Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

Seymour Bernstein at 95 Piano Legend

Born and raised in Newark, NJ, Seymour Bernstein has basically been teaching piano for 80 years, ever since his own teacher, Clara Husserl – herself a pupil of Theodor Leschetizky – delegated the supervision of some of her more gifted younger pupils to him when he was 15. Today, Bernstein continues to teach and enlighten, with 95 years of accumulated wit and wisdom.

Also contributing to his own education were celebrated pianists Alexander Brailowsky, Clifford Curzon, and Jan Gorbaty, legendary pedagogue Nadia Boulanger, and master of all trades George Enescu.

As a soloist, Bernstein gave the world premiere of Heitor Villa-Lobos’ Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1969. Even at the height of his career as a performer, he taught, conducting master classes in Europe, Asia, and the Americas. He abandoned the concert stage at the age of 50, opting instead for the quieter satisfactions of teaching and composing. He intimated to no one that his final concert, in 1977, would be his swan song.

Today, he maintains a private studio in New York City and is an adjunct professor at New York University. His books include “With Your Own Two Hands: Self-Discovery Through Music,” “20 Lessons in Keyboard Choreography,” “Monsters and Angels: Surviving a Career in Music,” and “Chopin: Interpreting His Notational Symbols.”

Warm and funny, dry, opinionated, and always full of insight, Bernstein is a larger-than-life character whose philosophy of musicmaking is always rooted in the heart. Don’t let that grandfatherly exterior lull you. Bernstein remains as sharp as C-sharp major.

In 2015, a documentary was released, “Seymour: An Introduction,” directed by Princeton’s Ethan Hawke. (If you’re a Salinger fan, you’ll doubly appreciate the title.) The film has a 100-percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. You can watch the trailer here.

A Bernstein interview at the age of 90 on “Living the Classical Life”

There are also hours of fascinating videos on the YouTube channel “tonebase PIANO.” In this one, Bernstein dismantles Glenn Gould’s Mozart.

Bernstein plays Brahms

At 19, playing Liszt’s “Mephisto Waltz No. 1”

Happy 95th birthday, Seymour Bernstein!

April 24, 2023
Shakespeare’s First Folio 400th & Music

2023 marks the 400th anniversary of the so-called First Folio, a collection of Shakespeare’s plays, published seven years after the author’s death and considered to be one of the most influential books ever issued.

Although not quite on the same level of significance, this Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll devote an hour to music inspired by the Bard – a topic which, of course, could fill many years of such programs – in observation of William Shakespeare’s birthday.

First, fairy high jinks are a metaphor for the mutability and volatility of the human heart in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” We’ll hear two works inspired by Shakespeare’s pixilated comedy.

English composer Walter Leigh (1905-1942) was killed in action during the Second World War, just shy of his 37th birthday. Like Paul Hindemith, who was his teacher for two years, Leigh thrived on writing music made to order for specific occasions. His incidental music for “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” first played in open air in 1936, sounds like a throwback to the Restoration period.

Italian-born composer Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895-1968) fled fascism in Europe to settle in California. There, he wrote concertos for Jascha Heifetz, Gregor Piatigorsky and Andrés Segovia. He is particularly well-regarded for his guitar music, having composed nearly 100 works for the instrument. He also worked on about 200 film scores. As a teacher, his students included André Previn, Nelson Riddle, Herman Stein, Henry Mancini, Jerry Goldsmith, and John Williams.

Over the course of his career, Castelnuovo-Tedesco churned out an extraordinary amount of music inspired by the Bard. He composed an opera after “The Taming of the Shrew,” four dances for “Love’s Labour’s Lost,” 33 Shakespeare songs drawn from the plays, and settings of 35 of the sonnets.

Between 1930 and 1953, he wrote a number of overtures on Shakespearean themes – at least 11, enough to fill two compact discs, which have been issued on the Naxos label. His overture to “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” dates from 1940.

Czech composer Josef Bohuslav Foerster (1859-1951) lived a very long life, during which he witnessed, firsthand, many remarkable events in music history. Born in Prague, Foerster worked as a critic in Hamburg, then moved to Vienna, where he became closely acquainted with Gustav Mahler.

Although he occasionally employed in his works musical inflections of his native land, he wasn’t truly part of the Czech nationalist school embraced by Dvořák and others. Because his music is not as overtly Czech-sounding as some, and because he spent so much of his early career in Germany and Austria, Foerster’s output and reputation were embraced only gradually by his countrymen.

He returned to Prague in 1918, with the establishment of the Czechoslovak Republic, and found employment there at both the conservatory and university. Gradually, he attained the status of “grand old man” of Czech music.

He composed his symphonic suite “From Shakespeare” in 1909. Made up of four portraits of prominent female characters from Shakespeare plays, the work consists of a brief introduction, followed by musical meditations on Perdita (from “The Winter’s Tale”), Viola (from “Twelfth Night”), Lady Macbeth (from – well, you know), and finally, Katherina, Petruchio and Eros (from “The Taming of the Shrew”).

I’ll provide the whipped cream and maraschino cherries. Bring your own straws for “Great Shakes” – celebrating William Shakespeare and 400 years of the First Folio – this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

April 23, 2023
Shakespeare’s Birthday Henry V on Film

This week on “Picture Perfect,” it’s William Shakespeare’s birthday (observed).

No one knows for sure when the Bard was born – his baptismal date was April 26, 1564 – but since he died on April 23, 1616, the tradition has been to keep it tidy. So, like Mark Twain, who “came in” with Halley’s comet and “went out” upon its return, we feel it as a matter of poetic satisfaction that Shakespeare’s death date must also be his birth date.

All’s well that ends well! I’ll celebrate Shakespeare on both of my show’s this weekend (following up tomorrow night on “The Lost Chord” with some Shakespeare-inspired concert works at 10:00 EDT), beginning today with two complementary versions of “Henry V.”

William Walton composed his now-classic score for Laurence Olivier in 1944. We’ll hear selections from a recording that hews closer to the film’s original orchestrations than does the sanctioned concert suite by Muir Mathieson and restores the parts for chorus. In addition, Olivier himself will declaim two of Henry’s rousing speeches, in a separate release conducted by the composer.

Then Patrick Doyle will be the baritone that initiates the choral showpiece “Non nobis Domine” that caps his own acclaimed score for Kenneth Branagh’s directorial debut in 1989.

Olivier’s “Henry V” was nominated for four Academy Awards: those for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Art Direction, and Best Score. It didn’t win in the competitive categories, but Olivier was honored with a special award “for his outstanding achievement as an actor, producer and director in bringing ‘Henry V’ to the screen.”

To go toe-to-toe with the 20th century’s most renowned Shakespearean interpreter was a bold gamble, but at 29 Branagh did just that. Amazingly, when his version galloped into theaters 45 years later, comparisons were not unfavorable. The film and Branagh’s performance would also be nominated (along with the film’s Costume Design). But despite its enthusiastic reception, Doyle’s music would be overlooked by the Academy. The soundtrack, however, received a lot of exposure on classical radio at the time, and the score remains popular.

It’s instructive to view the two directors’ takes on “Henry V” in the context of the times in which they were filmed. When Olivier brought Harry the King to the big screen, England was in throes of the Second World War and his “Henry” bubbles over with patriotic zeal.

Branagh, on the other hand, offers a grittier, post-Vietnam “Henry,” with his charismatic, ambitious king plunging his country into a war that is both costly and messy. Fortunately, as history tells us, the long-bow saves the day, and Branagh’s Henry makes us forget his cold rejection of old friendships with a hair-raising rendition of the St. Crispin’s Day speech that would drive anyone who hears it to want to fight the French, consequences be damned.

Judge for yourself, from these two contrasting interpretations of the St. Crispin’s pep talk from “Henry V.”

Olivier, a powerful and patriotic – if somewhat theatrical – symbol for the beleaguered British during World War II:

And Branagh, a cinematic, very human Henry for today:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRj01LShXN8

Once more unto the breach, dear friends! I hope you’ll join me for “Henry V” times two, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, this Saturday at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

April 22, 2023
Austin Powers Podcast Tonight

Next week is NOW! Join us for our fourth season opener, when we put the “Mod” in “moderately amusing,” as Roy and I discuss “Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery” (1997). We’ll be taking our mojo out of mothballs for @[100063986017424:2048:Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner], TONIGHT at 7:30 EDT!

https://www.facebook.com/roystiedyescificorner

April 21, 2023
Sir John Eliot Gardiner at 80 A Musical Legacy

Sir John Eliot Gardiner has a reputation for being a bit prickly, but when I had the privilege to interview him in 2014, he was nothing of the sort. On the contrary, he was nothing if not patient and gentlemanly. I found this Gardiner’s plot to be wholly devoid of cacti.

And he’s a man who knows a thing or two about agriculture. As of the time we spoke, he was still running an organic farm inherited from his great-uncle, the conductor and composer Balfour Gardiner.

Today, Sir John turns 80. For 59 years, his cultivation has been of a different sort, as director of the Monteverdi Choir, the ensemble he found in 1964.

Surely a high point of their collaboration was in 2000, when, for the 250th anniversary of the death of Johann Sebastian Bach, Gardiner and his choristers undertook an extensive Bach Cantata Pilgrimage, performing and recording most of the cantatas in 60 historic churches.

In 2017, he and his musicians toured widely with its Monteverdi 450 project. They performed all three of Monteverdi’s surviving operas, to mark the 450th anniversary of the composer’s birth.

In between, Gardiner and his Monteverdians came to Princeton for two concerts at Richardson Auditorum: of Bach’s cantata “Christ lag in Todesbanden” and his motet “Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied” and Handel’s “Dixit Dominus,” in 2014; and Monteverdi’s “Orfeo,” in 2015. Both were among the most memorable of my concertgoing career.

The Princeton concerts were made possible through the munificence of the late philanthropist William H. Scheide. I wrote more about Gardiner’s connection to Princeton and Mr. Scheide, through a certain Bach portrait, in an article that appeared in the Trenton Times.

https://www.nj.com/times-entertainment/2014/06/sir_john_eliot_gardiner_to_con.html?fbclid=IwAR3MB7f2qZ7M7Bco7f1H2FmUFxk5cvCUXwrUXTd5sblYJVEMcw1q4kpLHVM

Just last week, it was announced that Gardiner will conduct the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists at King Charles’ coronation on May 6.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-dorset-64940228

Gardiner in action, directing the Monteverdi Choir in a performance of Handel’s “Dixit Dominus”:

Happy birthday, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, and thank you for the countless bouquets of memorable music. There’s not been a thorn among them!

April 20, 2023

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