening up to it, or even actually enjoying it. Opera is not just for stuffed shirts and serial killers. Personally, I’d much rather see “The Devil’s Wall” than attend Carnival.
But maybe I’m just weird.
“The Devil’s Wall” as heard in “Spider-Man: Far from Home.” Is it just me, or is Peter Parker getting younger and younger? I mean, I know he’s supposed to be a teenager, but surely these kids are in elementary school?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkcDJLjig_s
The selection from “Dalibor” used in “Gotham” (probably to underscore a serial killer)
JoAnn Falletta is one of the nicest, most generous people in the business. Not only did she make time to drop by my morning radio shows during her summer visits to Princeton to conduct the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra Edward T. Cone Composition Institute concerts and to participate in multiple phone interviews for my syndicated radio program, “The Lost Chord,” but she’s actually gone out of her way to send me related material herself from her home. Where does she find the time? She’s in demand everywhere, and she’s constantly learning new material. The last time I saw her was at an all-Lukas Foss concert at Carnegie Hall last year. (The music was recorded, so a CD will materialize on Naxos at some point, I expect very soon.) She’s always on the lookout for worthy unusual and neglected repertoire. Is it any wonder I feel as if we are totally simpatico? Falletta’s recordings are well-represented on my radio programs and in my CD library. She holds a special place in my heart. Happy birthday, JoAnn Falletta! Thank you for your curiosity, your energy, your artistry, and your munificence.
I almost forgot, I’ve got one of our interviews preserved on Soundcloud!
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