Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

Nordic Soul Autumn Music Langgaard Rautavaara

Don’t forget to turn your clocks back tonight! As we prepare to return to standard time and the days grow ever shorter, those of us in the Northern Hemisphere can feel a spiritual kinship with the Scandinavians.

This week on “The Lost Chord,” it’s autumn in the North countries, as well as in the Nordic soul. We’ll test your limits, not only for lengthening shadows, but also for gratuitous vowels, with music by Danish composer Rued Langgaard and Finnish master Einojuhani Rautavaara.

Langgaard lived from 1893 to 1952. Despite a promising start – born to musical parents, a prodigious childhood, meetings with major conductors, and a symphony performed by the Berlin Philharmonic – his personal and creative eccentricities worked against him.

Perpetually out of step with the times, and particularly with the musical tastes of his countrymen, performances of his works were scarce. He found himself ignored by the musical establishment, with the result that his music really only started to be recognized in the 1960s – 16 years after the composer’s death.

Langgaard was 46 by the time he managed to obtain a permanent job, as an organist at the cathedral in Ribe. It was the oldest town in Denmark, and situated far, far from Copenhagen, the center of Danish musical life. He would die in Ribe at the age of 59.

He wrote 16 symphonies. The fourth of those bears the subtitle “Fall of the Leaf.” Beyond a simple evocation of autumnal nature, complete with thunderstorms, wind, and rain, the symphony is one of moods related to, or symbolized by, autumn. The composer originally called the work “Nature and Thoughts.”

Rautavaara, Finland’s grand old man of music, died in 2020 at the age of 87. He studied at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, under Aare Merikanto, before receiving a scholarship to attend the Juilliard School. Among his teachers in the United States were Vincent Persichetti, Roger Sessions, and Aaron Copland. He himself taught for extended periods at the Sibelius Academy.

As a composer, he wrote eight symphonies, 14 concertos, and nine operas, as well as choral, chamber and instrumental music. His most famous piece is probably his “Cantus Arcticus,” for taped bird song and orchestra.

Early on, Rautavaara experimented with serialism (though he was never a strictly serial composer), but in the 1960s, he left all that behind. His mature style is frequently one of austere beauty, marked by lyricism and even luminosity. His later works often bear something of a mystical stamp.

We’ll be listening to music composed in 1999, titled “Autumn Gardens,” Rautavaara’s meditation on beauty in nature and the transience of life. If I were to introduce anyone to the music of Rautavaara, this may very well be the piece I would select. It’s gorgeous and moving.

I hope you’ll join me for “Fall of the Leif,” autumnal meditations from the North, on “The Lost Chord,” 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 the Trenton-Princeton area. Here are the respective air-times of my recorded shows (with East Coast conversions in parentheses):

PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday on KWAX at 5:00 PACIFIC TIME (8:00 PM EDT)

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday on KWAX at 4:00 PACIFIC TIME (7:00 PM EDT)

Stream them here!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

November 4, 2023
Exorcist 50th Anniversary Chat

After several unfortunate postponements, Roy and I seem to have finally wriggled out from beneath the curse of “The Exorcist” (1973). Now we can finally put Halloween – and Regan – to bed.

One of the unfortunate effects of talking about a film weeks after the fact is that I tend to forget some of the fascinating details that leap out at me while viewing. Even if I jot them down, I don’t always recall the precise trajectory of my thoughts. The difficulty is compounded as, even under the best of circumstances, I can be frustratingly wayward when attempting to express myself in speech. So I guess it’s a good thing I’ve worked for 37 years in broadcast media!

Hopefully we left you with some food for thought, or at any rate, kept you entertained, even as we got sidetracked discussing the relative merits of directors’ cuts and at what length a film should necessitate the inclusion of an intermission. There were plenty of loose ends as we got turned around in the labyrinth. But the journey is always the destination on Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner. If you missed our 50th anniversary discussion of this horror high-water mark, the entire lollaPazuzu is archived here:

November 4, 2023
Elegies for the Old West: Revisionist Western Soundtracks

This week on “Picture Perfect,” it’s an elegy for the Old West.

By the 1960s, the cinematic western was rapidly becoming a victim of its own success. The western had been a popular genre since the silent era, with dozens, of variable quality, released every year. Seemingly the genre hit its peak in the 1950s. One might say, the western suffered the fate of the actual American West, with its mythic resonance choked into clichés by too many settlers.

Also, current events began to color filmmakers’ perceptions of the West, the turbulence surrounding the Vietnam War, the assassinations of both Kennedys and King, and increased suspicion of government making for violent, bloodier and more nihilistic visions of Manifest Destiny. The shift gave rise to the revisionist western, which embraced new realities of dirt, corruption, and moral ambiguity in the West. At the same time, there was a rise in more wistful, elegiac westerns, which seem to bid farewell to beloved western icons like Joel McRea, Kirk Douglas, and John Wayne.

Common characteristics include the obsolescence of the gunfighter; the free-ranging cowboy fenced off by barbed wire; the encroachment of corporations in the form of railroad and mining interests; horses replaced by automobiles; the six-shooter superseded by the Gatling gun – the land of limitless possibility and moral certitude, subdivided and spoiled by industrialization. Once-heroic figures ride slowly into the sunset, or are killed, their qualities unrecognized, perhaps even willfully rejected, by those who come after.

We’ll hear selections from four elegiac westerns, including “Cheyenne Autumn” (1964), with music by Alex North; “The Shootist” (1976), with music by Elmer Bernstein; “The Wild Bunch” (1969), with music by Jerry Fielding; and “Monte Walsh” (1970), with music by John Barry, whose birthday it is today.

Autumn comes to the Old West, on “Picture Perfect,” 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 the Trenton-Princeton area. Here are the respective air-times of my recorded shows (with East Coast conversions in parentheses):

PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday on KWAX at 5:00 PACIFIC TIME (8:00 PM EDT)

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday on KWAX at 4:00 PACIFIC TIME (7:00 PM EDT)

Stream them here!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

PHOTO: John Wayne and Ron Howard take aim in “The Shootist”

November 3, 2023
Remembering Yuri Temirkanov Russian Maestro

I am very sorry to learn that the conductor Yuri Temirkanov has died.

I had the good fortune to see Temirkanov many times in Philadelphia. Once, he led the orchestra and chorus in Prokofiev’s “Alexander Nevsky,” with the film. This was years – decades, in fact – before the current practice of conducting scores live to sound film had become so prevalent.

Prokofiev had been a family friend. Temirkanov’s father had invited the composer to work on his opera, “War and Peace,” at their home, far from the fighting around Moscow, during World War II. Yuri later claimed to remember Prokofiev only dimly, like his father, who was executed by a German firing squad. More vivid were his memories of Prokofiev when he encountered him as a teen, while Temirkanov was studying at what was then the Leningrad Conservatory.

Later, Temirkanov worked with Shostakovich. He ruffled the feathers of the Soviet authorities when he programmed Shostakovich’s “From Jewish Folk Poetry,” with its dangerous implications of Russian antisemitism.

With the fall of communism, Temirkanov revitalized the St. Petersburg Philharmonic. He had had a long association with the orchestra, dating back to 1968. He was principal conductor when it was still known as the Leningrad Symphony. Eight years later, he took over the music directorship of the Kirov Opera and Ballet. He returned to Saint Petersburg as the orchestra’s artistic director and chief conductor, following the death of Yevgeny Mravinsky, in 1988.

Concurrently, from 2000 to 2006, he served as music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Although he made some fine commercial recordings, including one of the “Nevsky” film score (in Saint Petersburg), none of them, to my knowledge, were made with the Baltimore Symphony.

He was also principal guest conductor of the Danish National Symphony Orchestra and conductor laureate of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra of London (with which he served as principal guest conductor from 1979 and principal conductor from 1992–1998).

In a charming display of modesty, he would always return to the stage at the end of a concert, drop suddenly and sit on the podium, and applaud the standing musicians, a gesture that showed he knew where the true credit lay. He also preferred to conduct without a baton.

Temirkanov relinquished his post in Saint Petersburg in January of last year. He continued to divide his time between the city and London, where he also kept a home.

I didn’t know him personally, but he seemed to be a real gentleman. Although reportedly shy in the U.S. on account of his poor English, he still knew how to connect with an audience.

Temirkanov would have turned 85 next month. R.I.P.

“Alexander Nevsky” in its concert version, as a cantata

Rachmaninoff’s “Symphonic Dances”

Elgar’s “Enigma Variations”

Interviewed by Bruce Duffie

https://www.bruceduffie.com/temirkanov.html

November 2, 2023
Douglas Lilburn New Zealand’s Musical Grandfather

Being such a huge Sibelius fan, I remember being positively charmed on my discovery of the music of Douglas Lilburn. Lilburn is probably New Zealand’s most celebrated composer.

Lilburn studied journalism and music at Canterbury University College, then part of the University of New Zealand, before embarking for London’s Royal College of Music. There he was tutored by Ralph Vaughan Williams. The two remained good friends, with Lilburn sending his former teacher gifts of New Zealand honey.

Lilburn made his mark at home not only as a composer, but as a conductor and a noted teacher. For decades, he was associated with Victoria University in Wellington, beginning in 1947.

Astonishingly, for one whose own music was so rooted in tradition, Lilburn founded the first electronic music studio in Australasia. This followed visits to electronic facilities at Darmstadt and the University of Toronto.

Actually, his comparatively thorny Third Symphony signaled something of a turning point. Soon after its completion, in 1961, he shifted his attention exclusively to electronics, a field in which he spent the remainder of his career. Many of his works in the medium evoke the New Zealand landscape and the natural sounds he loved so well.

Lilburn died in 2001. He was 85 years old. He has been described as “the elder statesman” and “grandfather” of New Zealand music.

Happy birthday to this eminent antipodean!

“A Song of Islands” (1946)

The composer in the electronic music studio he founded

November 2, 2023

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