Hammer house composer James Bernard (“The Curse of Frankenstein,” “The Horror of Dracula”) makes today’s “Composers Datebook.” To listen to the audio, follow the link and click the green button. As far as I’m concerned, it can’t be Halloween soon enough!
https://www.yourclassical.org/episode/2021/08/26/the-creeping-unknown
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LEONARD BERNSTEIN!
Enjoy a lovingly-curated Bernstein playlist (below).
“Rhapsody in Blue” from the keyboard, with the fearless Stanley Drucker on clarinet
Bernstein conducts “Prelude, Fugue and Riffs” on “Omnibus” in 1955
Bernstein and Aaron Copland create demo record of “Fancy Free” for Jerome Robbins. Stick around for commentary at the end, with self-incriminating interjection by Copland!
Bernstein’s sensational eleventh-hour debut with the New York Philharmonic, at 25, in 1943
An entire playlist of Bernstein rarities!
Conducting Haydn – with his face
Lauren Bacall sings “The Saga of Lenny,” lyrics by Stephen Sondheim (with apologies to Kurt Weill), for Bernstein’s 70th birthday celebration.
Bernstein’s death reported on ABC News in 1990.
Bernstein conducts his recently-composed “Candide Overture” on a televised Young People’s Concert in 1960
Bernstein conducts Mahler’s “Resurrection Symphony” as a memorial tribute, broadcast live, two days after the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qruHjywjE_g
Bernstein on the future of music, from one of his Harvard lectures. The answer is yes!
Bernstein celebrates the fall of the Berlin Wall with a multinational ensemble and Beethoven’s 9th
Remembering the old bi-monthly WWFM – The Classical Network program guides, which passed into obsolescence as the station gradually shifted its focus to online content.
“The Lost Chord” made the cover in July/August 2008. The show, devoted to unusual and neglected repertoire, is now in its 18th year. This week’s program, focusing on music composed at Howard Hanson’s summer home on Bold Island, Maine, has now been posted a webcast. You can enjoy it here.
https://www.wwfm.org/post/lost-chord-august-22-august-hanson
It’s sobering to note that three of the hosts pictured are no longer with us. The photo of WXXI’s Richard Gladwell, longtime host of the syndicated sacred choral music show, “With Heart and Voice,” was snapped on a visit to Trenton-Princeton. Gladwell died in 2009 at the age of 88.
Radio legend Ralph Collier hosted numerous talk shows, travelogues, and review segments over the course of his career, with guests ranging from Maria Callas to Fred Astaire to President Dwight D. Eisenhower. During his time at WWFM, I acted as Ralph’s “mule,” transporting audio from Ralph’s home in Philadelphia to the station. His was a voice I’d known since childhood, so I always got a charge out of hearing him at the other end of the phone. I still have one of his messages. Ralph died in 2013 at the age of 91.
And of course, Bliss Michelson was probably my most significant mentor. He was perhaps the most complete “radio man” I ever worked with. I greatly admired his avuncular, unflappable on-air presence. He could handle any challenge you dropped on him, even in front of the microphone, with absolutely no notice. Bliss died of complications from COVID-19 in March at the age of 71. He is fondly remembered.
Thank you so much to Scott Tracy Griffin for joining us in spreading the love for Edgar Rice Burroughs on last night’s Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner. As a Burroughs fan since my teens, I had so been looking forward to this episode!
Enjoy the conversation, check out Griffin’s writings – he’s got two lavishly illustrated, carefully researched, and compellingly-written coffee table books, Tarzan: The Centennial Celebration and Tarzan on Film, with another project in the pipeline – and then consider giving Burroughs a whirl. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: if you only know Tarzan from the movies, you don’t know Tarzan!
But there’s also the Mars (John Carter) books, the Pellucidar (hollow earth) novels, the Caspak trilogy (including “The Land That Time Forgot”), some highly-regarded westerns, and so much more. For imaginative world-building and flamboyant adventure, accept no substitutes!
As a product of the pulps, Burroughs had the luxury to revisit his creations again and again, lending fresh perspectives in his sequels to characters and settings indelibly established in the popular originals. As an artist, he may not have been Hemingway, Faulkner, or Fitzgerald (whose combined works he easily outsold), but at his best, his stories have a primal appeal, an adolescent exuberance, and an ennobling sense of romance that make them timelessly entertaining.
Watch the show here, and give it a thumbs-up, if you’re so inclined:
Roy and I will reconvene on Friday for a nostalgic trip back to 1977 and a reminiscence of the television series “The Incredible Hulk,” starring Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno (in tattered pants and a yak-haired wig). Sadly, at the moment, it is difficult to find the episodes available for streaming, but I’ve managed to locate the pilot on Dailymotion.
Part I
Part II
Mr. McGee, you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry! We’ll be burning through our wardrobe, as you flood the comments section with your gamma rays, when we livestream on Facebook, this Sunday evening at 7:00 EDT! (PLEASE NOTE: there will be no show this Friday!)
For many, the prospect of having to work through vacation can be a real drag; but for the creative artist, getting away can be a welcome opportunity to really get things done.
This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll hear three pieces associated with Bold Island, Maine, the summer home of Howard Hanson.
For 40 years, Hanson was director of the Eastman School of Music. In that capacity he nurtured and championed innumerable American composers, giving literally thousands of premieres at the helm of the Eastman-Rochester Orchestra, an ensemble he founded. The lucky ones made it onto Hanson’s records on the Mercury label.
Hanson, of course, was himself a composer. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1944, for his Symphony No. 4 “Requiem,” written in memory of his father. But his best-known music, undoubtedly, is his Symphony No. 2 “Romantic,” composed in 1930.
The famous “Hanson sound” is one of heart-on-the-sleeve romanticism, characterized by glowingly nostalgic melodies, though he also had his severe side. After all, he was born in Wahoo, Nebraska, to Swedish parents, and a certain Nordic austerity can be detected, especially in his later works.
His Symphony No. 6, of 1967, is more tightly argued than his earlier, more famous symphonies. Its six brief movements are built on a recurring motif. At times, it can sound a bit like Sibelius, though Hanson very much remains his own man. Hanson being Hanson, he doesn’t really skimp on the lyricism, but he doesn’t exactly indulge it to the same extent he does in the earlier works. Still, predictably, the symphony was derided as old-fashioned by the genuinely austere musical establishment of the day.
The Bold Island connection is through Hanson’s “Summer Seascape No. 2,” written a few years earlier, and clearly the blueprint for the symphony. In fact, the opening of the symphony is identical.
Hanson’s first “Summer Seascape” forms the centerpiece of his “Bold Island Suite,” a separate work composed in 1961. The suite also contains movements with the descriptive titles “Birds of the Sea” and “God in Nature.”
The North Atlantic inspires some august music, on “August Hanson,” this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
PHOTO: Not-very-austere Puffins off the coast of Maine
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