The tie-dye is at the dry cleaners this weekend, as Roy takes off to appear in another mystery, “The Perfect Match Murders,” courtesy of Country Gate Players in Belvidere, NJ. Performances will be live-streamed, via Zoom, tomorrow at 8 pm EST and Sunday at 2 pm EDT. Admission is free, but donations help support the playhouse, which has been hard hit, like everyone else, by the deprivations of Covid. To register, visit billscurato.com.
Roy and I will reunite next Friday to chase away your delirium tremens, with a post-St. Patrick’s Day discussion of “Darby O’Gill and the Little People” (1959). This Walt Disney classic pioneered forced perspective effects of a type employed so effectively in Peter Jackson’s “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy. Furthermore, it boasts an early film appearance by the late Sean Connery.
Be sure and save yourself a hair of the dog. We’ll see you next Friday, even as we’re seeing double, on Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner.
Friday again. If you’re starved to see a “live” performance of anything these days, even it means streaming, here are just a few morsels to savor over the coming weekend.
Pianist Orli Shaham will appear with the Grand Rapids Symphony, in Francis Poulenc’s “Aubade.” Even under the best of circumstances, the work is hardly over-programmed, but what makes this concert especially interesting is that it will also be danced, as was originally intention. Dancers from the Grand Rapids Ballet will join Shaham and musicians from the orchestra. Also on the program will be “Aubade” by the Brazilian composer Antônio Francisco Braga (1868-1945) and Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings. If “aubade” is not in your active vocabulary, it indicates a piece of music associated with the dawn or early morning. The concert will be available on-demand to ticket holders for 30 days, beginning tonight at 7:30 pm EST. https://www.grsymphony.org/art-of-dance
Somewhat closer to home, the PUBLIQuartet, familiar to followers of the Princeton Symphony Orchestra (especially in regard to its landmark #Quartweet residency) will appear on “The Atterbury House Sessions.” This live concert series, held at New York’s historic Atterbury House, is curated by violinist Lara St. John, who has also appeared locally, as soloist with the PSO and courtesy of Lambertville’s Riverside Symphonia. The PUBLIQuartet concert will include works by Jessie Montgomery, Jessica Meyer, John Corigliano, and the quartet itself. Live streaming begins tomorrow at 5 pm EST. The concert will be available then, on-demand, for the period of one week. For more information, visit https://www.larastjohn.com/?ss_source=sscampaigns&ss_email_id=604bc1656af8864a81fd6f99
Bard College can always be counted on to put together a good program. Tomorrow, the Bard College Conservatory Orchestra will be conducted by its music director, Leon Botstein (also president of Bard College) and assistant conductor Andrés Rivas . Featured will be the Serenade in E-flat major, Op. 7, by Richard Strauss, “Ennanga” for Harp, String Orchestra, and Piano, by William Grant Still, Prologue and Variations, by Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, and the Divertimento for String Orchestra by Béla Bartók. The concert will stream Saturday night at 8 pm EST.
Tempesta di Mare – Philadelphia Baroque Orchestra will celebrate the 300th anniversary of Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 4, on a concert titled “1721: A Very Good Year.” Also featured will be works by Locatelli, Telemann, and Evaristo Felice Dall’Abaco. The concert will begin streaming tomorrow at 7 pm EST, and on-demand through March 21st (Bach’s birthday). https://tempestadimare.secure.force.com/ticket/PatronTicket__PublicTicketApp#/events/a0S0H00000O1WOKUA3
Finally, Voices Chorale NJ will host an “Irish Coffee House Concert” with Gerry Dignan. Get a leg up on St. Patrick’s Day with a program of Celtic ballads and fast Irish “mouth music.” The concert will be streamed on Monday at 7:30 pm. https://www.voiceschoralenj.org/
Five events to keep you out of trouble. Don’t forget to change your clocks. Enjoy the music, and have a great weekend.
Today is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Argentinian master Astor Piazzolla. It also marks a year since my last live air-shift at WWFM The Classical Network.
With the white caps of Covid already beginning to crest on the horizon, hosts scrambled to get five weeks-worth of recorded shows in the can, against the event that the college would have to shut down. I mean, if everyone stayed home for five weeks, cases would dwindle to nil, and we’d all be back to work, right?
At least I am still selecting my shows from the archive, which is vast, but I think it’s high time to begin assembling a home studio already. Too many significant anniversaries have gone by – including my 25th at the station, and the 10th of “Picture Perfect” – to say nothing of missed holidays and lost musicians who should have been memorialized. At the very least, I should be producing new material. I should not be squandering my time sharing music links on Facebook.
That said…
Although Astor Piazzolla wrote in all forms, he is best remembered for reinvigorating the tango. He accomplished this by drawing on modern classical techniques to deepen its expressive possibilities.
He first discovered the bandonéon – like the accordion, a member the concertina family – when his father purchased one from a pawn shop in Greenwich Village. Piazzolla took up the instrument that would become his constant companion in 1929, at the age of 8. He composed his first tango at 11. At 13, he was invited by Carlos Gardel to join his band. His father forbade it – fortunately, it turns out, since Gardel and his musicians died in a plane crash while on tour.
Piazzolla also attracted the attention of Alberto Ginastera, with whom he studied for five years. Then, in common with many of the great composers of the 20th century, he traveled to Paris, hoping to broaden his understanding of classical composition under the guidance of Nadia Boulanger. After he played one of his tangos for her, the legendary pedagogue took his hands in hers and said, “Here is the true Piazzolla – do not ever leave him.” Her advice paid off. By embracing Argentina’s national dance, Piazzolla not only secured his place in the hearts of the public, but also in the classical concert repertoire.
Spring is a time of renewal. With this in mind, here is Piazzolla’s “Four Seasons of Buenos Aires.” The work is often performed these days by violinists – its movements interleaved with those of Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons” – to charming effect. Here it is, as Piazzolla intended, with the composer on bandonéon:
Piazzolla plays “Libertango”:
Happy birthday, Astor Piazzolla!
In case you’re interested, I’ve appended the playlist, divided into hours, from my last live air shift, on March 11, 2020, which touches on some juicy birthdays: those of American mavericks Henry Cowell and Carl Ruggles, “Beethoven of Kentucky” Anthony Philip Heinrich, Catalan composer Xavier Montsalvatge, and yes, Astor Piazzolla. Not included is “Music from Marlboro,” which followed at 6 pm and consisted of Brahms’ String Sextet No. 2 and the Air from Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 3. Who knew so much time would pass?
March 21st is the birthday of Johann Sebastian Bach. I’ve already got my order in for a cake, and it had to be a big one, in order to accommodate 336 candles.
The Princeton Symphony Orchestra has just posted the last of its four-part series on Bach’s “The Musical Offering.” PSO musicians perform Bach’s contrapuntal, often chromatic – and for at least one canon, crabby – masterwork, with Assistant Conductor Nell Flanders offering absorbing insights into its history and structure. The series is free. Watch all four installments at princetonsymphony.org.
On Sunday, The Dryden Ensemble will stream a lecture by Bach scholar Michael Marissen on the musical aims of the “St. John Passion.” Then the following Sunday, March 21st – Bach’s birthday – experience a performance of the oratorio from last year, an especially notable concert, in that it was documented just as the world was shutting down for the pandemic. Both of the Bach events will be made available, on their respective Sundays, at 3 p.m. The lecture is free. More information and tickets for the performance are available at drydenensemble.org.
Finally, WWFM The Classical Network is in the midst of its annual “Bach 500” challenge. 500 listener donations in any amount will be matched by funds from the station’s “Bach Pot” (fortified by some very generous leprechauns). If the goal is reached, fundraising will be cancelled for Bach’s birthday. The reward will be a euphoric playlist of uninterrupted Bach, free from pecuniary concerns – lutes in place of lucre, concertos supplanting chatter, pipe organs in preference to pitching.
Won’t you be one of the Bach 500? Make a contribution now, and watch the mercury rise on the Bach thermometer at wwfm.org. Thank you for your support of classical music on WWFM – The Classical Network. It’s because of listeners just like you that we are able to continue to Bach-around-the-clock!
IMAGE: Bach makes a musical offering in the form of a riddle canon, in the famous Elias Gottlob Haussmann portrait. The painting, which was housed in Princeton for over 60 years, in the private collection of William H. Scheide, was bequeathed by Scheide to the Bach Archive in Leipzig – the city in which Bach spent most of his creative life – where it now resides.
Since last March, when Covid broke across New Jersey, the only Barber I’ve visited is Samuel Barber. The composer of the ubiquitous “Adagio for Strings” was born in West Chester, Pa., on this date in 1910.
My favorite Barber pieces? The Violin Concerto. The Symphony No. 1. The Second Essay for Orchestra. “Souvenirs” (in the version for piano four hands). Okay, and the Adagio.
If its passionate, elegiac character seems out of step with such a lovely day, here’s something with a lighter, carefree disposition, from his set of piano pieces titled “Excursions.”
Also, one of his most charming songs, “The Monk and His Cat.”
Here’s a real gem: an interview with Barber in his NYC apartment, to celebrate his 67th birthday. Barber plays the piano, displays his conversational wit, and shares his recording of “Dover Beach,” on which he appears as baritone. Stay tuned for the birthday cake at the end!
His music may do nothing for the length of my beard, but it keeps my soul limber.
Happy birthday, Sam.
PHOTO: Barber, dressed like Sky Masterson, conducting his Second Symphony. Ironically, Barber disliked the work. He disliked it so much, he tried to destroy it. In 1984, three years after his death, the symphony was revived when a set of parts turned up in an English warehouse.
