Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

Easter Sunday Cathedral Soundscapes

Happy Easter, everyone! I’ve been all wrapped up with Easter activities for most of the day, so I’m only just getting around to extending the invitation for you to cap off your Sunday by joining me on “The Lost Chord” for an hour of pieces inspired or influenced by cathedrals.

We’ll hear Jennifer Higdon’s “blue cathedral” (all lower-case), from 1999, commissioned by the Curtis Institute of Music in honor of its 75th anniversary. The work is dedicated to the memory of Higdon’s younger brother, Andrew Blue. In the writing of the piece, she imagined a journey through a glass cathedral in the sky, with transparent walls and crystal pillars, through which clouds and endless expanses of blue are visible.

Guitarist-composer Agustin Barrios wrote “La Catedral” (“The Cathedral”) in 1921, after having heard music of Johann Sebastian Bach performed on the organ of the cathedral of San Juan Bautista de las Misiones in his native Paraguay.

Englishman Joby Talbot composed “Path of Miracles” in 2005. The work – dedicated to the memory of his father, Vincent – was written on a commission from the vocal chamber group Tenebrae. Its four movements reflect stops along the medieval pilgrimage route to Santiago. The third of these, an evocation of León Cathedral, is imagined as a kind of “Lux Aeterna,” the interior of the space bathed in light.

Finally, American composer Adolphus Hailstork recollected his experiences as a child chorister at the Cathedral of All Saints in Albany, New York, when he came to write his “Sonata da Chiesa” (“Church Sonata”) in 1992. Hailstork, composer-in-residence at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, conceived the work’s seven vibrant sections – “Exaltation,” “O Great Mystery,” “Adoration,” “Jubilation,” “O Lamb of God,” “Grant Us Thy Peace,” and “Exaltation” – for string orchestra, providing a joyous conclusion to the hour.

I hope you’ll join me for “Master Builders” – architects of cathedrals in sound – this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

PHOTO: The vaulted ceiling of León Cathedral

April 9, 2023
Vaughan Williams Easter Songs Review

For me, it’s never Easter until I listen to Vaughan Williams’ “Five Mystical Songs” with John Shirley-Quirk. Especially the first one, titled – appropriately enough – “Easter.”

April 9, 2023
Marian Anderson’s Easter Triumph Florence Price’s Legacy

On Easter Sunday, on this date in 1939, in the ultimate demonstration of turning lemons into lemonade, Marian Anderson, barred from performing at Constitution Hall by the Daughters of the American Revolution, because of her race, sang instead from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, to a diverse crowd of 75,000 people on the mall and a national radio audience estimated in the millions.

The program concluded with the spiritual “My Soul is Anchored in the Lord,” in an arrangement by Florence Price (1887-1953). By coincidence, today also happens to be Price’s birthday. Price, born in Little Rock, Arkansas, became the first African-American woman to be recognized as a symphonic composer, when her Symphony in E minor was performed by the Chicago Symphony in 1933. Needless to say, in an era when White American males struggled to find acceptance on Eurocentric classical music programs, Price, as a Black American woman, faced even greater challenges.

The playing field has shifted in recent years, and interest in Price’s music has been on the rise. It’s hard to believe, for a composer of her accomplishments, that dozens of her manuscripts were rescued from her dilapidated summer home, on the outskirts of St. Anne, Illinois, only as recently as 2009.

It’s an exciting time to be alive. Who knows what other musical riches are out there, undervalued in their time, awaiting rediscovery?

Anderson sings “My Soul’s Been Anchored in the Lord”

Price’s Symphony No. 1 in E minor

Lincoln Memorial Concert

April 9, 2023
Saints on Screen: The Music of Faith in Film

This week on “Picture Perfect,” the saints go marching in.

We’ll begin with a suite from “The Song of Bernadette” (1943), one of Jennifer Jones’ finest hours. Jones was honored with an Academy Award for her performance (the film was nominated in 12 categories). Franz Werfel’s novel tells the story of Bernadette Soubirous, a Lourdes peasant prone to visions of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Igor Stravinsky made several attempts to break into Hollywood, but he could never keep up with the grinding schedule. He took a crack at scoring the “Apparition of the Virgin” scene, but then thought better of it. The project went to Alfred Newman, who won his third Oscar (of nine). Stravinsky’s music would be recycled in the second movement of his “Symphony in Three Movements.”

The story of Joan of Arc has been translated to film many times. In the case of “Saint Joan” (1957), Otto Preminger adapted the play by George Bernard Shaw. Newcomer Jean Seberg was cast in the title role. Her inexperience brought her in for a sound critical drubbing. Even an old hand like screenwriter Graham Greene was not immune to critical barbs for the liberties he took in reworking Shaw’s play. Despite all that, the score, by Russian-born English composer Mischa Spoliansky, is lovely.

By contrast, the film of “A Man for All Seasons” (1966), after the play of Robert Bolt, was lavishly praised, especially Paul Scofield’s performance as Sir Thomas More (for which he received an Academy Award for Best Actor). The film won six Academy Awards in all, including that for Best Picture. The period-inflected score is by Georges Delerue.

I suppose it’s impossible to get through Easter without some Biblical bombast, so why not go all out with “Quo Vadis” (1951)? Henryk Sienkiewicz’s international bestseller incorporates into its narrative Saints Peter and Paul, but the really interesting characters are the cynical Petronius (Leo Genn), who knows how to throw a party, and the quite mad Nero (Peter Ustinov), who plays the lyre even as Rome burns.

Miklós Rózsa’s score has been much-lauded for its attempt at historical authenticity (the incorporation of contemporaneous Greek, Hebrew, and Sicilian melodies), though its popularity has been eclipsed, somewhat, by that of his work on “Ben-Hur” and “King of Kings.” “Quo Vadis” is really the film in which Rózsa lays out the blueprint for a decade or more of big screen piety. Bernard Herrmann called it “the score of a lifetime.”

I hope you’ll join me in taking some time off for good behavior. That’s “Lives of the Saints,” on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, this Saturday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

PHOTO: Jennifer Jones and the Lourdes’ prayer

April 8, 2023
Penderecki’s Utrenja Holy Saturday’s Haunting Masterpiece

While there are plenty of Vespers settings by classic composers to maintain a solemn and reflective atmosphere appropriate to the delayed gratification of Easter Sunday, few works for Holy Saturday are as engaging – or as challenging – as Krzysztof Penderecki’s “Utrenja.”

Penderecki, who emerged from the 1960s as an icon of the avant-garde, here performs a delicate balancing act. The heavy weather of tone clusters and quicksilver cacophony disperses for hurricane’s eye interludes of hypnotic tonality. The overall impression is eerie as can be, but also affectingly mysterious. It’s a ritual both time-honored and timeless.

The text is based on the Orthodox liturgy for Holy Saturday, for the lamentation for Christ’s death, and the Easter Sunday morning service commemorating the Resurrection.

The two parts were first performed separately. “The Entombment,” composed in 1970, was dedicated to Eugene Ormandy, who recorded it with the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Temple University Choir; “The Resurrection,” was composed in 1971. Both parts were commissioned by West German Radio.

Audience response to the joint premiere in 1971 was tumultuous, likely as much for extramusical considerations as for the music itself. The performance took place only days after the putdown by Polish armed forces of the Gdansk shipyard riots, sparked by precipitous inflation, that resulted in 44 people killed and over 1000 injured. Polish art and politics have frequently been familiar bedfellows.

Penderecki’s “Utrenja” has long since joined his “Polish Requiem” and “St. Luke Passion” as a milestone of modern Polish music. Not music for every day, perhaps, but if you’re feeling a little adventurous, put it on and just go with it. Afterward, you can always listen to Rachmaninoff’s “Vespers,” if you want.

Petrifying Penderecki:

Reassuring Rachmaninoff:

IMAGE: “Mourning from Chomranice,” by an artist identified as the Master of Mourning, c. 1440

April 8, 2023

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