Princeton Porchfest 2023 will take place tomorrow, from 12 to 6 p.m.
Dozens of performers, bands, and singer-songwriters will present classical, jazz, blues, hip-hop, bluegrass, Americana, alternative, and rock.
According to the Arts Council of Princeton, the event is a “walkable music festival where neighbors offer up their front porches as DIY concert venues. Talented local performers play rotating sets throughout the neighborhood during this day-long celebration of music, art and our wonderful community. Stroll from porch to porch to enjoy live, local talent.”
Among that talent will be mezzo-soprano Kelly Guerra, who sang the role of Ruth Bader Ginsburg in Derrick Wang’s opera “Scalia/Ginsburg” at last year’s The Princeton Festival. Guerra will return in June to sing Rosina in Rossini’s “The Barber of Seville.” (The Princeton Festival will be held at Morven Museum & Garden, June 9-25.) Hear her tomorrow, from the porch of 71 Wiggins Street, at 2 p.m.
There’s occasional rain in the forecast, with temperatures in the lower 50s, so bring an umbrella and a sweater and fortify yourself with cheering edibles. The music will go on, rain or shine!
For more information about Princeton Porchfest, and a complete schedule and interactive map, follow the link.
In my Leopold Stokowski post on April 18, I wondered (not for the first time) what the hell happened to my country. This was while reflecting on how classical music, while perhaps never entirely mainstream, was once heard and recognized by the populace, and the most celebrated musicians were household names. Toscanini, Paderewski, Caruso, Paganini. Some of these were already in the grave, but thanks to radio and cinema, in the 1940s, they were names everyone knew. The sextet from “Lucia” was familiar enough that it could be parodied. A lot. Then came television, which continued to keep everyone culturally literate, or at least aware. For a few decades, anyway.
At a point, José Iturbi entered the conversation, in a comment beneath my post, with a lament that today he is nearly forgotten. Which is probably true, except for classic movie buffs. But wouldn’t you know it, just a few months ago, Sony Classical reissued Iturbi’s recordings made for the RCA label.
Here’s a post I wrote in 2015 on Iturbi and how classical music was once an expected – and accepted – part of our culture. I’ve included a link to the new Iturbi set at the very end.
Once again, you’ve got to love the Golden Age of Hollywood. In terms of music, movies from that era just seemed so… inclusive.
On the one hand, you could have crooner Rudy Vallée acting in Preston Sturges comedies (and not singing a note); on the other, you could have Leopold Stokowski shaking hands with Mickey Mouse. There seemed to be a wider acceptance of musicians of all stripes as equally valid entertainers, and an assumption that the general public would understand (or at least not be put off by) a line of dialogue about Delius or Sibelius. When the Three Stooges weren’t flipping fruit into opera singers’ mouths, that is.
This is especially fascinating when viewed from the perspective of the present, when seemingly the bar is set lower and lower all the time, with everyone racing to the lowest common denominator so as not to seem too pointy-headed. Wouldn’t it make sense that people of any era would want to aspire to be more? That they would want to be led, represented and entertained by the most talented, most intelligent people? It’s a very strange world we live in.
José Iturbi (1895-1980) was one of the seemingly unlikely cinematic superstars of the 1940s. Like Oscar Levant, Iturbi was a serious pianist. In the ‘20s, he had made a name for himself as a barnstorming virtuoso who toured Europe, Asia, Africa and South America. He made his North American debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Stokowski.
Eventually, he made the transition to conducting, which had long been his dream. He led the great symphony orchestras of Philadelphia and New York, the London Symphony, the orchestra of La Scala Milan, and the Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam. He would serve as music director of the Rochester Philharmonic.
Iturbi generally played himself in Hollywood musicals, including “Thousands Cheer” (1943), “Anchors Away” (1945) and especially “Three Daring Daughters” (1948), in which he was actually the lead.
For all his talent and charisma, however, Iturbi was always churning up controversy, making provocative remarks and losing his temper. Ironically, for a musician who owed so much of his fame to his absorption into popular culture, he made a big hullabaloo about appearing on concert programs that included both classical and popular music. It wasn’t popular music he objected to, particularly; it was the mixing of the two. This is especially puzzling from a pianist who studied at the Valencia and Paris Conservatories, yet played jazz and boogie-woogie in innumerable film shorts.
His private life was equally turbulent, perhaps even more so, with tragic results. His wife died of accidental poisoning. He sued his daughter, claiming she was an unfit mother to his grandchildren. The daughter later committed suicide.
Iturbi could be a brilliant pianist, though he sometimes drew criticism that he was diluting his talents through his involvement with Hollywood, and a number of his concerto recordings, which he conducted himself from the keyboard, don’t really seem to take flight. Even so, there are gems among his recorded repertoire, and the part he played in keeping classical music in the mainstream is to be lauded.
It’s a vine that is now severely withered. I wonder if Luciano Pavarotti’s “Yes, Giorgio” (1982) was the last in the line of dubious movies featuring great classical musicians.
Iturbi in “Holiday in Mexico” (1946)
Insane take on Liszt’s “Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2” from “Anchors Aweigh” (1945)
Iturbi plays Mozart with his sister, while conducting the Rochester Philharmonic, in 1946
Iturbi plays Albeniz, Granados and Navarro, from 1933
Oscar Levant in “The Barkleys of Broadway” (1949)
Lauritz Melchior with Esther Williams and Van Johnson in “Thrill of a Romance” (1945)
“Unfaithfully Yours” (1948): “No one handles Handel like you handle Handel!”
The Three Stooges, “Voices of Spring,” and “Lucia di Lammermoor” in “Micro-Phonies” (1945)
I missed Charlie Chaplin’s birthday by ten days, but I only just stumbled across this footage of Chaplin conducting (at the link below).
While Chaplin was musically illiterate (by which I mean, he couldn’t read sheet music), he taught himself to play piano, violin and cello as a child, which served him well in his early days in the music hall. Later, he composed, or rather worked very closely with trained musicians, to produce the original scores for all of his features and some of his shorter films.
David Raksin, best remembered for his score to “Laura” (1944), assisted Chaplin on the silent classic “Modern Times” (1936). Raksin later revealed that it was he who had essentially scored the film, with Chaplin whistling all the tunes and asking him to make them fit the action.
However, he stressed the process was more complicated than it might at first seem. Chaplin was very much involved with every aspect of his films, and oversaw the development of the music as closely as he did any of the other elements. As a result, such a collaboration could take months, and there wasn’t a note in his scores that he didn’t approve.
Emotions could run high. Raksin recalled he was actually fired once, after only a week and a half, though quickly rehired. When music director Alfred Newman stormed out of one of the recording sessions, Raksin again defied Chaplin, refusing to take up the baton, which only led to further acrimony. The rift was eventually mended and decades later Raksin recollected his work on “Modern Times” as some of the happiest days of his life.
Chaplin’s scores yielded three popular hits: “Smile” from “Modern Times,” a hit for Nat King Cole in 1954; “Terry’s Theme” from “Limelight,” popularized by Jimmy Young as “Eternally” in 1952; and “This Is My Song” from “A Countess in Hong Kong,” recorded by Petula Clark in 1967.
Through a fluke – the belated release of “Limelight” in the United States, on a single screen in Los Angeles, twenty years after it was filmed, coinciding with the disqualification of music from “The Godfather,” after it was learned that Nino Rota had recycled a theme from one of his earlier scores (for the Italian film “Fortunella” in 1958) – Chaplin walked away with his only competitive Oscar, as a composer (!), one month before his 84th birthday.
Previously, he received two honorary Academy Awards, in 1929 and 1972.
Harry Belafonte was already a legend when he appeared on “The Muppet Show” in 1979 – he was about 52 years old – and now, looking back, he seems so young.
He starred in the film version of “Carmen Jones” opposite Dorothy Dandridge – his singing voice dubbed (!) by LeVern Hutcherson – but he turned down “Porgy and Bess,” which he found “racially demeaning.” Both films were directed by Otto Preminger.
I will also always remember him for a moody, post-apocalyptic film, “The World, the Flesh and the Devil,” which he co-produced.
Belafonte was never complacent in his celebrity. A disciple of Martin Luther King and Paul Robeson, he remained socially and politically engaged.
I’ve been remiss in not posting about it for a little while, but I’m still having a blast making my way through Howard Pollack’s 700-page Samuel Barber biography. Lots of great stuff in there, for music geeks, for anyone interested in local history (by local, I mean if you happen to live in the Pennsylvania/New Jersey/New York area or have been to Tanglewood), and more broadly, for anyone interested in the cultural and social history of 20th century America.
There are too many amusing or even startling connections to itemize, but surely one of the most surprising is that actor Patrick Swayze, who I think most people are aware was a dancer as well as an actor, once appeared in a ballet choreographed to Barber’s solo piano work “Excursions.”
Swayze, a principal with the Eliot Feld Ballet, was one of an ensemble of six who danced in the premiere of Felds’ “Excursions” at New York Public Theater in October 1975.
“Excursions” is distinguished in Barber’s output as one of his few works evidently touched by American popular idioms (“Souvenirs” is another), with the influence of blues, folk ballads, and fiddle tunes. In its breezier moments, it almost seems as if the composer had been listening to Vince Guaraldi – which couldn’t possibly be the case, since the four movements were written between 1942 and 1944. The last movement is a barn dance, which inevitably calls to mind Aaron Copland (“Rodeo” was first performed in 1942), but Barber approaches the material very differently.
The first movement was written for Jeanne Behrend, the composer’s friend and former classmate at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Then Vladimir Horowitz took an interest. He gave the debut of movements I, II and IV at Philadelphia’s Academy of Music. Subsequently, he took them to Carnegie Hall. The third movement was yet to be written. The official premiere of the complete set was given by Behrend, who performed all four movements in December 1948. Personally, I like the third movement best. It just makes me happy.
I’m not sure that Barber ever did any dirty dancing, but clearly he’s having the time of his life. Nobody puts Barber in a corner!
Listen to “Excursions” here, performed by John Browning, the pianist for whom the composer wrote his Pulitzer Prize winning Piano Concerto:
You’ll find more information about Howard Pollack’s “Samuel Barber: His Life and Legacy,” released earlier this month by University of Illinois Press, by following the link. Highly recommended, if you’re at all interested in classical music of the 20th century. (Barber lived from 1910 to 1981.) What a life, and how much the country has changed!
