Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

Fantasia on a Phantasy by Vaughan Williams

It’s a mercurial November Sunday here in Princeton, one hour overcast and gloomy, the next blue sky and amorphous clouds, with perhaps an interlude of rain expected this afternoon. Optimal conditions for a pilgrimage to Solebury, PA (outside New Hope), at 3 p.m. to hear Concordia Chamber Players perform Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “Phantasy Quintet.”

It’s not that Vaughan Williams didn’t know how to spell “fantasy.” His “Phantasy” was one of a number of works commissioned from England’s great composers by Walter Wilson Cobbett. Cobbett was a businessman and amateur violinist whose dual passions were chamber music and music of the Elizabethan era. The “phantasy” was Cobbett’s musical folly, an eccentric answer to the fancies and fantasias of Byrd, Gibbons, and Purcell.

Cobbett’s phantasies are short and sweet at around 12 minutes in length. Personally, I could listen to Vaughan Williams all day, but the Concordia concert will also include Johannes Brahms’ String Quintet in G major, Op. 111. Very cool.

The program will open with a rare bit of chamber music by a composer who liked to think big – Anton Bruckner. Bruckner composed his String Quintet in F major in 1878-79, between his Symphonies Nos. 5 and 6. This is civilized and beautiful music. In 1884, the Viennese critic Theodor Helm wrote: “While the finale of the Bruckner Quintet – at least the effect of first-time listening – is in doubt, the three remaining movements are of the highest interest, especially in the happy and original invention of the motives. …But the pearl of the quintet is the Adagio (in G-flat major), one of the noblest, most enlightened, tenderest and most beautiful in sound, written in modern times […]. What an exceedingly deep, flowing in a truly ‘infinite’ stream of emotion! This adagio looks rather as if it were a play, only now found in Beethoven’s estate, from the last time of the master and animated by his fullest inspiration. This is probably the highest praise that can be said about the composition of a living sound artist, and we are not afraid to say it.”

The entire quintet runs to some 43 minutes. Concordia will perform the sublime Adagio, around 14 minutes in length.

The venue is the hill-top, timber-trussed Trinity Episcopal Church, located at 6587 Upper York Rd., again, in Solebury, PA. I can’t think of a cheerier venue for a concert of this kind. Anticipating a phantastic afternoon!

For more information, visit concordiaplayers.org.

November 9, 2025
Unbowed Strings on “Sweetness and Light”

This week on “Sweetness and Light,” it’s an hour of “unbowed strings.” All of these string instruments will be plucked, struck, or strummed, with not a bow in sight. We’ll hear works for zither, guitar, cimbalom, harp, and mandolin, by composers Anton Karas, Ferdinando Carulli, Zoltán Kodály, Reinhold Gliere, and Samuel Siegel. We forgo the bow, but strings are the thing on “Sweetness and Light,” this Saturday morning at 11:00 EST/8:00 PST, exclusively on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Stream it, wherever you are, at the link kwax.uoregon.edu and soon here at rossamico.com/radio!

November 8, 2025
Film noir on “Picture Perfect”

This week on “Picture Perfect,” as the shadows lengthen, we revisit the world of film noir, a genre notoriously slippery to define, but easy to know when you see it – with its long shadows and moral ambiguities; cock-eyed camera angles and snappy repartee; isolation and innuendo. It’s a genre wherein a pair of gams is an invitation to the gallows; wherein a man’s best friend – and sometimes his worst enemy – is his Colt .38, wherein only cigarettes and bourbon can ease the pain.

The labyrinthine mystery at the heart of “The Big Sleep” (1946) is so disorienting, even the book’s author, Raymond Chandler, couldn’t tell whodunit. Who cares? Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall get some more steamy dialogue to satisfy fans of “To Have and Have Not,” and there’s plenty of Bogie pounding the pavement and tossing off tart one-liners in pursuit of the truth. But my favorite scene involves Dorothy Malone, who runs the hottest bookstore in town.

Whenever there are gallows to be built or gangsters to be beaten, Warner Bros. could be counted on to assign Max Steiner.

“Touch of Evil” (1958) is often considered to be the last of the classic noirs. Yet another brilliant feature by Orson Welles, it was taken out of the master’s hands and re-edited by the studio. The film was restored only in 1998, to bring it closer to Welles’ original design.

If you can get past Charlton Heston as a Mexican, “Touch of Evil” is one of the director’s best films. Welles himself is unforgettable as corrupt police captain Hank Quinlan. He’s joined by Janet Leigh, Joseph Calleia, Akim Tamiroff, and Marlene Dietrich, against a rogues’ gallery of memorable hoodlums and lowlifes.

The film is celebrated, for, among things, a sustained and fluidly-executed tracking shot, which spans over three minutes – an eternity in film – documenting two threads of overlapping action. The score, by Henry Mancini, is equally arresting, as it often seems as if it’s diegetic – whatever music happens to be playing on a radio or in a nightclub – lending its own counterpoint to the seedy drama.

“Chinatown” (1974) is one of the best of the neo-noirs of the 1970s. Jack Nicholson plays private dick J.J. Gittes, who takes on a seemingly routine case that begins to spiral out of control. When producer Robert Evans rejected Philip Lambro’s original score, Jerry Goldsmith stepped in as a last-minute replacement. The composer was hired with the understanding that he had only ten days to write and record new music. For his effort, Goldsmith received an Academy Award nomination.

Finally, we’ll have music by the king of noir composers, Miklós Rózsa. Before he came to be stereotyped for his work on epic films like “Ben-Hur,” “King of Kings” and “El Cid,” Rózsa provided scores for genre classics such as “The Strange Love of Martha Ivers,” “The Killers, “Brute Force,” and “The Naked City.”

We’ll hear an extended suite from “Double Indemnity” (1944). Sultry Barbara Stanwyck ensnares insurance salesman Fred MacMurray in a plot to bump off her husband for the insurance money, sparking an investigation by MacMurray’s boss, Edward G. Robinson. Director Billy Wilder shows how it should be done, in one of the high-water marks of the genre.

Put on your rumpled linen suit, draw the Venetian blinds, and play the sap for nobody. We’ve got a nose for noir this week, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

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Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:

PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EST/5:00 PM PST

SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – Saturday at 11:00 AM EST/8:00 AM PST

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EST/4:00 PM PST

Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu

November 7, 2025
Princeton Symphony Orchestra Around the World

An overture about an Italian soubrette in Algiers, a symphony by a German composer in Italy, and a Russian concerto that had its first performance in New York City. It’s a small world on the next concerts of the Princeton Symphony Orchestra, as composers find inspiration and support from beyond the borders of their native lands.

Maxim Lando will be the soloist in Tchaikovsky’s lesser-heard Piano Concerto No. 2, introduced in New York in 1881. The work was criticized by its dedicatee, Nikolai Rubinstein – granted, more diplomatically than he had Tchaikovsky’s evergreen Piano Concerto No. 1, which he had dismissed outright, before finally taking up its cause to the benefit of both music and performer. Be that as it may, Rubinstein died in Paris not long after his assessment of the 2nd, the longest and most lyrical of Tchaikovsky three keyboard concertos.

Also on the program will be Felix Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 4 – known as the “Italian” – which had its origins in a European tour undertaken by the composer between 1829 and 1831. Mendelssohn was 21 years-old when he first arrived in Italy, and the experience threw him into ecstasies. He did his best to capture his ebullience in music. The symphony’s first performance in London in 1833, which Mendelssohn himself conducted, made him the most emulated composer in England for the remainder of the 19th century.

At first, Mendelssohn described it as “the jolliest work I have yet written.” However, despite its overwhelmingly positive reception (Ignaz Moscheles tells us the premiere was met with thunderous applause), the composer began to feel a nagging dissatisfaction with it. He revised the symphony in 1834, with plans for further changes, and the score was never published in his lifetime. He even claimed that it caused him some of the bitterest moments of his career. Naturally, it went on to become his most beloved symphony.

Rossini claimed that he wrote his opera “L’Italiana in Algieri” in 18 days. The plot is a mash-up of seria “rescue opera” and orientalist comedy, as an Italian woman shipwrecked off the coast of Algiers is captured and delivered to the Bey’s seraglio. The Bey wants to make her one of his wives, but she is a wily Rossini heroine, so of course she manages not only to outwit him but to spring her lover who happens also to have been enslaved. The manic intensity we often associate with the composer is evident in the overture, which will open this weekend’s concerts.

Rossen Milanov will conduct the program twice with the Princeton Symphony Orchestra, at Princeton University’s Richardson Auditorium. No passport necessary, this Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at 4:00 p.m.

For more information, visit princetonsymphony.org.

November 6, 2025
“Frankenstein”: It’s Alive

From some of the computer-generated chaos at the start, I was afraid I wasn’t going to like Guillermo’s del Toro’s “Frankenstein.” I guess I’m still smarting from Robert Egger’s remake of “Nosferatu.” But here my concerns were misplaced. As writer and director, Del Toro definitely puts his own spin on the source material, yet he manages to honor Mary Shelley’s 1818 classic. More importantly, the movie is full of heart. I don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up, but I wound up actually really liking it.

I hasten to add, Del Toro’s approach is more Shelley than Karloff, even though he turns a lot of the original novel on its head. Don’t go into it expecting any “scares.” This is a movie that explores the nature of humanity and man’s overweening desire to push into the unknown without considering the morality of doing so or assuming responsibility for the consequences. It is, after all, “Frankenstein.”

But these underpinnings are not simply brushed aside so that the filmmakers can get on with the killings, as is the case with so many of the movies. It has one of two gruesome moments, for sure, but the lens doesn’t linger. Rather, it is a thoughtful, literary, even philosophical movie, with layers of allusions and symbols that fit hand-in-surgical glove with the narrative.

Oscar Isaac plays the haughty, frustrating scientist, Shelley’s “modern Prometheus,” as maddening as he is mad. His rearing of his creation proves here to be the product of cyclical abuse. The theme is skillfully assimilated and has a nice payoff. Tragedy is woven right into the story, of course, but this is one Frankenstein movie that actually leaves one with a glimmer of hope. Del Toro has loved this story – and “the creature” – since childhood, and clearly he’s internalized everything. Like Victor Frankenstein himself, he’s discovered the source of its life; but unlike Victor he also recognizes its soul.

I have no idea who Jacob Elordi, who plays the creation, is, but he is a wonder. His performance makes the movie. I note he’s also going to be playing Heathcliff in an impending, overheated adaptation of “Wuthering Heights,” with Margot Robie trading on her “Barbie” good will. From the trailer, it looks as if it totally misses the point of Emily Bronte’s novel. But here, Elordi is excellent. As with “The Shape of Water,” Del Toro proves that he can be much more than simply a technical director, eliciting fine performances from his leads.

That said, I would be remiss if I didn’t also mention how sumptuous a production this is. Every detail is fully realized, from the vibrant costumes to the outrageous and eyepopping sets, digital or otherwise. The lavish estates, the streets of Edinburgh, the frozen battlefields, the Thomas Eakins medical theater, the steampunk lab, and the arctic wastelands all look fabulous, often operatically stylized, but all of a piece. The production design more than compensates for a few moments of shaky CGI, with cartoonish flying bodies and pouncing wolves.

Why, oh why, aren’t they making it easier for people to see this in a theater? This practice of showing a film for a very limited run in just a few venues so that it qualifies for Academy Awards consideration before consigning it to streaming on Netflix as “content” is more monstrous than anything in the movie.

Beyond the all-too-rare experience these days of enjoying the film on a big screen with an engaged audience, it was such a pleasure to be able to sit there during the end credits and to be able to ruminate on what I had just witnessed to Alexandre Desplat’s evocative score. That is a part of the moviegoing experience that is so tragically undervalued in the streaming age. So much of a movie’s impact is cemented in those few minutes at the end, when you just allow it all to sink in.

I hope you will follow my advice and don’t google anything about it, if you haven’t done so already. It’s best to experience it fresh. It’s a beautiful movie, visually and emotionally alive, with good performances, and I highly recommend it.

“Frankenstein” comes to Netflix tomorrow, but if you can see it in a theater, go.

November 6, 2025

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