Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

Bard Music Festival Review A Listener’s Take

As always, the Bard Music Festival is almost too much of a good thing. I’m not complaining – I wouldn’t have it any other way – but it sure is a lot to take in, and between all the travel and the intensive listening, the day after should be a day of rest!

I’ll probably post about it in more detail soon (I’m writing an article about it), but for now, here’s a piece in the New York Times, if you missed it, about the first weekend’s concerts. I sat directly across the aisle from the writer as he scribbled in his program.

While I more or less agree with his general impressions, I had a totally different experience of the Saturday night concert, which featured “Job, A Masque for Dancing,” the Concerto for Two Pianos, and the Symphony No. 4. Have I heard more shattering performances of the symphony? Yes, I have, but this one came at the end of a very demanding evening. I myself left the hall feeling somewhat bedraggled. That Leon Botstein and his orchestra acquitted themselves so well in three very difficult pieces (both for performers and, cumulatively, for listeners), by juxtaposing them to such provocative effect, is a testament to what this festival does best.

More importantly, I don’t know when I will ever encounter “Job” or especially the concerto again in concert. Everyone involved with the festival has my sincerest gratitude. There are a couple of photos in the Times article at the link.

Next year at Bard? Berlioz and His World!

@[100063807330266:2048:Fisher Center at Bard]

August 14, 2023
Bard Music Festival Finale: Vaughan Williams & Falstaff

My long visit with Uncle Ralph is winding down. But still two concerts to go!

The final chamber concert of this year’s Bard Music Festival will commence at 11:00 this morning (with a pre-concert talk at 10:30). “Vaughan Williams’ Legacy” will include works by Ruth Gipps, Michael Tippett, Samuel Barber (who Vaughan Williams met while lecturing at Bryn Mawr), Peggy Glanville-Hicks, and Constant Lambert. RVW himself will be represented by his last major instrumental work, the Violin Sonata in A minor.

The festival will conclude this afternoon with a semi-staged performance of the Falstaff opera “Sir John in Love,” after Shakespeare’s “The Merry Wives of Windsor.” That’s the one for which RVW set “Greensleeves.” The opera begins at 3:00 (with a pre-concert talk at 2:00). “Sir John” will be livestreamed. If you’re interested, you’ll find information at the link.

https://fishercenter.bard.edu/events/program-eleven-vaughan-williams-and-shakespeare-sir-john-in-love/

More thoughts soon. Last night’s concert, with the “Sinfonia Antartica” [sic], was a stunner!

Fisher Center at Bard

August 13, 2023
Scarlatti’s Musical Duels and Lasting Legacy

It seems as if it was only a matter of time before any Baroque musician of merit would become embroiled in a musical duel.

In the case of Domenico Scarlatti, he was challenged in Rome by none other than George Frideric Handel. The resulting contest led to Handel being judged superior to his rival on the organ; however, on the harpsichord Scarlatti was deemed to be supreme. In fact, Scarlatti’s unusual facility at the keyboard has had artists “keyed up” for centuries.

Born in Naples in 1685 – the same year as Handel and Bach – Scarlatti spent much of his career in the service of the Portuguese and Spanish royal families. He wrote 555 keyboard sonatas, which have been admired by composer-performers from Frederic Chopin to Marc-André Hamelin.

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll enjoy several works written in tribute to this Baroque master.

Charles Avison, whose life overlapped Scarlatti’s own (he was born in 1709, when Scarlatti was 23 years-old), arranged a number of his elder colleague’s keyboard works into a set of 12 concerti grossi. We’ll sample one of those, Avison’s Concerto No. 10 in D.

Then we’ll turn to American composer Norman Dello Joio. Dello Joio was the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1957 for his “Meditations on Ecclesiastes.” From 1979, we’ll hear his four-movement piano work, “Salute to Scarlatti.”

Dmitri Shostakovich arranged two of Scarlatti’s keyboard sonatas for small wind ensemble and percussion. We’ll enjoy performances of these by members of the former USSR Ministry of Culture Symphony Orchestra conducted by Gennady Rozhdestvensky.

Finally, Alfredo Casella’s 1926 suite for piano and orchestra, “Scarlattiana,” draws its inspiration from dozens of Scarlatti sonatas. Though unquestionably high-spirited, it was not originally intended for the dance – but since it unabashedly recalls Stravinsky’s “Pulcinella,” it is hardly surprising that some clown decided to choreograph it.

I hope you’ll join me for a mixed salad of Scarlatti tributes, on “Italian Dressing,” on “The Lost Chord,” now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Keep in mind, 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/

August 12, 2023
Zorro and Swashbuckling Film Scores on KWAX

Latin may be a dead language, but Latin swashbucklers live this week on “Picture Perfect!”

Alfred Newman gets the blood pumping with his virile soundtrack for “Captain from Castile” (1947), in which Tyrone Power flees persecution at the hands of the Inquisition to join Cortés’ expedition to conquer Mexico. Because conquest is so “in” right now. The film was shot on location with one sequence set against the backdrop of an actual erupting volcano!

Power, of course, was one of the screen’s great Zorros. However, with “The Mask of Zorro” (1998), Antonio Banderas becomes the Zorro for our time. He’s aided and abetted by Anthony Hopkins, as the elder Zorro who mentors him. TWO Zorros in one film! It can’t get any better than that. (Save your “Zorro, the Gay Blade” brickbats for the comments section.) Catherine Zeta-Jones is radiant, and the music by James Horner literally hits all the right notes.

This film was already a throwback on release, with plenty of real-life, real-time swordplay and stunts galore, and the barest minimum of computer-generated bells and whistles. I wish to the ghost of Douglas Fairbanks that popcorn entertainment could still be like this. As it was, “The Mask of Zorro” was like a belated last gasp of the 1980s. It was easily the best swashbuckler of the ‘90s – though, really, was there much competition?

Banderas got a chance to send-up his image in the Dreamworks’ computer-animated feature, “Puss in Boots” (2011), a spin-off from the Shrek series, which actually turned out to be a better sequel than “The Legend of Zorro” (2005).

The film sports plenty of Zorro in-jokes, which extend even to Henry Jackman’s entertaining score. How is it that animated movies are just about the only movies these days that seem to keep up the great symphonic tradition of classic film scoring?

Finally, Errol Flynn has one last swash left in his buckle for “The Adventures of Don Juan” (1948), his last wholly satisfying period adventure. Equally, Max Steiner rises to the occasion and provides one of his best scores, just about on the same level as those of the master of the genre, Erich Wolfgang Korngold. Gen-Xers may recognize the theme from its use in “The Goonies” – and, now that I think about it, “Zorro, the Gay Blade!”

I hope you’ll join me for an hour of Latin swords, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Keep in mind, 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/

August 11, 2023
Bard Music Festival Serendipity: Vaughan Williams & More

Another serendipitous reunion at the Bard Music Festival: for Saturday night’s concert, who else should be sitting in my row, but Warren Cohen, music director of the MusicaNova Orchestra!

The orchestra is based in Phoenix, Arizona, but Warren makes his home in New Jersey, which is why he was able to make the trip down to the studios of Princeton University’s WPRB, to share with me his experiences with English composer Richard Arnell and his works (of which he has conducted many), for Arnell’s centenary in 2017. It was an all-Arnell morning, which featured several of Warren’s recordings with his orchestra. I feel comfortable stating that Warren is a huge advocate of unusual and neglected repertoire, with a special fondness for English music. Remind you of anyone?

Anyway, here we are during intermission on Saturday, Warren, holding a copy of the lavish Bard Music Festival program, and me, with this year’s tie-in volume of scholarly essays, “Vaughan Williams and His World,” published by University of Chicago Press.

The concert itself was a Vaughan Williams enthusiast’s dream, featuring “Job, A Masque for Dancing” (with projections of William Blake’s artwork), the Concerto for Two Pianos (with soloists Danny Driver and Piers Lane), and the turbulent Symphony No. 4. Leon Botstein conducted The Orchestra Now (TŌN). Good luck ever hearing “Job” in the United States, or the concerto anywhere!

The Bard Music Festival will resume this weekend at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, with a couple of special supplementary events taking place at Church of the Messiah in Rhinebeck on Thursday evening and Friday afternoon.

Impending highlights from Bard’s marathon programs will include Vaughan Williams’ “Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus,” “Flos Campi,” and “The Lark Ascending” (alongside works by Edward Elgar, Grace Williams, Peter Warlock, Frederick Delius, and Gustav Holst, on Friday evening), the String Quartet No. 2 (alongside works by Gordon Jacob, Robert Müller-Hartmann, Egon Wellesz, Arnold Bax, Howard Ferguson, Béla Bartók, Edmund Rubbra, and a Bach transcription by Harriet Cohen, on Saturday afternoon), the Symphony No. 8 and “Sinfonia Antartica” (alongside works by Elizabeth Maconchy, William Walton, and Jean Sibelius, on Saturday evening), the Violin Sonata in A minor (alongside works by Ruth Gipps, Michael Tippett, Samuel Barber, Peggy Glanville-Hicks, and Constant Lambert, on Sunday morning), and the Falstaff opera “Sir John in Love” (Sunday afternoon).

Some of the concerts will be livestreamed. You’ll find the complete schedule here:

https://fishercenter.bard.edu/whats-on/programs/bard-music-festival/

Fisher Center at Bard

Warren Cohen conducts Richard Arnell’s Symphony No. 4:

Warren joins me in 2017 to talk about Arnell on WPRB:

MusicaNova’s website:

https://musicanovaaz.org/

Who else will I encounter at Bard?

August 10, 2023

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