Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

Free Opera Online Met Streams Encore HD

Everything is cancelled. But nature abhors a vacuum, so some musicians, ensembles, and organizations (Yo-Yo Ma, Joyce DiDonato, the Philadelphia Orchestra) have been stepping up to offer free concerts and recitals online.

The latest is The Metropolitan Opera, which will share select encore “Live in HD” presentations for the duration of the house’s closure, streamed at its website, metopera.org. The series will begin tonight with Elīna Garanča as an especially sultry Carmen. But for me the pick of the bunch for this first week is Renée Fleming and the late Dmitri Hvorostovsky in “Eugene Onegin,” which will be made available on Sunday.

The operas stream free from 7:30 in the evening to 3:30 the following afternoon. You’ll find more information and a complete schedule when visiting metopera.org.

March 16, 2020
John Addison’s Centennial A Musical Tribute

Today is the 100th birthday of Academy Award winning composer John Addison.

Addison was awarded his statuette for “Tom Jones” in 1964. The score is a brilliant admixture of unusual instrumentation (harpsichord, well-worn upright, banjo, accordion) and music hall brio.

Addison also provided the memorable music for “Sleuth.”

And, for television, “Murder She Wrote.”

Addison was the composer to whom Alfred Hitchcock turned, notoriously, after his falling out with Bernard Herrmann over the scoring of “Torn Curtain.” The studio was pressuring Hitch for a more “popular” sound. Ironically, Addison just wound up trying to conjure Herrmann – as did every one of Hitch’s collaborators thereafter.

Addison also provided music for “The Entertainer,” “A Taste of Honey,” “The Loneliness of a Long Distance Runner,” “Start the Revolution Without Me,” “Luther,” “The Seven-Per-Cent Solution,” “A Bridge Too Far,” and the television miniseries “Centennial.”

A student of Gordon Jacob at the Royal College of Music in London, he wrote a number of concert works, though he remarked, “If you find you’re good at something, as I was as a film composer, it’s stupid to do anything else.”

Here is Addison’s Trumpet Concerto:

Over a half century before Warren Beauty and Faye Dunaway got caught up in the infamous “La La Land” snafu, Sammy Davis Jr. was bitten by “Tom Jones”:

Happy birthday, John Addison!

March 16, 2020
Doriot Anthony Dwyer, Pioneering Flutist, Dies at 98
Flutist Doriot Anthony Dwyer has died. Dwyer served as principal flute of the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1952 to 1990. She was one of the first women to win a principal chair in a major U.S. orchestra.*

Understandably, this was a very big deal. Back in the day, Boston didn’t even have a separate dressing room for women. Early notices were all about her gender and good looks, but soon it was her playing that was receiving raves. She won over players, audiences, and critics alike.

To mark her retirement, the orchestra commissioned for her a flute concerto from Ellen Taaffe Zwilich. Zwilich was the first female recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Music (in 1983!).

Prior to her tenure in Boston, she was second flute with the National Symphony Orchestra and Los Angeles Philharmonic, and served as principal flute at the Hollywood Bowl. Early in her career, she also played with Frank Sinatra and the Ballets Russes.

Dwyer died on Saturday at the age of 98.
- Dwyer was preceded by, at the very least, Florence Wightman (principal harp, Cleveland Orchestra, 1929-30), Alice Chalifoux (principal harp, Cleveland Orchestra, 1931-74), Edna Philips (principal harp, Philadelphia Orchestra, 1930-41 and 1942-46), and Helen Kotas (principal horn, Chicago Symphony, 1941-48).
An interview with Doriot Anthony Dwyer, in three parts:

Dwyer with Leonard Bernstein conducting “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun”

Debussy Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9frKtO0nRn8

Prokofiev Flute Sonata:

Ellen Taffe Zwilich Flute Concerto:

Charles Munch bringing Dwyer forth for a solo bow (at the very end of the video)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrMnUUWTBd4

PHOTO: Doriot Anthony Dwyer, with harpist Olivia Luetcke and cellist Winifred Winograd (courtesy of the Boston Symphony Orchestra)
March 16, 2020
Seward Johnson Sculptor Dies at 89

I’ve been remiss in not mentioning the death of sculptor Seward Johnson, who died last week at the age of 89. If you’ve ever done a double take at an immoveable figure seated on a bench or banged your head against a bronze umbrella, chances are you are familiar with his work. Johnson was born in New Brunswick, NJ, in 1930.

He was especially adept at casting three dimensional realizations of works by the French masters, many of them on display at Grounds For Sculpture in Hamilton, a 42-acre sculpture park he established in 1992. His sense of whimsy was evident, whether expanding the world of Grant Wood’s “American Gothic” or casting a 26-foot Marilyn Monroe, caught in her iconic subway grate scene from “The Seven Year Itch.” Some would say he had the itch for kitsch. But Johnson was a populist at heart.

In his later years, he enjoyed leading sing-alongs of showtunes and American standards at Rat’s Restaurant, located on the grounds of Grounds. The grandson of Robert Wood Johnson I, founder of Johnson & Johnson, he also happened to be a nephew of Kirk Douglas.

https://www.mycentraljersey.com/story/entertainment/people/2020/03/13/j-seward-johnson-world-renowned-sculptor-dies-89/5041696002/

PHOTO: “Unconditional Surrender,” by Seward Johnson

March 16, 2020
Irish Music on The Lost Chord Pre-St. Patrick’s

Don’t let the Italian surname fool you; my mother’s people came from Ireland. My own sensibilities tend more toward the Northern climes than to the Mediterranean. And I could be quite happy on a steady diet of praties and Guinness.

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” green is the new black. I hope you’ll join me, if only virtually, in anticipating St. Patrick’s Day, with music from, and in celebration of, the Emerald Isle. We’ll hear works by Irish composers John Larchet, Philip Hammond, Howard Ferguson, and A.J. Potter, and works on Celtic themes by Percy Grainger, Sir Arnold Bax, and John Foulds.

That’s “The Sharing of the Green.” It will be all Guinness and no Corona, this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

March 15, 2020

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