Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

Philadelphia Orchestra Memories

It’s gotten to the point that I remember things I experienced 30-35 years ago more vividly than stuff I did 30-35 weeks ago. Even so, I will sometimes try to search for old concert reviews to confirm my memory of certain dates or performers or companion pieces on a given program.

In the course of one of such search, I happened across this: Philadelphia Orchestra concert listings from the 1980s and ‘90s, the era that formed the peak of my Philadelphia concert attendance – first as one of those who stood in line for an hour and a half, in all weather, outside the old Academy of Music at Broad and Spruce Streets, for a shot at a $1.50 amphitheater ticket (later raised to $2.00); then as a young subscriber.

How strange it is to revisit these programs from my current perspective, all these years later. On the one hand I can remember vividly being there in the hall, and the actual performances, as if next to no time has passed; on the other, not only does it seem so very distant, but like from another dimension entirely. Surely it is for elusive sensations like this that the word as “uncanny” was coined.

Looking back, I realize afresh how lucky I was to be able to see and hear so many of the greats in action. I can’t say that I took everything for granted, but with the passage of time, one starts to realize how seldom certain pieces are played in concert and how indispensable individual talents are.

Pay attention not only to the conductors, but also the soloists – some of them drawn from the orchestra’s personnel. So many no longer with us, or getting toward the end of their careers.

https://concertannals.blogspot.com/2018/12/philadelphia-orchestra-subscription_13.html

Those of you with even longer memories may appreciate this. Scroll down for Ormandy in the ‘50s:

https://concertannals.blogspot.com/search/label/Philadelphia%20Orchestra

PHOTO: Philadelphia’s Academy of Music, where I saw Mieczylslaw Horszowski, Rudolf Firkušný, Leon Fleisher, Alicia de Larrocha, Max Rudolf, Klaus Tennstedt, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Erich Leinsdorf, Oscar Shumsky, Isaac Stern, Paul Tortelier, Mstislav Rostropovich, Heinrich Schiff, Lynn Harrell, Jessye Norman, Luciano Pavarotti, John Shirley-Quirk, William Warfield, Gian Carlo Menotti, Einojuhani Rautuvaara, and so many others. Entrance to the amphitheater is toward the far right of the photo. If you were in line back to the poster on the front right of the building (seen center), you knew you were in. You just had to be sure to bring a coffee and a book. No cell phones then!

April 5, 2022
Elmer Bernstein A Centennial Celebration

His was an enviable career that spanned some 50 years. He composed music for over 150 movies and nearly 80 television projects, many of them still much-beloved, including “The Ten Commandments” (1956), “The Magnificent Seven” (1960), “To Kill a Mockingbird” (1962), “The Great Escape” (1963), and the iconic theme for the National Geographic television specials.

Elmer Bernstein would have been 100 years-old today.

Bernstein was composer-of-choice for John Wayne’s later films, including “The Comancheros” (1961), “The Sons of Katie Elder” (1965), “True Grit” (1969), and “The Shootist” (1976).

In addition, he was one of the first film composers to incorporate jazz elements into his work for dramatic purposes, in movies like “The Man with the Golden Arm” (1955), “Sweet Smell of Success” (1957), and “Walk on the Wild Side” (1962).

Coming out of the Swinging Sixties, a time when the industry clearly favored a more popular sound over purely orchestral music (that is, until John Williams changed everything), Bernstein kept right on working. Thanks to a generation of younger filmmakers who had grown up on his classics, he never lacked for choice. Suddenly, he found himself much in demand as a comedy composer, providing the underscores for “Animal House” (1978), “The Blues Brothers” (1980), “Airplane!” (1980), “Stripes” (1981), and “Ghostbusters” (1984).

For Martin Scorsese, he composed music for “The Age of Innocence” (1993), “Bringing Out the Dead” (1999), and “The Gangs of New York” (2002) – although his score for the latter was ultimately rejected due to extensive tampering in post-production. He also adapted Bernard Herrmann’s music for Scorsese’s remake of “Cape Fear” (1991) and wrote the music for the Scorsese-produced “The Grifters” (1990).

In all, Bernstein was nominated for 14 Academy Awards, but claimed the Oscar only once, fairly early on, for his work on “Thoroughly Modern Millie” (1967), of all things. His final nomination was for his very last score, for “Far from Heaven” (2002). Elmer Bernstein died on August 18, 2004 at the age of 82.

No relation to Leonard Bernstein (or “Bern-STINE”), Elmer pronounced his name “Bern-STEEN.” The two were sometimes further differentiated as “East Coast Bernstein” and “West Coast Bernstein.”

In the year 2000, Elmer Bernstein composed a guitar concerto and expressed regret that he hadn’t contributed more to the concert hall. At least it was good one. David Hurwitz of classicstoday.com described it as “incontestably the finest piece ever composed for this combination” (i.e. guitar and orchestra), going so far as to hold it up to Joaquin Rodrigo’s “Concierto de Aranjuez.” I don’t know if I’d take it that far, but it is pretty damn good.

Movement 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mrSyhK6174

Movement 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f072Efxnw24

Movement 3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBi-BHZPkq4

Keep an eye out for my webcast for this past weekend’s “Picture Perfect,” devoted to Bernstein. I’m told the audio will be up this afternoon. Once it’s posted, you can click on “listen” at the link.

https://www.wwfm.org/show/picture-perfect-with-ross-amico/2022-03-31/picture-perfect-apr-2-elmer-bernstein-at-100

Some of Bernstein’s music for “The Ten Commandments” will also be featured on this weekend’s show, which will be devoted to scores composed for Biblical epics, this Saturday evening at 7:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

In the meantime, enjoy “Elmer Bernstein: This Is Your Life,” with appearances by John Williams, John Landis, Eli Wallach, and others, offering congratulations to the composer at the age of 80.

Happy birthday, Elmer Bernstein. Thank you for your magnificent body of work!

April 4, 2022
Composer Painters: Art & Music Collide

For some people, being a master in one field, it seems, just isn’t enough. This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll hear works by three successful composer-painters.

Carl Ruggles (1876-1971), a friend of Charles Ives, lived 95 years. The cantankerous American modernist was the creator of a handful of meticulously-crafted, uncompromising works. His complete, authorized output amounts to four times the length of an LP side. We know this, because Michael Tilson Thomas recorded just about everything as part of a two-LP set, issued on the Columbia Masterworks label back in 1980.

Ruggles’ method was described by musicologist Charles Seeger as “dissonant counterpoint,” a system wherein all the traditional rules of counterpoint are reversed, so that dissonance, rather than consonance, is the norm. The very practice smacks of contrarianism!

Not surprisingly, he was beloved by Ives. When someone had the audacity to boo a work by Ruggles at a concert given in 1931, Ives berated the critic as a sissy. “Why can’t you stand up before fine, strong music like this, and use your ears like a man?” he challenged.

In addition to his activities as a composer, Ruggles created hundreds of paintings. They were deemed to be successful enough that he was invited to hang shows and even sold many of his canvases.

His musical composition “Sun-Treader” was inspired by Robert Browning’s poem, “Pauline” – in particular the line, “Sun-treader, light and life be thine forever!”

In contrast to Ruggles, a gifted dilettante who tossed off paintings in an afternoon, Mikalojus Čiurlionis (1875-1911) is considered every bit as important a painter as he was a composer.

In his 35 years, Čiurlionis managed to compose about 400 pieces of music and to paint about 300 canvases. A pioneer of abstract art in Europe, he was an exemplar of the symbolist and art nouveau movements, a representative of the fin de siècle epoch, and a major figure in Lithuanian culture. Interestingly, Čiurlionis was also a synesthete; that is to say, he perceived colors and music simultaneously. We’ll hear his vibrant symphonic poem, “The Sea.”

Lyonel Feininger (1871-1956), on the other hand, is known almost exclusively as a visual artist. Born and raised in New York, he moved to Germany at the age of 16. There, he became a leading practitioner of German Expressionism and the Bauhaus. With the rise of the Nazis in the 1930s and the party’s campaign against modern art, Feininger was driven out of Germany, and after 50 years returned to the United States, where he met with great success.

Feininger had no formal music studies, beyond a few years of violin lessons. Regardless, he composed thirteen fugues (with extant sketches for a fourteenth). These, he wrote by ear, with the music of Johann Sebastian Bach being an undisguised influence. Feininger claimed that the influence of Bach was equally evident in his paintings.

Prepare to see double this week. It’s an hour of music by ambidextrous artists. Join me for “Fixtures at an Exhibition,” this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

“Sonata of the Sea: Finale” (1908), by Mikalojus Čiurlionis

April 3, 2022
Remembering Pianist Joseph Kalichstein

I know it’s been a few days since pianist Joseph Kalichstein died, but I can’t seem to have been able to find the time or focus to report it. Kalichstein, who was equally accomplished as a recitalist, soloist, and chamber musician, died at his home in Maplewood, NJ, on Thursday.

His career spanned half a century. He was part of generation of Juilliard-trained musicians, including Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman, Emanuel Ax, Leonard Slatkin, and James Levine, who rose to the top of their respective fields to become highly-visible and frequently-recorded performers.

It was Claudio Arrau who heard him in Tel Aviv, when Kalichstein was 14 years-old. (Kalichstein later stated he had been able to read music before he could read words.) Arrau arranged for him to be brought to Juilliard in 1962. Kalichstein himself later taught there, beginning in 1983.

He attracted the admiration of Leonard Bernstein, who invited him to perform on one of his televised Young People’s Concerts, and Rudolf Serkin, George Szell, and William Steinberg, who sat on the jury for the Leventritt Competition in 1969. Kalichstein won the the competition by unanimous decision.

In 1976, with violinist Jaime Laredo and cellist Sharon Robinson, he formed the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio. The trio made its public debut at the Inauguration of President Jimmy Carter in 1977. Kalichstein’s final performance, in Phoenix on March 17, was with the ensemble, playing works by Schumann, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, and Brahms.

A sensitive interpreter and a self-effacing one, Kalichstein excelled as a collaborator, with a widely remarked-upon lack of ego. His peers, students, and audiences all benefited from his devotion to music.

I was privileged to attend a few of his performances with the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio in Philadelphia. Locally, he also appeared as soloist in Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4, with the Princeton Symphony Orchestra, in 2014.

Kalichstein’s repertoire embraced the core composers of the 18th and 19th centuries, 20th century masters such as Ravel, Bartók, and Shostakovich, and, with the trio, more contemporary works by Leon Kirchner, Arvo Pärt, Richard Danielpour, and Daron Hagen.

He was 76 years-old.

Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 22

Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 with Szell

Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio in Beethoven’s “Triple Concerto”

Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio perform Brahms, Dvořák and Mendelssohn

Kalichstein talks Brahms with David Dubal

The Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio’s chamber music recordings across a broad repertoire are generously represented on YouTube, but most of them are posted in individual movements. So if you’re interested in more, definitely poke around!

PHOTO: Joseph Kalichstein (center) with Jaime Laredo and Sharon Robinson

April 3, 2022
Elmer Bernstein A Centennial Celebration

April 4 would have been the 100th birthday of Elmer Bernstein. Over a career that spanned some 50 years, Bernstein scored dozens of film and television projects, many of them now classics.

This week on “Picture Perfect,” sample his versatility with selections from just a few of them, including “The Magnificent Seven” (1960), “The Age of Innocence” (1993), “Stripes” (1981), and “To Kill a Mockingbird” (1962).

In all, Bernstein was nominated for 14 Academy Awards, but claimed the Oscar only once, fairly early on, for his work on “Thoroughly Modern Millie” (1967), of all things. His final nomination was for his very last score, for “Far from Heaven” (2002). Bernstein died on August 18, 2004 at the age of 82.

Elmer will have you glued to the radio, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, this Saturday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

PLEASE NOTE: If you were hoping to hear some of Bernstein’s music for “The Ten Commandments” (1956), tune in next week, as we anticipate Passover with selections from Biblical epics from the Old Testament!

April 2, 2022

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