I’m sufficiently well along in my recovery from a crazy throat ailment that I can say with confidence that I will be joining Roy tomorrow night for our rescheduled discussion of James Cameron’s “Aliens” (1986). Thank you all for your well-wishes.
Conveniently, it’s not much of a leap from bile to body horror. Get ready for more than your share of slime on the next Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner. Bring your Kleenex to the comments section when we livestream on Facebook, YouTube, etc., this Friday evening at 7:30 EST!
I’m sitting here thinking I could really use some William Mathias Harp Concerto. This webcast of “The Lost Chord” from a few years back is the very thing. Mathias’ concerto is the centerpiece of an hour of Welsh music. March 1st, St. David’s Day, has been celebrated in Wales since the Middle Ages. I honor the country’s patron saint with a playlist also featuring Grace Williams’ “Penillion” and John Thomas’ work for solo harp “Megan’s Daughter.” You’ll also hear Bryn Terfel sing a Welsh song with his former school mate, tenor John Eifion.
There’s a giant leek in the fridge. Yes, you heard that correctly, and no, it’s not broken. Listen to “And God Created Great Wales” here:
You may recall “The Pianist.” The 2002 film was based on the autobiography of Władysław Szpilman, a Jewish musician who miraculously survived the Nazi occupation of Poland. His family was not so lucky. In 1942, they were deported to Treblinka. Szpilman was saved only by a friend in the Jewish Ghetto Police, who recognized him and pulled him out of line as his family boarded the train.
Two years later, Szpilman was hiding in an abandoned house when he was discovered by a German officer. To his surprise, the officer did not harm him or have him arrested. Rather, after learning that he was a musician, he asked Szpilman play him something on the piano. Szpilman played the Nocturne in C-sharp minor by Frederic Chopin. The officer listened and afterward helped him to find a better hiding place and smuggled him food.
If you haven’t seen the film, there’s a lot more to it than that. At the bottom of this post, you’ll find footage of the man upon whose life it was based. Adrien Brody played Szpilman in the movie, which was directed by Roman Polanski, who also lost family in the Holocaust. Both Brody and Polanski were recognized with Academy Awards.
Ironically, Chopin, for all his gifts, was anti-Semitic – which, it should be acknowledged, was not uncommon for his time and place. (He also disliked Russians and “Huns.”) Chopin regarded himself an aristocrat, a descendant of Polish nobility and a superior soul, with plenty of grievances across the board.
How fortunate for him that Jewish musicians have done so much down the years in looking past his shortcomings to celebrate his genius.
We don’t know for sure when Chopin was born, but it is commonly held that it was on this date in 1810. After all, Chopin and his mom said so. However, his baptismal certificate, filled out on April 23, gives his natal day as February 22. The Chopin Society UK, in defiance of the composer and his family, is inclined to agree.
Władysław Szpilman died in the year 2000 at the age of 88. He plays Chopin at the link.
Frequently referred to as “the Finnish national epic,” the Kalevala, a disparate collection of long narrative poems set down from oral tradition in the early 19th century, tells of the creation of the Earth, the loves, antagonisms, and retaliations of its peoples, and the forging, theft, and attempted recovery of a mysterious talisman called the Sampo. Its fantastic and heroic tales informed the work of Finland’s greatest artists at a time when the country began its surge toward independence, after 700 years of Swedish rule, and another century as a duchy of the Russian Empire.
The Kalevala was instrumental in promoting a sense of Finnish national identity. Swedish had been the tongue of the country’s administration and education from time immemorial. Then Tsar Nicholas II attempted to instate Russian as the official language. The Kalevala became a lightning rod for Finnish nationalists. Cresting patriotic fervor led Finland to declare independence on the heels of the Russian Revolution in 1917.
The Kalevala resonated in Finland to an extent it may be difficult for foreigners to comprehend. It has inspired holidays, the naming of cities and companies devoted to banking, insurance, jewelry, asphalting, icebreaking, and dairy, and innumerable paintings, books, and pieces of music.
Finland celebrates its own separate Independence Day, on December 6, as it trumpets its freedom from the Russian Empire, but Kalevala Day, also known as Finnish Culture Day, is equally a time of deep national pride.
Fun fact: In the United States, a community founded by Finnish immigrants in Michigan is called Kalevala, and many of its street names are drawn from the epic. Better known is the fact that the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was inspired by a German translation of the Kalevala in the crafting of his own “The Song of Hiawatha.”
The composer Jean Sibelius, fiercely patriotic, was Kalevala-crazy. A significant portion of his output was influenced by this fount of Finnish lore – “Four Legends from the Kalevala,” “Kullervo,” “Pohjola’s Daughter,” “Tapiola,” “The Origin of Fire,” and “Kyllikki,” to name a few. Some of the symphonic poems had their roots in a projected opera, “The Building of the Boat,” which was never completed.
I’ve done several radio shows, over the years, programmed around themes from the Kalevala. This one, “Epic Finnish,” last aired on Sunday, on “The Lost Chord,” on WWFM – The Classical Network.
The playlist includes “Aino” by Sibelius champion Robert Kajanus, the “Kalevala Suite” by Uuno Klami, and a Sibelius rarity, “A Song for Lemminkäinen.”
I am also appending, as a bonus, Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic with Sibelius’ “Pohjola’s Daughter.” I’m a little mixed on Bernstein’s recordings of the symphonies, but here I think he really excels. The performance is a wonder. Steadfast old Väinämöinen, the wizard, attempts to woo the Daughter of the North, whom he espies seated atop a rainbow, weaving a cloth of gold. She agrees to marry him only if he is able to complete a series of impossible tasks. (My favorite is tying an egg into invisible knots!) Unfortunately, Väinämöinen, always unlucky in love, wounds himself grievously with an axe while attempting to construct a boat from fragments of her distaff.
Also, quite simply, one of my favorite Sibelius recordings of all time: Eugene Ormandy conducts the Philadelphia Orchestra in “Four Legends from the Kalevala.” Its four movements are meant to evoke the swashbuckling Lemminkäinen and his adventures among the maidens of Saari; the Swan of Tuonela gliding through the realm of the dead; the resurrection of Lemminkäinen, treacherously slain; and finally, Lemminkäinen’s homeward journey.
Here’s a live performance, with the Turku Philharmonic (a Finnish orchestra) conducted by Leif Segerstam
The message to would-be occupiers: don’t start what you can’t Finnish! Happy Kalevala Day!
“The Defense of the Sampo” (1896), by Akseli Gallén-Kallela. Väinämöinen the wizard faces off against the evil witch Louhi
Today is the 175th anniversary of the birth of Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry – who, let’s face it, had far too many names, which is why everyone generally refers to him, simply, as Hubert Parry.
Parry was one of the foremost figures of the so-called English Musical Renaissance – not the actual Renaissance, mind you, but rather the flowering of English music that took place toward the end of the 19th century, after a nearly 200-year dearth of world-class composers following the death of Henry Purcell in 1695.
A professor at the Royal College of Music in London, Parry eventually became the school’s head. He influenced an entire generation of much better-known musicians, people like Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gustav Holst, John Ireland, and Frank Bridge.
Parry himself composed reams of music – symphonies, odes and oratorios, unaccompanied choral pieces, church music, an opera, chamber and instrumental works, incidental music for the stage, a piano concerto and, perhaps best of all, a set of “Symphonic Variations” – but he is probably best-recognized these days for his enduring choral work “Jerusalem” (still sung on the Last Night of the Proms) and the coronation anthem “I was glad.”
The character of much of his music – and the fact that his works have been embraced by royals and nationalists – might lead one to assume that Parry the man was a little on the stodgy side. But nothing could be further from the truth. He was a free-thinker, humanist and Darwinian in outlook, who was described with affection by some as a radical, with a strong bias against Conservatism.
Though he himself was enormously wealthy and never wanted for anything, he lived an ascetic life and a reflective one. He was against blood-sports and prone to bouts of depression – understandable in one disposed to reflection.
He was generous with his pupils and broadminded with those he disagreed with. Though he held strong convictions, he seldom took anything at face value. Without Parry’s perception and support of his most promising students, English music might have developed very differently.
It’s interesting to note that, even during his lifetime, his detractors used his “privilege” against him. But it seems his only indulgence was his yacht, which he dubbed “The Wanderer.”
Parry is buried in St. Paul’s Cathedral, alongside Sir Arthur Sullivan and William Boyce.
Happy birthday, Hubert Parry!
“Symphonic Variations”
Symphony No. 3 “The English”
The “Lady Radnor Suite,” composed for Helen, Countess of Radnor, who led an all-female string orchestra
“Jerusalem” at the Proms
“I was glad” at the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee
Vaughan Williams remembers Hubert Parry and Sir Charles Villiers Stanford
Dave Hurwitz of classicstoday.com shares George Bernard Shaw’s evisceration of Parry’s oratorio “Job”
“The Wanderer” Toccata and Fugue, named for Parry’s yacht
