Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

Whitman Mania on WWFM Classical Network

If you’ve a mania for Whitmaniana, you need look no further than WWFM The Classical Network.

Walt Whitman was born on this date in Huntingdon, New York, 200 years ago; he died in Camden, New Jersey, in 1892.

America’s national poet has inspired literally hundreds of musical responses. We’ll liven up your Friday afternoon with choral works, orchestral pieces, and songs. Join me at a special time, from 12 to 4 p.m., for a playlist of tributes to “the bard of democracy.”

On a related note, “Picture Perfect,” at 6 p.m., will offer music from movies about poetry and poets, including selections from “Dead Poets Society” (Maurice Jarre), “Lady Caroline Lamb” (Richard Rodney Bennett), “Il Postino” (Luis Bacalov), and “Cyrano de Bergerac” (Dimitri Tiomkin).

Poetry and movies will also inform an exciting live broadcast, tomorrow at 7:30 p.m., of Bernard Herrmann’s radio play, “Whitman.” Baritone William Sharp will assume the title role, with the PostClassical Ensemble conducted by Angel Gil-Ordóñez at Washington National Cathedral. The program will also include Herrmann’s Clarinet Quintet “Souvenirs de Voyage” and “Psycho: A Narrative for String Orchestra.”

In addition, some of our archived shows may be of interest. Check out our webcasts, including a four-part series devoted to Whitman on “The Lost Chord.”

Also, Rachel Katz spoke with Malcolm J. Merriweather, music director of The Dessoff Choirs, last Saturday on “A Tempo.” The Dessoff Choirs will present three world premieres of Whitman settings, as part of a Whitman Bicentennial Festival, tonight at the Church of St. Paul and St. Andrew in New York City. That show too has been archived.

To listen to the webcasts, go to wwfm.org. Click on “About Us,” then “Our Programs A-Z,” and then the individual shows, which are listed alphabetically. (“The Lost Chord” appears under the letter T.)

Or if you have the time and the patience to scroll through everything, simply click on “Classical” and then “Webcasts.”

Happiness, knowledge, not in another place but this place, not for another hour but this hour!

Join us in sounding a barbaric yawp. It’s wall-to-wall Whitman, today from 12 to 4 p.m.; “Poetry in Motion” on “Picture Perfect,” Friday evening at 6; and Bernard Herrmann’s “Whitman,” with the PostClassical Ensemble, Saturday night at 7:30, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

May 31, 2019
Korngold’s Birthday & Bard Music Festival

Happy birthday, Erich Wolfgang Korngold!

I am so excited to have just gotten off the phone with Leon Botstein. Botstein, who is president of Bard College, is also co-artistic director of the Bard Music Festival, held each summer on the campus of Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY. This year, the festival’s focus will be on “Korngold and His World.”

Tune in this afternoon for some of Dr. Botstein’s insights into Korngold the composer, as we talk just a bit about the festival, which will take place this year over two weekends: August 9-11 and August 16-18.

Then watch this space for news of upcoming installments of “Picture Perfect” and “The Lost Chord,” which will include more of Botstein’s comments on Korngold’s significance as a composer for opera house, concert hall, and film.

The Bard Music Festival will encompass a veritable cornucopia of Korngold, including the composer’s two greatest operas – a concert performance of “Die tote Stadt,” which will round out the festival, on August 18, and a fully-staged production of “Das Wunder der Heliane,” which will act as a kind of preamble to the festival proper, from July 26 to August 4. Leon Botstein will conduct. As has been the case with so much music performed at Bard, “Heliane” is an opera that has never before received a staging in the United States.

The festival will shine light on all aspects of Korngold’s art, by way of his own work for different media (including a performance, with film, of selections from “The Adventures of Robin Hood”), and music by his contemporaries, those he influenced and those who were influenced by him.

You can find at more about “Das Wunder der Heliane” and the Bard Music Festival by visiting fishercenter.bard.edu.

Then tune in today, in the 4:00 hour EDT, to hear portions of my conversation with Dr. Botstein – with more to come on future episodes of “Picture Perfect” and “The Lost Chord” – on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College

May 29, 2019
Schoenberg, Paganini & Marlboro Music

Arnold Schoenberg’s “Serenade,” Op. 24, puts me in the mind of Lorca’s weeping guitar.

Schoenberg employs the guitar as part of a loony ensemble that also includes two clarinets, mandolin, violin, viola, cello, and – in the work’s most prescient movement – voice.

On this week’s “Music from Marlboro,” we’ll hear this Janus-like piece. The Serenade may contain the first published example of Schoenberg’s twelve-tone method to employ multiple instruments (with voice) – a three-minute setting of a Petrarch sonnet – but of the other five movements, though they may push tonality beyond the breaking point, none of them are actually “twelve-tone.”

If you find yourself hanging on by your fingernails at the seeming lack of identifiable landmarks, it might be better to just let go and allow all the colors to wash over you.

The composer looks back to classical form through the use of repetitions in the opening “March,” the second movement “Minuet,” and the fifth movement “Dance Scene.” There is also a seeming affirmation of the past through the deliberate choice of Petrarch as a source of inspiration. The third movement is a set of “Variations,” and the sixth a “Song (without Words).” A “Finale” caps the piece,” which, all in all – by Schoenberg standards – is fairly light and easygoing.

We’ll hear a performance from the 1966 Marlboro Music Festival. Guitarist Stanley Silverman is one with an ensemble that also includes violinist Jaime Laredo, violist Samuel Rhodes, cellist Madeline Foley, B-flat clarinetist Harold Wright, bass clarinetist Don Stewart, mandolinist Jacob Glick, and (singing Petrarch) bass Thomas Paul. Leon Kirchner directs.

The guitar moves to the front and center in Niccolò Paganini’s Quartet No. 15 in A minor. Paganini, of course, was one of the great violinists – some posit, the greatest who ever lived – but he was also an exceptional guitarist. He composed 15 quartets for guitar and strings.

The last of these is from 1820. We’ll hear it performed in 1976, by guitarist Javier Calderon, violinist Daniel Phillips, and violist Luigi Alberto Bianchi. The cellist, 20 years-old at the time, is Yo-Yo Ma.

Marlboro musicians get a chance to exhibit their pluck, on this week’s “Music from Marlboro,” this Wednesday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

Marlboro School of Music and Festival: Official Page

In a 1930 poll conducted by the Viennese newspaper Neues Wiener Tagblatt, Arnold Schoenberg and Erich Wolfgang Korngold were elected two of the most influential Austrian composers of their time. The two artists couldn’t be more different, of course – Schoenberg, the godfather of dodecaphonic music, and Korngold, the progenitor of the “Hollywood sound.” Tune in a little early, at 4:00 EDT, to enjoy some of Korngold’s music, on his birthday. I’ll also be talking with Leon Botstein about this summer’s Bard Music Festival, at Bard College. The focus of this year’s festival will be on “Korngold and His World.”

May 29, 2019
NBCO on The Classical Network Today

Tune in today for our Noontime Concert on The Classical Network to get a hit of Hyczko.

Mark Hyczko, artistic director of the New Brunswick Chamber Orchestra, will be my co-host for a program titled “Take Flight,” with works by Christopher Cerrone, Howard Hanson, Mason Bates, Shruthi Rajasekar, and Béla Bartók.

Highlights will include Princeton graduate Shruthi Rajasekar’s “Son of Pandu” and Béla Bartók’s energetic, masterful “Divertimento for String Orchestra.”

The NBCO’s next concert, “Fragments,” will take place this Sunday at 5 p.m., and will feature music by Elena Kats-Chernin, Thea Musgrave, Benjamin Britten, and Pulitzer Prize winner Caroline Shaw. The program will be presented at Christ Church, located at 5 Paterson Street, in New Brunswick.

The NBCO prides itself in presenting “music that matters.” I hope you’ll join Mark and me for a stimulating early afternoon of engaging music.

Then, après moi le déluge! With severe weather in the Trenton-Princeton forecast, catch the wave, as we’ll immerse ourselves in music related to excessive precipitation, swelling floodwaters, and uplifting rainbows.

We’ll hear Hector Berlioz’s “Royal Hunt and Storm,” selections from Jean Sibelius’ incidental music for “The Tempest,” Rued Langgaard’s Symphony No. 10 “Yon Dwelling of Thunder,” Christopher Theofanidis’ “Rainbow Body,” and more.

Prepare to be taken by storm. We’ll toss you a lifesaver, from 12 to 4 p.m. EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

May 28, 2019
Memorial Day Remembrance on The Classical Network

It’s Memorial Day. I know we love our burgers and our quoits and our three legged-races and our gumboot tosses and all that, but do remember to take a moment to reflect on how lucky we all are, and those who laid down their lives in the belief that they were doing something for the greater good.

This afternoon on The Classical Network, we honor the fallen, even as we pray for peace, with a program of elegies and war-time symphonies. Enjoy the vitality, freedom, and limitless possibility of a gorgeous spring afternoon, experience the elation of hard-won victory, and look to the future in tranquility, with a heart full of generosity and optimism.

The world may seem as if it is teetering on the brink of chaos, and it may feel like a perpetual struggle to hold slippery leadership accountable. But have courage. Be inspired by the valor and sacrifice of those who have gone before, and who have given it their all, from 4 to 7 p.m. EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

May 27, 2019

Tag Cloud

RECENT POSTS