The grand old man of Ukrainian music is 85 today. Born in Kyiv in 1937, Valentin Silvestrov attended the conservatory there from 1958 to 1964. In fact, he lived most of his life in Kyiv. He was there when the shelling started in March. One of nearly seven-and-a-half million refugees who have fled Ukraine since the beginning of the Russian invasion, he made a harrowing escape to Germany, by way of Poland. He now lives in Berlin. Whether he will ever see his home again is anyone’s guess. It will not be the Kyiv he remembers.
“Diptych: Testament” (1995), on poetry by Taras Shevchenko
Taras Shevchenko, MY TESTAMENT
(“Zapovit” / “Iak umru, to pokhovaite”
“Заповіт” / “Як умру, то поховайте”)
Translated by John Weir
When I am dead, bury me
In my beloved Ukraine,
My tomb upon a grave mound high
Amid the spreading plain,
So that the fields, the boundless steppes,
The Dnieper’s plunging shore
My eyes could see, my ears could hear
The mighty river roar.
When from Ukraine the Dnieper bears
Into the deep blue sea
The blood of foes… then will I leave
These hills and fertile fields —
I’ll leave them all and fly away
To the abode of God,
And then I’ll pray…. But till that day
I nothing know of God.
Oh bury me, then rise ye up
And break your heavy chains
And water with the tyrants’ blood
The freedom you have gained.
And in the great new family,
The family of the free,
With softly spoken, kindly word
Remember also me.
“Prayer for Ukraine” (2014)
Symphony No. 5 (1980-82)
Silvestrov at the piano, remembering the victims of the Charlie Hebdo and related attacks in France, January 7-9, 2015
From the time of Adam and Eve, so many of the world’s woes have stemmed from some sort of transgression or disobedience. So in the context of “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark” (1973), if William Demarest tells you not to open the fireplace, don’t open the fireplace!
You wouldn’t expect any profound subtext in a made-for-TV movie, but there is some pretty palpable feminist anxiety underpinning this tale of Sally, a housewife (“the perfect hostess”), played by Kim Darby, who’s alternately dismissed, neglected, or berated by her ambitious, career-driven husband, played by Jim Hutton. Her only friend tells her, “I don’t care what Women’s Lib tells me, the very mention of a mouse drives me crazy!” Sally’s isolation is made manifest when she’s left alone – in an old dark house, of course.
Sure, the acting is wooden (it doesn’t take much to divine that Demarest is thinking, “I used to work with Preston Sturges!”), the script flat, the set-up pedestrian, and the character motivations preposterous, but there is still something elementally creepy about being stalked by malevolent yams that rasp “Sally, Sally, we want your spirit!”
On the next Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner, we kick off Halloween month a day early, as we discuss the television movie we all watched for the first time as kids, either through our fingers or from behind the couch. The conversation will be sharper than a pocket full of straight razors, and the coffee will be laced with NoDoz. We’ll leave the lights on in the comments section, when we livestream on Facebook, this Friday evening at 7:30 EDT!
27 years ago this morning, I made by debut on WWFM – The Classical Network. Beloved radio personality Bliss Michelson, ever the avuncular presence, sat at my elbow as I opened the mic, my heart racing, and I introduced my first hour of selections.
This was at the end of one of Bliss’ weekday morning shifts. I would be left to fend for myself the following weekend. A lot of responsibility for a fledgling, and I took it very seriously. I rose at 4 a.m. every Saturday and Sunday (3 a.m. before the station went to 24 hours in 1997), drove an hour in the dark through all weather, and accrued a few flat tires and speeding tickets along the way.
When it snowed, I scaled the icy ladder to the deck on the roof to clean out the satellite dish. I stayed late if there was a malfunction. I came through in innumerable ways that were not part of the job description, to keep everything running smoothly when I was alone at the helm.
In January 2003, after much petitioning, I got the go ahead to produce my specialty show “The Lost Chord,” devoted to unusual and neglected repertoire. In 2010, I added “Picture Perfect,” my movie music show.
In 2011, as we expanded into New York, broadcasting on Columbia University’s HD2 channel, I was moved from weekend mornings to weekday afternoons, which I alternated with David Osenberg. By that time, I was also heavily into producing live and recorded broadcast concerts. I had become a crackerjack interviewer, with guests ranging from representatives of our local musical community to phoners with people like Leon Fleisher, Peter Schickele, Dawn Upshaw, JoAnn Falletta, Sharon Isbin, and Christopher Walken (who played a cellist in the film “A Late Quartet”).
Although, at the time I started, I already had nine years’ experience as a community broadcaster at WMUH Allentown and WXLV Schnecksville, Pennsylvania, I quaked at the enormity of the listenership (I myself had been listening in Philadelphia and the Lehigh Valley for years), and because I didn’t want to mess up the opportunity. Detecting my anxiety, Bliss offered the following words of advice: “Remember, it’s just you and the microphone.”
Thus commenced my dream job, getting paid to share music I’ve selected with an audience of kindred spirits. Personally, I can’t think of a more perfect marriage of knowledge, ability, enthusiasm, resources (have you seen my record collection?), and performance.
It’s been said, get a job that you love and you’ll never work a day in your life. Well, that’s what it was for a good many years. Things weren’t always that simple, but in terms of it just being “me and the microphone,” the honeymoon was remarkably long.
Here’s the music I selected for my first hour on WWFM, at 9 a.m. on September 28, 1995:
HOWARD HANSON – Merry Mount: Suite
SIR PETER MAXWELL DAVIES – Farewell to Stromness
MUZIO CLEMENTI – Symphony No. 1
ARNOLD SCHOENBERG – Aria from “The Mirror of Arcadia”
PHOTO: In my glory, during a WWFM membership drive in 2016
Is it possible that for the first public performance of his Clarinet Concerto, Aaron Copland received a little help from a friend?
While he was still in his teens, in 1940 or ’41, Philadelphia composer Romeo Cascarino was handed a letter from the “Dean of American Composers.” Romeo’s father had sent Copland some of his compositions, and Copland responded with an impressively favorable evaluation. Included in the correspondence was an invitation for Romeo to visit Copland at Tanglewood, home of the Berkshire Music Center, an emerging musicians’ academy located in the Berkshire Hills of Western Massachusetts.
Understandably, the young man was full of anticipation. Tanglewood, also the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, was a magnet for some of the finest composers, conductors, and musicians of the time.
Following his arrival, Romeo received a further surprise when, upon a second examination of the scores, Copland told him he couldn’t suggest any improvements and that they should remain just as they were. He was especially taken with how naturally Romeo was able to move from key to key. Romeo responded that he never thought compositionally in terms of keys, but simply tried to write the music he was hearing and wished to express.
Copland remembered the young man when, in 1948, an interesting problem arose. He had written his Clarinet Concerto on a commission from Benny Goodman. In the agreement, Goodman was to have two years exclusivity in playing the work. However, Goodman had apparently gotten cold feet. He may have been “The King of Swing,” but tackling a concerto by America’s most revered composer was another kettle of fish entirely.
Copland became uneasy with Goodman’s hesitancy, and as the premiere of the concerto kept getting pushed back, a second performance was arranged with the Philadelphia Orchestra and clarinetist Ralph McLane. Perhaps this was the spur that Goodman required. The concerto was performed at last, just before Goodman’s exclusivity ran out. The premiere performance was given as a broadcast, over the radio, with the NBC Symphony Orchestra and Copland conducting.
HOWEVER, there are those who prefer to credit the second performance as the true premiere, as it was the first time it was ever heard before a live audience, at Carnegie Hall no less.
Here’s where it really gets interesting. For whatever reason, McLane didn’t want to play the cadenza as Copland had written it for Goodman. So he requested another.
This placed Copland, at the peak of his fame, in a bit of a quandary, since it was short notice and he was extraordinarily busy. Under the circumstance, he arrived at a practical solution. With McLane’s knowledge, he would delegate the task of writing a new cadenza, with the proviso that the substitute would be destroyed after the Philadelphia Orchestra performance.
For this delicate operation, which had to be undertaken in comparative secrecy, Copland turned not to any of his gifted proteges – including Leonard Bernstein, Lukas Foss, Irving Fine, etc. – but to the young Philadelphian he recollected from Tanglewood. Such was the regard in which Copland held the younger composer.
The performance, with the cadenza as “ghosted” by Cascarino, enjoyed great success. Cascarino was to remain uncredited and, characteristically, sought none. For subsequent performances, the concerto would be played with Copland’s original cadenza, as written for Goodman.
Goodman and Copland recorded the work twice. Copland regarded the stereo version, with the Columbia Symphony Orchestra, as far and away his personal favorite among the recordings he conducted.
This anecdote is a piece of Cascarino family lore, but I see no reason to disbelieve it. I heard it from the composer’s widow, and she heard it directly from the composer’s lips. Romeo’s reticence on the matter would be entirely characteristic. Consistent with the young man who would have been too shy to reach out to Copland in the first place, in his maturity Romeo remained modest to a fault. Throughout his life, even as he would brook no compromise when it came to the composition and performance of his own music, so he would not engage in self-promotion.
It was only through the intervention of his friend, arts writer Tom Di Nardo, that his opera “William Penn” finally received a series of performances at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia in 1982. Later, Tom pulled some strings to have the orchestral works recorded and released on Naxos.
None of the participants in the musical sleight-of-hand surrounding the Copland concerto are still living, but it’s possible that the proof is still out there, either by way of a scrap of score or surviving testimony. Would that there were, at least for curiosity’s sake, a recording of the McLane performance. Perhaps in the archives of Carnegie or Philadelphia?
“Meditation,” inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s “Annabel Lee,” composed in 1935, when Cascarino was 13 years-old, as he is in the photo, left.
In case you missed it, my radio documentary on Romeo Cascarino has been posted as a webcast, just in time for the composer’s centenary.
The show includes commentary by soprano Dolores Ferraro, the composer’s wife for over 40 years, and arts writer and longtime champion Tom Di Nardo; also rare recordings from the family archive, music from a Naxos release of Cascarino’s orchestral music with JoAnn Falletta conducting, and a selection from the composer’s magnum opus, the opera “William Penn.”
