This week on “Picture Perfect,” on the 20th anniversary of 9/11, it’s a multifaceted portrait of Manhattan.
Enjoy selections from “All About Eve” and “Street Scene” (both by Alfred Newman),” “Taxi Driver” (Bernard Herrmann), “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” (Henry Mancini), and “King Kong” (Max Steiner). Also, Oscar Levant will perform George Gershwin’s “Second Rhapsody,” from the 1931 film “Delicious.”
It’s a collage of realism and romance, tragedy and comedy, seediness and sophistication. Join me for “Indomitable New York,” on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies. The Big Apple never falls, this Saturday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
On last night’s “Roy’s Tie Dye Sci Fi Corner,” watch, as I’m dragged, kicking and screaming, into the “Black Sun.”
While it’s true, I’m not the biggest fan of the television series “Space: 1999,” I do my best to remain respectful (by Classic Ross Amico standards), even if at some points I am obviously glazing over.
A big weekend for “Space: 1999” fans! In the fictional universe of the show, September 13 is the “anniversary” of the Moon being blown out of its orbit (seriously?), a catastrophe that precipitates the unlikely journey that forms the basis of the crew’s adventures.
To mark that date, this Sunday, September 12, a virtual “Space: 1999” convention, “Destination: Moonbase Alpha,” will be conducted via livestream, from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. EDT. The event will include visits by, and conversations with, an impressive array of actors and technicians who were involved with the show, including series costar Barbara Bain. Warren Friedrich and Robert Wood dropped by last night, around the 1:26:00 mark, to tell us all about it.
Proceeds will go to Alzheimer’s Research. For further news about “Destination: Moonbase Alpha,” and to make ticket reservations, visit http://www.destinationmoonbasealpha.com/
BTW, Roy will be taking part as one of the virtual convention’s moderators.
On next Friday’s Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner, in anticipation of our landmark visit to Trekonderoga – hosted by the Star Trek Original Series Set Tour from September 24-26 – Roy and I will discuss “Master of the World” (1961), starring Vincent Price as Jules Vernes’ misguided (?) hero, a kind of Captain Nemo of the air, in a film that costars David Frankham. Frankham will be our guest in a livestreamed interview from Trekonderoga, on Sunday, September 26, at 1:30 pm EDT.
A colorful raconteur, Frankham not only appeared in the “Star Trek” episode “Is There in Truth No Beauty?,” he’s a fount of captivating industry anecdotes, acquired from his work in films like “Return of the Fly,” “King Rat,” “The Great Santini,” and “One Hundred and One Dalmatians” and classic television shows like “Alfred Hitchcock Presents”/”The Alfred Hitchcock Hour,” “The Outer Limits,” and “Thriller,” hosted by Boris Karloff.
The weekend’s star attraction, of course, will be Mr. Sulu himself, George Takei. But you have to make the trip to see him! For more information about this three-day event, visit https://www.startrektour.com/
Then tune in for our conversation about “Master of the World.” The world is our oyster, as we livestream on Facebook. Share your pearls in the comments section when we livestream on Facebook, next Friday evening at 7:00 EDT!
My pick for most awesome stream of the weekend? This double-bill from the Fisher Center at Bard College of knock-out mid-century symphonies by William Levi Dawson and Dmitri Shostakovich.
Dawson’s “Negro Folk Symphony” was first performed by Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1934. The composer extensively revised the piece after a trip to West Africa in 1952. Stokowski was the first to record it, but chances to experience it in concert have been few.
Shostakovich composed his Symphony No. 7, the “Leningrad,” as a display of hope and defiance during the Nazi siege of the city in 1941. The work was given its premiere in Moscow, by the Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra. It was next performed in the West, in London (by Henry Wood) and New York City (by Toscanini), after the score was smuggled out of the Soviet Union on microfilm, by way of Tehran!
The symphony was finally performed in Leningrad itself on August 9, 1942, with the concert blasted on loudspeakers into the enemy lines after three thousand high-caliber shells had been lobbed into the Germans. Furthermore, Shostakovich employed a grotesque quotation from Hitler’s favorite operetta, “The Merry Widow,” to mock the Nazi “invasion.”
The “Leningrad Symphony” enjoyed tremendous popularity during the war years, but in the decades since, its musical merits have tended to be overshadowed by its propagandistic origins.
This weekend’s concerts will be played by The Orchestra Now (TŌN) under the direction of Leon Botstein. The concerts will take place on Saturday evening at 8 pm and Sunday afternoon at 2 pm EDT.
Tickets are available in-house at the Fisher Center’s Sosnoff Theater. For those of us at home, the concert will stream free. Make your reservation here:
Just because someone’s particular vision of the future happens to be branded with an expiration date doesn’t mean it won’t contain timeless truths. Like when a nuclear waste dump explodes on the far side of the moon, and earth’s only natural satellite hurtles through the solar system for destinations unknown. A bad day for surfers and werewolves, to be sure.
In anticipation of the “Space: 1999” virtual convention, Destination: Moonbase Alpha – scheduled to stream all day this Sunday, September 12 – Roy and I will chat about the first series episode “Black Sun.” What happens when you’re an accidental tourist traveling on your planet’s moon and it turns out to be on a collision course with a black hole? With a premise like that, your guess is as good as anyone’s.
Finally, we get to act our age, on the next Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner. The conversation will be all-devouring, when you join us in the comments section, as we livestream on Facebook, this Friday evening at 7:00 EDT.
Over the years, I’ve written a number of program notes for Sinfonietta Nova, a community orchestra based in West Windsor, New Jersey (on the outskirts of Princeton). In 2015, I was asked by its artistic director and conductor, Gail Lee, to submit seven interesting facts about Antonin Dvořák, to be shared on the orchestra’s Facebook page, as kind of a countdown to a performance of his Symphony No. 7. On the first half of the concert was Dvořák’s Cello Concerto. I reproduce those Facebook contributions here, for the occasion of the 180th anniversary of the composer’s birth. Happy birthday, Antonin Dvořák!
DVOŘÁK FACT #1
It’s hard to believe, but before writing his famous Cello Concerto in B minor, Dvořák wasn’t particularly fond of the cello as a solo instrument. He disliked its nasal high register and rumbling bass. However, after he heard a performance of the Cello Concerto No. 2 in E minor by his colleague at the National Conservatory of Music, Victor Herbert, Dvořák changed his mind. Herbert, best-remembered for his operettas, including “Babes in Toyland” and “Naughty Marietta,” was principal cello at New York’s Metropolitan Opera. He also led the cello section of the New York Philharmonic at the world premiere of Dvořák’s “New World” Symphony, when it was played at Carnegie Hall in 1893.
Victor Herbert’s Cello Concerto No. 2:
DVOŘÁK FACT #2
The slow, wistful passage just before the Cello Concerto’s triumphant conclusion was added by Dvořák as a tribute to his sister-in-law, Josefina Kaunitzova, who died during the work’s composition. Dvořák was actually in love with her for many years. When she refused his proposal, the composer married her younger sister, Anna, instead. The passage quotes from the composer’s Four Songs, Op. 82, of which Kaunitzova was particularly fond.
“Kéž duch můj sám” (“Leave Me Alone”), Op. 82, No. 1:
Transcribed for cello:
DVOŘÁK FACT #3
The Cello Concerto in B minor, completed in 1896, is Dvořák’s final concerto for solo instrument and orchestra. Previously, he had written a Violin Concerto in A minor and a seldom-performed Piano Concerto in G minor, both published in 1883. The Cello Concerto is widely regarded as one of the greatest – if not THE greatest – ever written for the instrument.
Of the three, the Piano Concerto has been the poor stepchild. This has been blamed in large part on the writing for piano. Pianist and Liszt authority Leslie Howard notes, “… there is nothing in Liszt that is anywhere near as difficult to play as the Dvořák Piano Concerto – a magnificent piece of music, but one of the most ungainly bits of piano writing ever printed.” Rudolf Firkušný was the work’s greatest champion. He recorded the piece three times.
Firkušný performs Dvořák’s Piano Concerto:
Dvořák’s Violin Concerto performed by his great-grandson, Josef Suk:
DVOŘÁK FACT #4
Like William Shakespeare, Antonin Dvořák was the son of a butcher. He was the first of fourteen children, eight of whom survived infancy. As a violist in the Bohemian Provisional Theater Orchestra, he performed under Bedřich Smetana and visiting conductor Richard Wagner. It was Johannes Brahms who was the first outside of Bohemia to recognize Dvořák’s genius as a composer. Brahms labored on his behalf to secure a grant, so that Dvořák could rise above impoverished circumstances and devote himself to composition full-time. In gratitude, Dvořák dedicated his String Quartet No. 9 to his new friend and champion. Brahms also provided an introduction to his publisher, Simrock, who commissioned Dvořák to compose something in the vein of Brahms’ “Hungarian Dances.” The resulting “Slavonic Dances” became an international smash.
Dvořák’s “Slavonic Dances”
String Quartet No. 9 in D minor, Op. 34
DVOŘÁK FACT #5
Dvořák was crazy for trains. During his tenure at the National Conservatory of Music in New York, he was frequently seen “trainspotting,” and when at home he took daily walks to the train station in Prague. So perhaps it is hardly surprising that on one such walk the first subject of a brand-new symphony flashed into his mind. The impetus was the arrival of a festive train full of countrymen returning from Pest. He sketched the first movement of his 7th Symphony in only five days. It was Dvořák’s intention for the work to reflect the political struggles of the Czech nation and his own feelings of patriotism. An atmosphere of obstinate defiance seems to hang over the piece. It is the most cosmopolitan of his last three great symphonies, with the composer keeping the reins tight on his penchant to bubble over into folk-inflected rhapsody. The work’s classic formal structure makes it arguably the greatest of his symphonies, though it has never achieved the popularity of the 8th or 9th, which wear their charms like the vibrant colors and patterns of Bohemian traditional dress.
Dvořák’s Symphony No. 7:
DVOŘÁK FACT #6
Earlier in his career, Dvořák composed another concerto for cello, in the key of A major. He wrote it for Ludevit Peer, a fellow musician in the Bohemian Provisional Theatre Orchestra (with which Dvořák played viola). It didn’t go anywhere, and in fact it lay undiscovered until 1925. Its existence remains obscure enough that whenever anyone refers to “the Dvořák Cello Concerto,” they mean the famous concerto in B minor – which, in fact, is the Cello Concerto No. 2!
Dvořák’s “forgotten” cello concerto:
DVOŘÁK FACT #7
“God grant that this Czech music will move the world,” Dvořák said of his 7th Symphony. He was riding high on the euphoria of composing at white heat. He completed the sketch of the symphony’s first movement in five days.
Ten days later, he finished the second. It is said that the sadness of the passing of his mother and possibly the recent death of his eldest child are reflected in this music. However, he also intimated to a friend, “What is in my mind is Love, God and my Fatherland.”
He completed the third and fourth movements over the next month or so. Dvořák suggested that the fourth movement enshrines the capacity of the Czech people to display stubborn resistance to political oppressors.
With the publication of his Symphony No. 7 in 1885, it could be said that Dvořák experienced the struggle for Czech independence in a deeply personal way.
PHOTOS (left to right): Well-trained composer Antonin Dvořák, Victor Herbert, and Josefina Kaunitzova
