Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

David Del Tredici: A Life in Music Remembered

How quickly time passes.

It seems only yesterday that David Del Tredici was one of America’s brightest young composers. Now I learn that he has died at the age of 86.

Del Tredici began his studies as a pianist. (He said if he hadn’t become one, he would have become a florist.) He was mentored by Bernhard Abramovitch and Robert Helps at the University of California, Berkeley. At the same time, he began to venture into composition. He performed his work, “Opus 1,” for a favorably-disposed Darius Milhaud.

Subsequently, Del Tredici attended Princeton University, where his teachers included Roger Sessions, Earl Kim, and Seymour Shifrin. At Princeton, he received a grounding in serialism. Later, he gravitated back toward tonality and became a pioneer of the Neo-Romantic movement.

He achieved considerable recognition for a cycle of works inspired by the writings of Lewis Carroll. One of these, “Child Alice,” was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1980. “Child Alice” was inspired by two prefatory poems from Carroll’s “Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There” and “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” If Carroll and Gustav Mahler had had a love-child, it would probably have come out sounding something like this.

Here’s an excerpt from Part One, “In Memory of a Summer Day,” conducted Gil Rose. If you like what you hear, I highly recommend Rose’s recording of “Child Alice” with Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP).

One day, back in 1990, when I was in my early 20s and living in a cramped efficiency in Philadelphia, I opened my apartment door, and who happened to be standing there in the hall, but Del Tredeci. This was just a few years after Bernstein recorded his orchestral work, “Tattoo,” for release on Deutsche Grammophon. What a surreal experience that was. It turns out he was an acquaintance of my landlord, who lived upstairs. It’s sobering to think, at the time, Del Tredici was younger than I am now.

Del Tredici taught at Harvard, Yale, Boston University, Juilliard, the University of Buffalo, and City College of New York. He was composer-in-residence with the New York Philharmonic from 1988 to 1990.

He also composed a lot of song settings, many of them on “gay” themes.

Del Tredici is the subject of this “Capricorn Conversation,” hosted by my friend, the documentarian H. Paul Moon.

An earlier interview with Bruce Duffie

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

“Del Tredici is that rare find among composers – a creator with a truly original gift. I venture to say that his music is certain to make a lasting impression on the American musical scene. I know of no other composer of his generation who composes music of greater freshness and daring, or with more personality.” – Aaron Copland

R.I.P.

November 18, 2023
Ormandy’s Lost Chord American Music

This week on “The Lost Chord,” for Eugene Ormandy’s birthday, it’s the second installment in a three-part series of Ormandy conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra in rarely-heard recordings of American music.

Samuel Barber was born in West Chester, Pa., not far from Philly, in 1910. He attended Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music and had his first orchestral work, the “School for Scandal Overture,” performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1931, when he was 21 years-old.

His “First Essay for Orchestra” was sent to Arturo Toscanini in the same mail as his “Adagio for Strings.” Toscanini performed both works with the NBC Symphony in 1938, but it was Eugene Ormandy who made the first recording of “Essay,” with the Philadelphians, in 1940.

Vincent Persichetti was born in Philadelphia in 1915, and he died there in 1987. In between, he attended Combs College of Music, the Curtis Institute (where he studied conducting with Fritz Reiner) and the Philadelphia Conservatory. He taught at Combs and the Philly Conservatory. Then he received an invitation from William Schuman (some of whose music we heard last week) to take up a professorship at Juilliard.

Persichetti was one of our great composers, but to this day he remains underappreciated, more respected than loved. His Symphony No 4 of 1951 must be one of his most immediately attractive works.

Finally, John Vincent may be the most undeservedly neglected composer in Ormandy’s entire discography. Ormandy described his recording of Vincent’s Symphony in D (“A Festival Piece in One Movement”) as “one of the best we have ever done,” and the piece itself as “one of the finest compositions created by an American composer in the past decade.” The 1954 work sounds at times like Sibelius gone to the rodeo, but my, is it good stuff!

I hope you’ll join me for “All-American Ormandy II.” Ormandy recommends a visit to the Barber (pictured), then convinces with the Vincents, on “The Lost Chord,” now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Happy birthday, Eugene Ormandy!

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 EST)

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

Stream them here!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

PLEASE NOTE: Ormandy’s recording of John Vincent’s Symphony in D was reissued yesterday, November 17, as part of Sony Classical’s new 88-CD box, “Eugene Ormandy/The Philadelphia Orchestra: The Columbia Stereo Collection.” I opened my set this morning with trembling hands!

Persichetti’s Symphony No. 4 was reissued in 2021, as part of Sony’s laudable 120-CD box of Ormandy’s Philadelphia mono recordings, “Eugene Ormandy: The Columbia Legacy.”

Both Sony releases are newly-remastered.

November 18, 2023
MLSO Shines with Gipps Bloch & Vaughan Williams

The Main Line Symphony Orchestra and conductor Don Liuzzi deserve breakfast in bed – an English breakfast, of course – for last night’s impressive rendering of Ruth Gipps’ Symphony No. 2, a work I never dreamed I would ever get to hear live. Their performance of Ernest Bloch’s “Schelomo,” with the Philadelphia Orchestra’s Yumi Kendall the cello soloist, was also very fine. Of course, I can turn down no opportunity to hear Vaughan Williams’ Symphony No. 5. The program will be repeated at Reform Congregation Keneseth Israel in Elkins Park, PA, this afternoon at 1:00. Thank you, MLSO!

For more information, visit http://www.mlso.org.

November 18, 2023
Thanksgiving Movie Music on KWAX

“Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? Every, every minute?”

This poignant observation, from Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town,” stands as a timely reminder that there are things we should all be thankful for, while they – and we – are here to appreciate them.

This week on “Picture Perfect,” we’ll set the table for Thanksgiving.

None other than Aaron Copland wrote the music for the big screen adaptation of Wilder’s Pulitzer Prize winning play (first performed in Princeton in 1938). The composer was at the height of his “populist” period. “El Salon Mexico” and “Billy the Kid” had already been written, and “Fanfare for the Common Man,” “Lincoln Portrait,” “Rodeo” and “Appalachian Spring” would follow within just a few years. Clearly, there was no better choice to capture the essence of small town America.

The concert version of “Our Town” has been in circulation for decades, but it was only in 2011 that a complete recording of the score was made available, briefly, as a digital download.

Gary Cooper and Dorothy McGuire star in “Friendly Persuasion” (1956), based on the novel by Jessamyn West. The film’s portrayal of family and the resolution of moral conflict, as pacifist Quakers deal with issues both big and small – from the American Civil War, to the introduction of a “sinful” musical instrument into the household – make “Friendly Persuasion,” in my opinion, a good choice for this time of year.

The film was up for six Oscars, with Dimitri Tiomkin’s score nominated twice. The title song went on to become the popular hit “Thee I Love.” Only Dimitri Tiomkin would use balalaikas to depict Quaker life!

“Witness” (1985) may seem like an unusual choice for Thanksgiving, with its themes of police corruption and violence, but when honest cop Harrison Ford goes on the lam, he experiences the “plain” lifestyle of a close-knit Amish community. The highlight of Maurice Jarre’s score is a sequence called “Building the Barn,” in which the community comes together to raise a barn for a newly married couple.

Finally, we’ll hear selections from “Plymouth Adventure” (1952), with its depictions of William Bradford, John Alden, Miles Standish, and Priscilla Mullins. Spencer Tracy stars as the cynical captain of The Mayflower, Gene Tierney is his forbidden love interest, Van Johnson appears as Alden, and Lloyd Bridges is the first mate.

The music is by Miklós Rózsa, who already, at this stage of his career, was MGM’s go-to composer for historical drama. Seven years later, Rózsa would take home his third Academy Award for his classic score to “Ben-Hur.”

It’s never too early to give thanks. There’s not a turkey among them, this week 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 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 EST)

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

Stream them here!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

Martha Scott and William Holden make their mark in “Our Town” (1940)

November 17, 2023
Wittgenstein Hindemith A Hidden Concerto

Concert pianist Paul Wittgenstein lost his right arm during World War I. Rather than abandon his career, he began commissioning keyboard works for the left hand from some of the day’s leading composers – including Maurice Ravel, whose Concerto for the Left Hand became the most successful of its kind in the repertoire.

In 1922, Wittgenstein approached Paul Hindemith, at 27, a rising star of German modernism – indeed of the radical avant-garde – to produce his “Klaviermusik mit Orchester.”

Wittgenstein’s reaction to the piece is unknown, although we can easily surmise. He wasn’t even satisfied with the Ravel, gravitating instead toward the more Romantic – I hesitate to say heart-on-the-sleeve – temperaments of Franz Schmidt and Erich Wolfgang Korngold. Wittgenstein never played the Hindemith in public. Furthermore, since he had secured exclusive performance rights, he wouldn’t allow anyone else to play it, either.

Following the pianist’s death in 1961, Wittgenstein’s widow relocated to a farmhouse in Pennsylvania, where for decades she kept all of her husband’s belongings in a single room. When the estate was finally catalogued in 2002, a copy of the Hindemith concerto was discovered among Wittgenstein’s effects, along with other scores, correspondence, and items of interest, including locks of both Beethoven’s and Brahms’ hair.

It was Leon Fleisher who gave the belated premiere of the concerto, some 80 years after it was written, with the Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Sir Simon Rattle. Somebody posted the audio on YouTube.

The U.S. premiere also featured Fleisher, with the San Francisco Symphony, conducted by Herbert Blomstedt. What do you know, that’s been posted too.

I was present at the U.S. East Coast premiere, with Fleisher and the Curtis Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Christoph Eschenbach. If you listen carefully to the recording, made at Philadelphia’s Verizon Hall, at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, on April 27, 2008, and issued on the Ondine label, you might even be able to hear me applaud. It’s posted here as a YouTube playlist, over multiple videos.

Wittgenstein may not have thought much of Hindemith, but Glenn Gould clearly adored him. Here Gould elaborates on the nature of the fugue, illustrating his points with a selection from Hindemith’s Piano Sonata No. 3.

Gould at the keyboard for Hindemith’s Trumpet Sonata

And for his “Marienleben”

Get all keyed-up for Paul Hindemith on his birthday!

PHOTOS (from left): Hindemith in 1923; Wittgenstein; Gould; Fleisher with yours truly

November 16, 2023

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