Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

  • Samuel Barber: Rare Recordings & Insights

    Samuel Barber: Rare Recordings & Insights

    It is one of those things that would seem to go without saying, yet it should not be taken for granted – the blessing, as the 20th century progressed, of just how much recorded material exists relating to our great composers. Imagine what it would have been like to have had this kind of access to a conversational Brahms or Liszt.

    On the anniversary of his birth, here is Samuel Barber from 1978, speaking with WQXR’s Bob Sherman, prior to the premiere of the composer’s “Third Essay for Orchestra” with the New York Philharmonic. The conversation is punctuated by interesting recordings, including one of Pierre Bernac singing Barber’s “Mélodies passagères” – in French – with Francis Poulenc at the piano. Barber reveals that he acted as page-turner during the recording. Also, he mentions that he was originally expected to go to Princeton!

    https://www.wqxr.org/story/samuel-barber/

    The same interview, without ads for Scientific American (the program’s sponsor), but transferred at a lower level of sound:

    The “Third Essay for Orchestra,” the piece that would receive its premiere only a few days later:

    During the interview, Barber also teases the anticipated debut of a Concertino for Oboe, also with the New York Phil, a work that sadly never came to pass. This gorgeous “Canzonetta,” which would have served as the piece’s slow movement, is all that was released. It would be Barber’s final composition. The performance here is by Humbert Lucarelli and the now-defunct Lehigh Valley Chamber Orchestra.

    Here’s an earlier broadcast, from 1958, an intermission feature of the New York Phil, with Barber and James Fassett, the composer talking about his new orchestral work, “Medea’s Meditation and Dance of Vengeance,” distilled from the ballet for Martha Graham:

    Finally, Barber and composer Gian Carlo Menotti shared a home in Mount Kisco, New York, from 1943 to 1972. The two had met as students at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Menotti would serve as librettist for Barber’s Pulitzer Prize winning opera “Vanessa.” He later worked to rehabilitate Barber’s “Antony and Cleopatra” after its disastrous 1966 premiere at the grand opening of the new Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center. Both composers were two-time Pulitzer Prize winners. Menotti talks about Barber, ten years after their split (the two remained friends), at Curtis in 1980:

    If you’re a Barberophile, you’ll also want to check out H. Paul Moon’s award-winning documentary, “Samuel Barber: Absolute Beauty.” You can view the trailer here:

    https://samuelbarberfilm.com/

    Thankfully, one of America’s most celebrated composers is so well-documented. Happy birthday, Samuel Barber!

    PHOTO: A road trip with (left to right) Aaron Copland, Samuel Barber, and Gian Carlo Menotti

  • Ethel Smyth: Suffragette Composer

    Ethel Smyth: Suffragette Composer

    It’s International Women’s Day. The global holiday, established to celebrate the cultural, political, and socioeconomic achievements of women, has its roots in the universal female suffrage movement.

    Perhaps the composer most frequently associated with the movement was Dame Ethel Smyth (1858-1944). I am reminded of Sir Thomas Beecham’s recollection of Smyth, already in her 50s, conducting an impromptu chorus of women, gathered in a prison courtyard for exercise, by waving her toothbrush between the bars of her cell.

    Smyth was incarcerated for two months for smashing out the windows of politicians who opposed the female vote. Her “March of the Women” became the anthem of the women’s suffrage movement in England.

    But Smyth was more than just a political firebrand. Unusual for a woman of the time, she was also a composer of some renown. Her opera, “Der Wald” (“The Forest”), would be the only work by a female composer produced at New York’s Metropolitan Opera for over a century. That was in 1903.

    Anticipating the assertion that well-behaved women seldom make history, Smyth was driven to act up from the start. And who could blame her?

    She managed to outmaneuver her father, a major general in the Royal Artillery. When he objected to her pursuit of a career in music, she took the initiative to study privately. An all-out war of wills ensued. Ethel’s stomach proved stronger than her dad’s. In the end, he allowed her to attend the Leipzig Conservatory.

    When the conservatory didn’t measure up to Smyth’s expectations, she sought out Heinrich von Herzogenberg for further polish. Her travels also brought her into contact with Dvořák, Grieg, Tchaikovsky, Clara Schumann, and Herzogenberg’s friend, Johannes Brahms.

    It was at a private performance of Brahms’ Piano Quintet, with the composer in attendance, that Smyth’s St. Bernard mix, Marco, burst through a door, toppling the cellist’s music stand, which, much to everyone’s relief, the notoriously prickly Brahms found hilarious. Later, when Tchaikovsky wrote to Smyth, he never failed to ask after Marco.

    Her first piece to be played in public was her String Quintet in E major (1884).

    Her first orchestral work, the Serenade in D (1889) – written with the encouragement of Tchaikovsky – is better than just about anything composed by Sir Hubert Parry (whose music I happen to enjoy) and much more compelling than the symphonies of Sir Charles Villiers Stanford. Smyth’s serenade is a symphony in all but name, with some pretty good tunes.

    Even so, it was only in 1893, after her Mass in D was favorably received by George Bernard Shaw – he declared the Mass “magnificent” – that her father finally warmed to her chosen career.

    While she met with considerable success in her lifetime, as a woman, she was still often marginalized and had to push for almost everything. In her mid-50s, she began to lose her hearing. Undeterred, she commenced a second career as a writer, producing ten books. She was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1922.

    The next time a music director is looking for an alternative to Elgar (himself not exactly overplayed in this U.S.), he or she could do worse than to consider Ethel Smyth. The overture to “The Wreckers” (1906) would make for a dynamic curtain-raiser.

    Beecham considered “The Wreckers” to be Smyth’s masterpiece. In 2015, the opera was presented at Bard College, in a series of performances under the direction of Leon Botstein. Botstein led a concert performance of the piece at Carnegie Hall in 2007. Happily, the Bard production was filmed.

    Smyth herself conducts the overture here, in a 1930 recording.

    Finally, here’s “March of the Women” (1910), sung with more polish than it would have been in a prison courtyard.

    PHOTO: Smyth rocks the boat

  • Ravel’s Cats A Purrfect Love Story

    Ravel’s Cats A Purrfect Love Story

    How much did Maurice Ravel love cats? Quite a lot, actually.

    He had a particular fondness for Siamese cats. In 1921, he moved to a modest villa outside Paris, which he shared with a feline family. It’s unclear how many cats there were, exactly. Sources vary as to whether there were two, three, or six. One was named Mouni and another Jazz. At some point, there was a litter of kittens. Suffice it to say, there were a number of them, and Ravel adored them. They were with him when he worked. He played with them even as he wrote letters to his friends, documenting their antics. He mused on their intelligence and devotion, likening it to the “Basque temperament.” He even claimed to be able to speak to them in their own language.

    Among the works he composed there was his one-act opera “L’enfant et les sortilèges.” (“The Child and the Enchantments”). The opera relates the transformation of a naughty, rampaging child – who terrorizes animals and wreaks destruction upon numerous household items, until they all rise up against him – into a more mature, compassionate human being, signified by his redemptive ministrations to an injured squirrel.

    Here’s the barely safe-for-work “Cat Duet”

    The entire opera was later choreographed as a ballet by Jiří Kylián. It’s much worth watching. If you want to get right to the singing cats, they’re at the 31-minute mark, but they are present, if silent, from the start.

    Ravel was born in the Basque town of Ciboure on this date in 1875. He had difficulty finding intimacy with humans, claiming the only love affair he ever had was with music, but the companionship of cats he deemed purrfect.

  • Philly Women Composers Revisited

    Philly Women Composers Revisited

    I’m happy to note that in the past several years the idea of month-long celebrations devoted to “Women’s history” or “Black history” has started to seem almost old-fashioned, as the programming of concerts and radio broadcasts has become more and more diverse, so that it’s no longer unusual to encounter music by “minority” composers, with increasing regularity, year-round.

    I feel the historic shift most keenly as I reach back into the “Lost Chord” archive to 2010, when I believe the show that will air this evening was probably already a repeat. (I began the series in 2003.) Time was when one really had to scratch around in order to find enough material to fill out an hour’s theme. Looking back now, over a decade later, recordings have yielded an embarrassment of riches.

    I hope you’ll join me tonight as we revisit some of the selections available in the early years of the 21st century, for a program of music by women composers of Philadelphia.

    Andrea Clearfield (born 1960) was raised in Bala Cynwyd. She studied at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, PA (where, by the way, this particular broadcaster got his start in community radio in 1986). At Muhlenberg, she was mentored by Margaret Garwood. She then studied at Philadelphia College of the Performing Arts (now the University of the Arts) and at Temple University, where among her teachers was Maurice Wright.

    Clearfield herself taught at the University of the Arts from 1986 to 2011 (after this show was recorded, so some of the info may be a little out of date). She is well-known in Center City for a long-running, monthly, multidisciplinary salon held at her studio, located not far from the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts. Since the pandemic, this has been a virtual event, but the salon has run, more or less uninterrupted, since its inception in 1986.

    Clearfield’s recorded discography has expanded considerably since 2010, but for tonight we’ll sample her work for oboe and piano, “Unremembered Wings,” written in 2001.

    Then we’ll turn to Jennifer Higdon (born in 1962), whose career by this time had already taken off like a rocket. She would be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music for her Violin Concerto in 2010. Again, assuming the show was recorded before February of that year, it would have been at least a few months before the honor was bestowed in May.

    Higdon, born in Brooklyn to an artistic family, grew up in Atlanta and Seymour, TN. She studied flute at Bowling Green State University, where she was encouraged to pursue composition. This led her to the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where her teachers included David Loeb and Ned Rorem. She also received a Master of Arts and PhD in composition from the University of Pennsylvania, where she studied with George Crumb.

    Parenthetically, we were practically neighbors during my final decade in Philadelphia. Even so, it was only through the station that I finally met her, and I interviewed her for the paper a few years ago.

    Tonight, we’ll hear her “Concerto for Orchestra,” written for the hometown band – the Philadelphia Orchestra – but recorded by the Atlanta Symphony, under the direction of her old friend from Bowling Green, Robert Spano.

    Finally, we’ll turn to Evelyn Simpson-Curenton (born in 1953). Now based in Washington DC, she is music director of the Washington Performing Arts Men and Women of the Gospel and an associate of the Smithsonian Institute. After graduating from Germantown High School, she earned a BM in Music Education and Voice from Temple University. She’s received commissions from George Shirley and Duke Ellington, among others, and provided arrangements of spirituals for Jessye Norman and Kathleen Battle.

    We’ll listen to Simpson-Curenton’s setting of Psalm 91, “My Soul Hath Found Refuge in Thee,” in a performance by the ensemble VocalEssence under the direction of Philip Brunelle.

    Philadelphia is our sister city tonight, on “Sisters of Brotherly Love” – selections for hopefully soon-to-be-outmoded Women’s History Month – this Sunday night at 10:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

    PHOTOS (clockwise from left): Higdon, Clearfield, and Simpson-Curenton

  • Superhero Movie Music A Picture Perfect Soundtrack

    Superhero Movie Music A Picture Perfect Soundtrack

    Look! Up in the sky!

    It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s “PICTURE PERFECT” – where the focus this week is on superheroes!

    It’s true, I was wasn’t all that crazy about Tim Burton’s “Batman” (1989). In fact, I’m still waiting for someone to make the Batman movie I’ve got in my head. But that probably isn’t going to happen – we’re too far down the computer-generated, dystopian road at this point.

    At least Danny Elfman actually made the effort to write a decent score. I admit I was underappreciative of it at the time of the film’s release. To me, Elfman was still “that guy from Oingo Boingo.” But it sounds better and better in light of all that has followed. Elfman’s love for Bernard Herrmann is evident. And don’t worry, I will spare you the Prince songs.

    “The Avengers” may have provided the satisfaction of seeing Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, and the Hulk on the screen all at the same time, but arguably “The Incredibles” (2004) was more fun. Pixar’s clever satire/adventure featured the vocal talents of Craig T. Nelson, Holly Hunter, and Samuel L. Jackson.

    The score is a smart throwback to the swinging espionage films of the 1960s. Originally the producers approached John Barry to write the music, hoping for something very much in the style of his work on the James Bond films. But Barry declined, not wanting to return to his earlier style. In the event, composer Michael Giacchino was only too happy to step into Barry’s well-polished shoes.

    “The Avengers” (2012), of course, is the 800-pound gorilla of superhero franchises, but in these days when each hyper-spectacle seems to surpass the last, not only in terms of din and seizure-inducing effects, but in the epic scope of its box office, that could very well change at any time. Before it does, we’d better sample some of the music from the first film, by Alan Silvestri.

    To truly understand what is missing from superhero music these days, one need only refer to the gold standard of the genre, “Superman” (1978). John Williams’ score was from smack-dab in the middle of his heroic period, falling as it did, between “Star Wars” and “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” Its star-spangled fanfare and march beautifully conjure memories of Superman music past – for the George Reeves TV series and, before that, the Fleischer Brothers cartoons – yet effortlessly surpass them like leaping a tall building in a single bound.

    I know, I know, not every film can be, nor should be, the same, and Williams’ primary colors wouldn’t sit as well, perhaps, with the dark streets of Gotham. But why does everything have to be so grim these days? I read comic books when I was a kid, and I don’t remember everything being so hopeless.

    I don’t want to hear about how the real world is a gritty place right now. “Superman” was made in the wake of Watergate and Vietnam, for crying out loud. Entertainment molds the world, every bit as much as the world shapes our entertainment. Is it too much to ask for a little fun and inspiration from our superhero movies? Can we leave the theatres feeling exhilarated, for a change, as opposed to simply exhausted?

    All kryptonite will be encased in lead for “Everything’s Super,” on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, this Saturday evening at 6:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org

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