Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

Julian Grant Dances in the Dark with PSO

Julian Grant has extended an invitation to dance at the edge of the volcano.

I interviewed the Princeton composer in advance of two scheduled performances by the Princeton Symphony Orchestra of his concert work 五代同堂, or “Wu Dai Tong Tang” (Chinese for “Five Generations, One House”), which were to have taken place at Richardson Auditorium on March 21 & 22. Sadly, COVID-19 swept through New Jersey before the concerts could be given, and before my preview article could be printed. So Mr. Grant and I both eagerly await the Princeton premiere of 五代同堂 on some future season.

Happily, this was not the first of Grant’s pieces to be taken up by the PSO. In 2016, the orchestra performed “Is It Enough? Perhaps It Is…,” with its roots in an influential chorale setting by Johann Sebastian Bach, and in 2014, it tackled “Dances in the Dark.”

“Dances in the Dark” is the featured work on this week’s “At Home with the PSO.” Hear Julian Grant introduce his own music, read the program note, and then listen to the Princeton Symphony Orchestra performance:

https://princetonsymphony.org/home-pso/music-play-it-forward

Grant serves on the boards of both the PSO and Trenton Music Makers. As a composer, he has written 20 operas, in all shapes and sizes, including “Hot House,” which was performed at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in 2012. His opera “The Nefarious, Immoral and Highly Profitable Enterprise of Mr. Burke & Mr. Hare” – about the infamous “resurrection men” who provided cadavers for dissection at the Royal College of Surgeons in Edinburgh in the 1820s – was given its premiere by Boston Lyric Opera in 2017.

五代同堂 is informed by his years living in Hong Kong, Beijing, China, and Tokyo. From 2002 to 2007, he also served as music director at St. Paul’s Girls’ School in London, a post previously held by Gustav Holst, Herbert Howells, and other notables.

“At Home with the PSO” is a gateway to original online content – performance webcasts, musicians’ recipes, photo albums, and more – with fresh material being introduced weekly.

While you’re at the PSO website, be sure to check out the Virtual Gallery. Explore artwork and creative writing by student participants of the PSO Bravo program by navigating a 3-D space. Click on the speakers located throughout the gallery to hear Saad Haddad’s Clarinet Concerto, the PSO co-commission that inspired the works adorning the virtual walls.

https://princetonsymphony.org/

Also, search under “Cooking with the PSO” to learn how to cook “Mushroom Beef Barley Soup” with violinist Margaret Banks. (More recipes archived at the bottom of the page.)

You can learn more about Julian Grant by visiting his website, juliangrant.net.

Further examples of his music are posted on his YouTube channel, easily reached by following this link:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzcaUueh5wi_gR_BREJ_JO6ghvKn614t7

April 27, 2020
Met Opera Streams Bel Canto Borodin Week

Bel canto and Borodin bookend this week’s offerings from The Metropolitan Opera.

Now entering its seventh week, the Met’s “Live in HD” encore series will include Donizetti’s “Three Queens” trilogy (Monday-Wednesday), Nico Muhly’s adaptation of the book that also inspired Alfred Hitchcock’s “Marnie” (Thursday), Verdi’s “Aida” with Leontyne Price (Friday), Verdi’s “Luisa Miller” (Saturday), and Alexander Borodin’s “Prince Igor” (Sunday).

The operas stream free, for 23 hours, beginning each day at 7:30 p.m. (“La Cenerentola” is available until 6:30 this evening.) You’ll find teasers and bonus materials when following the link.

https://www.metopera.org/user-information/nightly-met-opera-streams/week-7/

April 27, 2020
Slonimsky’s Wildest Musical Insults

For the birthday of Nicolas Slonimsky (1894-1995), here a few favorites from his sidesplitting 1953 compendium of critical vitriol, “Lexicon of Musical Invective”:

“We recoil in horror before this rotting odor which rushes into our nostrils from the disharmonies of this putrefactive counterpoint. His imagination is so incurably sick and warped that anything like regularity in chord progressions and period structure simply do not exist for him. Bruckner composes like a drunkard!”

(Gustav Dompke, The German Times of Vienna, 1886)

“Heartless sterility, obliteration of all melody, all tonal charm, all music… This reveling in the destruction of all tonal essence, raging satanic fury in the orchestra, this demoniacal, lewd caterwauling, scandal-mongering, gun-toting music, with an orchestral accompaniment slapping you in the face… Hence, the secret fascination that makes it the darling of feeble-minded royalty…of the court monkeys covered with reptilian slime, and of the blasé hysterical female court parasites who need this galvanic stimulation by massive instrumental treatment to throw their pleasure-weary frog-legs into violent convulsion…the diabolical din of this pig-headed man, stuffed with brass and sawdust, inflated, in an insanely destructive self-aggrandizement, by Mephistopheles’ mephitic and most venomous hellish miasma, into Beelzebub’s Court Composer and General Director of Hell’s Music — Wagner!”

(J.L. Klein, “History of the Drama,” 1871)

And of course, who could forget:

“The violin is no longer played; it is pulled, torn, drubbed…. We see plainly the savage vulgar faces, we hear curses, we smell vodka.… Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto gives us for the first time the hideous notion that there can be music that stinks to the ear.”

(Eduard Hanslick, New Free Press, Vienna, 1881)

Tchaikovsky could recite from memory every word of Hanslick’s sustained screed, from which this is but an excerpt.

The “Lexicon” is just the tip of the Slonimsky iceberg. Slonimsky conducted first performances of works by Ives and Varèse. His “Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns” influenced musicians from John Coltrane to Frank Zappa. His sly wit made him a favorite guest on radio and television programs, including “The Tonight Show.” It’s hardly surprising that he lived to be 101.

Happy birthday, Nicholas Slonimsky.

Slonimsky documentary on YouTube — narrated by Michael York!

PHOTO: Slonimsky with his cat, Grody-to-the-Max!

April 27, 2020
Rediscovering William Walton’s Genius

Sir William Walton is beloved for his coronation marches and film scores. But posterity has been woefully reductive. He also wrote operas, symphonies, concertos, chamber music, and choral works.

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll hear two long-out-of-print recordings of works composed more than three decades apart.

At the time of the premiere of his Symphony No. 2, in 1957, Walton was perceived as something of a musical throwback. Indeed, despite the fact that it is more tightly argued, the piece has always been regarded as a poor stepsister of the Symphony No. 1, composed in 1935, a work full of grand gestures, written under the spell of Sibelius.

What apparently escaped critics of the day was the subtlety of its craftsmanship. The finale, in particular, is a set of variations based on a twelve-note row, a technique not unlike that employed in the kind of serial composition so much in vogue at the time.

George Szell (pictured, with the composer) gave the American premiere of the symphony, with the Cleveland Orchestra, in December of 1960. A few months later, they made the first recording.

More than three decades earlier, Walton was viewed as an enfant terrible, when he set Edith Sitwell’s poetry as an entertainment, titled “Façade.” The work was first performed publicly in 1923. The premiere was a succès de scandale, with Sitwell herself speaking her poems into a megaphone protruding from the mouth of a painted face by John Piper, Walton conducting an ensemble of six instruments.

The displeasure of performers, audience, and critics was evident, with Noel Coward ostentatiously marching out. However, the work quickly caught on, even becoming downright popular in a variety of arrangements. Within a decade, a purely orchestral version was choreographed by Frederick Ashton.

We’ll hear selections from a treasured recording, unavailable in this country for many years, featuring Dame Peggy Ashcroft and Paul Scofield as the reciters. Both were noted Shakespearean actors, who did much of their best work on stage. Ashcroft received an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1985, for her part in David Lean’s final film, “A Passage to India,” and Scofield was honored with an Academy Award for Best Actor two decades earlier, in 1966, for his performance in “A Man for All Seasons.”

I hope you’ll join me for “Will’s Wonders Never Cease” – rarely heard recordings of the works of William Walton – this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

April 26, 2020
Caffeine & Music Crossword Puzzle

Caffeinated Classics! Take a slug from the mug, perk up, and hit the grounds running with a stimulating, all-new Classic Ross Amico crossword, about caffeine and music. To fill it out, simply follow the link and select “solve online” at the bottom of the page:

https://www.armoredpenguin.com/crossword/Data/2020.04/2606/26063743.014.html

Once you feel you’ve exhausted the puzzle, you’ll find the solutions when clicking on “Answer Key PDF.”

PHOTOS: A gallery of composers at coffee and tea

April 26, 2020

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