Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

Support Classical Music Travel the World with WWFM

There’s no noon concert like no Noon Concert.

Instead, we’ll have wall-to-wall music about travel on The Classical Network, as we continue with our end-of-the-fiscal-year fundraiser. We’re asking not only that you contribute, but that you contribute to the programming. If you’re planning to take a trip yourself, let us know where, when you make your donation, and we’ll try to play something associated with that particular locale.

Even if you haven’t any travel plans at the moment, let us know where you’d like to go someday. If the destination is particularly challenging – and challenging is always interesting – there could be a slight delay in our musical response, as we may have to draw from our own personal collections, but we’ll do our best to celebrate your contribution ASAP.

It all ties in with our new WWFM travel mug, yours for a contribution of $120. If you go for it, take it with you and photograph it with an identifiable landmark. We’ll post some of the best shots on the station’s Facebook page.

There is no “easy pass” in classical radio. Help us cover the tolls by calling us at 1-888-232-1212, or by contributing online at wwfm.org.

With your help, we’ll continue to go places, both today and well into the future, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org. Thank you for your support!

June 25, 2019
Classical Music Summer Escape No Travel Needed

Any exciting trips planned for the summer? You don’t need a plane ticket or even a car to be transported.

We know the music we share on The Classical Network has the power to take you places. Whether your thoughts are guided by descriptive titles (“Capriccio Espagnol,” “Hungarian Rhapsody,” the “Grand Canyon Suite”), your intellect engaged by the trajectory of a symphony or a fugue, or your sense of fantasy stirred by a transcendent performance, we are your source – and destination – for great music.

We at The Classical Network are always happy to do the driving. But this week we’re asking you to chip in for the gas. After all, it is the end of our fiscal year. Your gift in any amount will make you a member, and it will ensure that we have enough fuel for our continuing adventures. Call us today at 1-888-232-1212, or donate online at wwfm.org.

With WWFM – The Classical Network, you never have to worry about what to pack. We depart this afternoon at 4:00 EDT. With your help, we will go far. Thank you, as always, for your support!

June 24, 2019
Midsummer Music Bonfires Witches and More

Thank the Romans. They’re the ones who marked the summer solstice for June 24 – hence, the discrepancy between the longest day (June 21) and Midsummer. But the Romans liked nothing if not a good party, so why split hairs? Let the good times roll!

The Church, though fashionably late, was quick to comprehend it would probably be best to divert the stream of paganism rather than attempt to dam(n) everything outright. To this end, June 24 was designated the Feast Day of St. John. This worked out very nicely, since St. Luke implies the birth of John the Baptist took place six months before that of Jesus.

On the eve of this blessed anniversary, the night of June 23, good Christians celebrate as only reformed pagans can, in the understanding that everyone will be up to fulfill their religious obligations on the morrow.

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll have music for St. John’s Eve.

The eve of St. John is a time for the harvesting of St. John’s Wort, with its miraculous healing powers. It’s a time to seek the fern flower, which can bring good fortune, wealth, and the ability to understand animal speech. It’s a time for the lighting of bonfires against evil spirits, and even dragons, which roam the earth, as the sun again pursues a southerly course. And it’s a time when witches are believed to rendezvous with powerful forces, such as the demon Chernobog, who emerges from the Bald Mountain on St. John’s Eve at the climax of Disney’s “Fantasia.”

Leaping over a bonfire is seen as a surety of prosperity and good luck. Not to light a bonfire is seen as offering up one’s own house for destruction by fire. The bigger the fire, the further at bay are kept evil spirits. The further the evil spirits, the better the guarantee of a good harvest.

We’ll have music inspired by some of these Midsummer customs, as we listen to Modest Mussorgsky’s “St. John’s Night,” an earlier, less-familiar incarnation of his popular musical picture “A Night on Bald Mountain,” as heard in his opera, “Sorochinsky Fair.”

Also featured will be Alfred Schnittke’s impish rondo, “(K)ein Sommernachtstraum.” The root of the title is German for “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” but the postmodern inclusion of the “K” in parentheses modifies the meaning to “NOT a Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Indeed! Schnittke sets up the listener with a soothing notturno in the style of Mozart or Schubert, but very soon the atmosphere begins to shift.

Finally, we’ll hear selections from the ballet, “St. John’s Eve,” by the Swedish composer Gunnar de Frumerie. Not surprisingly, after a long, hard winter, the Scandinavian countries are crazy for Midsummer. The allegorical ballet features appearances by John the Baptist, Salome, the Seven Deadly Sins, Angels, and the Devil, all tied up in Swedish Midsummer traditions.

Leap high, friends, and join me for “Midsummer Night’s Fiends,” this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

June 23, 2019
Washington Irving’s Sketch Book Rediscovered

While the big show in American letters this year has unquestionably been the Walt Whitman bicentennial, an equally worthy subject seems not to have captured the imagination of either press or internet. On June 23, 1819, the first story appeared of what was to become Washington Irving’s “The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.” – more commonly known as “The Sketch Book.”

“The Sketch Book,” ultimately a collection of 34 stories and essays, was published serially, for a little over a year, through July 1820. Twenty years in advance of the first of James Fennimore Cooper’s “Leatherstocking Tales,” thirty years in advance of “Moby-Dick,” and a full sixty years before “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” “The Sketch Book” was one of the first literary undertakings by an American to enthrall an international readership. William Makepeace Thackeray observed, “Irving was the first ambassador whom the New World of letters sent to the Old.”

Even those who have never encountered Irving’s work will be familiar with his creations, Rip Van Winkle, Ichabod Crane, and the Headless Horseman.

I divined the anniversary purely by chance two weeks ago, when searching for a suitable image for my post on Antonin Dvořák’s “The Specter’s Bride.” It turns out Irving treated the same subject, an old folktale, in his “Sketch Book” story “The Spectre Bridegroom.”

Naturally, I considered putting together a program of Irving-inspired works for “The Lost Chord.” But when I realized the material I have to work with is so thin, I was concerned it might come across a little bit like scraping the proverbial barrel.

These are the Irving-inspired pieces that sprang immediately to mind:

George Whitefield Chadwick: “Rip Van Winkle Overture” (1879)

Ferde Grofé: “Hudson River Suite:” Rip Van Winkle (1955)

Edgar Stillman Kelley: “Headless Horseman” (1891)

Apparently George Frederick Bristow composed a “Rip Van Winkle” opera in 1855, but if it’s even been recorded, I don’t have it. (And that’s saying something.) Ah! But here’s the overture!

Even so, that’s not a whole heck of a lot. Which means I would have had to fill out the rest of the hour with highlights from Kurt Weill’s “Knickerbocker Holiday,” which is very tangentially related indeed.

In any case, spare a thought for Washington Irving. Maybe even re-read one of his supernatural tales. It would be especially appropriate for St. John’s Eve. More on that jolly pagan celebration tomorrow.

CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” (1906) by Arthur I. Keller; portrait of a dashing young Irving (1809) by John Wesley Jarvis; illustration from “Rip Van Winkle” (1921) by N.C. Wyeth

June 22, 2019
Zeffirelli’s Shakespeare & Film Scores

Franco Zeffirelli died on June 15 at the age of 96. The influential director favored big emotions and grandiose subjects, making his biggest mark in Shakespeare and opera. I’ll leave the opera to other hands. However, this week on “Picture Perfect,” I’ll do what I can to honor his artistry with music from a selection of his films.

“Romeo and Juliet” (1968) was probably the most culturally significant of these. Not only did it turn out to be a surprise hit, the film has been a staple of high school English curricula for decades. Zeffirelli’s vision proved especially appealing to teenaged audiences – in part because of the refreshing youth of its leads (Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey, 17 and 16 respectively).

“Romeo and Juliet” was nominated for several Academy Awards, including those for Best Picture and Best Director. Laurence Olivier spoke the film’s prologue and epilogue, and reportedly dubbed the voice of the Italian actor who played Lord Montague. Nino Rota wrote the music, and the love theme was popularized as “A Time for Us.”

Another enduring success for Zeffirelli, a devout Roman Catholic, was his television miniseries, “Jesus of Nazareth” (1977). This time Olivia Hussey plays Mary, mother of Jesus. The all-star cast includes eight Academy Award winners, past and future (Anne Bancroft, Ernest Borgnine, James Earl Jones, Laurence Olivier, Christopher Plummer, Anthony Quinn, Rod Steiger, and Peter Ustinov). It makes me happy to learn that the sets for the film were reused by Monty Python for “Life of Brian.”

The music was by Maurice Jarre, David Lean’s composer-of-choice. I realize we’ve been hearing a lot of late-period Jarre recently, when he was most under the spell of electronics. “Jesus of Nazareth” sports a good old-fashioned orchestral score, with obligatory Biblical chorus.

Zeffirelli proved again and again that he was especially adept at adapting Shakespeare for the big screen. With the unlikely casting of action hero Mel Gibson as the melancholy Dane, “Hamlet” (1990) was something of a gamble that paid off. Zeffirelli puzzlingly tampers with one of the all-time great openings in the history of drama, delaying the appearance of the ghost of Hamlet’s father in favor of some fabricated funeral that looks like a rejected scene from “Star Wars,” but Gibson brings to the title role a refreshing vitality. The reading is passionate and dangerous. The music was by Ennio Morricone.

Art imitates life in Zeffirelli’s first feature as director, “The Taming of the Shrew” (1967), a showcase for the famously tempestuous husband-and-wife Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. In addition, “Shrew” and “Romeo” provided notable supporting roles for a young Michael York. Nino Rota supplies an alternately rollicking and melancholy score in a manner that seems characteristic of Italian composers – perhaps the influence of Italian opera?

Of course Zeffirelli made a magnificent imprint in the world of opera, with his opulent, eye-popping productions. For film, he directed adaptations of “La traviata” and “Otello,” with Placido Domingo.

Among his other films were “Brother Sun, Sister Moon,” “The Champ,” “Endless Love,” “Jane Eyre,” and “Tea with Mussolini.” But we’ll go with the spectacle – I think Franco would have wanted it that way – this Friday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

June 21, 2019

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