Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

Thief of Bagdad Rozsa’s Enchanting Score Recorded

If your three wishes would include a complete recording, in up-to-date sound, of one of the most enchanting film scores of Miklós Rózsa, you needn’t yearn for the chance discovery of a magic lamp.

This week on “Picture Perfect,” join me for selections from a 2017 release, a two-CD collaborative effort between Prometheus Records and Tadlow Music, of Rózsa’s score for the classic 1940 fantasy-adventure “The Thief of Bagdad.” The City of Prague Philharmonic and Nic Raine recorded the music, note-complete, with ample bonus material.

It’s a magic carpet ride through the fantastical world of the Arabian Nights. Surrender to the enchantment, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

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

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

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

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

Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

June 6, 2025
Wagner Strauss Fleming Weekend

This weekend I’ll be gazing into the abyss, even as I’m lifted to Parnassus!

It’s not like I planned it this way. Sometimes things just turn out like that.

A couple of months ago, I reserved a seat for Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde” with The Philadelphia Orchestra on Sunday afternoon. The opera is being performed complete in a concert setting – 4 and ½ to 5 hours, with two intermissions – with Nina Stemme, one of the world’s foremost Isoldes, still reportedly in fantastic voice, bidding farewell to the role, and heldentenor Stuart Skelton as Tristan. This is the first time the work is being presented complete in Philadelphia since the orchestra gave it its U.S. debut in 1934. An event, for sure, and scheduled for only two performances. Reviews for last Sunday’s concert have been ecstatic, with a critic in The Washington Post calling it “one of the greatest things I have ever heard.” It’s a 2 p.m. curtain, and I’ll likely have lunch plans beforehand, which means I’ll have to be ready to go and out the door on Sunday morning. On its own, certainly doable…

However, I have also been offered a ticket to hear a concert performance of Richard Strauss’ “Guntram” – also reportedly Wagnerian, in language if not length – at Carnegie Hall on Friday night. The work, Strauss’ first opera, seldom done, is quoted in the composer’s “Ein Heldenleben,” but beyond that, I have never heard it. So of course I’m in! Angela Meade will sing Freihild and Leon Botstein will conduct the American Symphony Orchestra. It’s an 8:00 curtain, which means by the time it lets out and I catch the train, it will be well after midnight by the time I get home. Then I’ll be wound up from the trip, so I’m not anticipating turning out the bedside lamp much before 2:00. For ordinary human beings, this might not pose a problem, since the next day is Saturday, but perhaps attributable to the early radio schedule I kept for a couple of decades, I have been conditioned to being a morning person. And I mean it. If I drank a bottle of scotch, my eyes would still shoot open with the first rays of the sun. So I’m anticipating not getting very much shut-eye after the Carnegie concert.

In the meantime, I’ve had a seat reserved to hear Renée Fleming at The Princeton Festival on Saturday evening. So while Saturday will undoubtedly be a day of bountiful coffee, so that I can be alert for the performance (which is at least close to home, thankfully), I will have to be mindful of the timing of my caffeine intake as I mustn’t overshoot the mark and destroy my chance at getting a full night’s sleep before “Tristan.” There will be wags among you, I’m sure, who will observe that I can just catch up on my sleep during the opera!

Fleming’s program will be a light one, accompanied by Rossen Milanov and the Princeton Symphony Orchestra, with arias, art songs, and musical theater selections punctuated by applause, so no danger of nodding for that. But droop during “Tristan,” and I’ll be swallowed beneath the brine of the Irish Sea.

If I do stay awake, and alert, may my ears remain supple!

“Coffee…” (“The Death of Tristan” by Harry Robert Mileham, 1902)

June 5, 2025
Joan Lippincott Legendary Organist Remembered

Somehow, I am the last to learn of the passing of Joan Lippincott. But just in case I’m not, Lippincott, who was so much a part of the fabric of the local music community, as a student and later a professor of organ at Westminster Choir College and the Curtis Institute of Music and, for a time, principal organist at Princeton University, died on May 31 at the age of 89.

Here’s an appreciation, with reminiscences and an obituary, shared by one of her former students.

Legendary Joan Lippincott

And another, from current University Organist at Princeton University, Eric Plutz.

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10163013703036215&set=a.155434051214

Over the years, I played her recordings for the Gothic Records label on my radio shows. R.I.P.

June 4, 2025
Princeton Festival: Opera to ABBA

Opera. Cabaret. Motown. Baroque. Ballet. Bluegrass… no, STRADGRASS. And ABBA?

Beginning this weekend, it will be another tuneful June for the Princeton Symphony Orchestra and friends, as The Princeton Festival gets underway at Morven Museum & Garden, June 6 to 21. For the most part, concerts will take place within a state-of-the-art performance pavilion on the Morven grounds, at 55 Stockton St. (Rte. 206), with a few to be held, as noted, across the way at Trinity Church.

The festival will open on Friday with “ICON: The Voices that Changed Music.” Capathia Jenkins and Ryan Shaw return to the festival stage to celebrate the artistry of Michael Jackson, Prince, Whitney Houston, Gladys Knight, Elvis Presley, Diana Ross, Stevie Wonder, and others, covering songs that helped shape popular culture and define a nation. (Friday, June 6, at 7 p.m.)

Operatic superstar Renée Fleming will appear on Saturday, to perform works by Handel, Puccini, Reynaldo Hahn, and others, including selections from American musical theater. Seating is already at capacity, but feel free to add your name to the waiting list. (Saturday, June 7, at 8 p.m.)

If musical theater is your bag, you’ll also likely be interested in “Sondheim in the City,” presented cabaret-style by Melissa Errico. Errico’s Broadway credits are too many to list. She was nominated for a Tony Award for Outstanding Lead Actress for Michel Legrand’s “Amour” and for a Drama Desk Award for her performance in Sondheim’s “Passion.” She and Sondheim have been very good to one another. Her 2018 album “Sondheim Sublime” was acclaimed by Terry Teachout of The Wall Street Journal as “the best all-Sondheim album ever recorded.” (Sunday, June 8, at 4 p.m.)

Kentucky-born, classically-trained Tessa Lark has basically forged her own genre: Stradgrass. A veteran of her father’s gospel bluegrass band, Lark went on to study at New England Conservatory and Juilliard. Her program will meld violin music by Telemann, Bach, and Ysaÿe with Appalachian and bluegrass licks. (Thursday, June 12, 7 p.m.) The concert will be held at TRINITY CHURCH, a stone’s throw from Morven at 33 Mercer Street.

Of course, opera has always been the centerpiece of the festival. This year’s offering will be Puccini’s “Tosca.” Sardou’s original play (a vehicle for Sarah Bernhardt) is the very definition of over-the-top, but the composer really sells it with some of his most ardent, romantic music. Take the plunge from Castel Sant’Angelo. (Friday, June 13, at 7 p.m., Sunday, June 15 at 4 p.m., or Tuesday, June 17, at 7 p.m.)

To get you in the mood, members of Opera Delaware will join Rochelle Ellis and “Tosca” soprano Tonie Marie Palmertree for a free “opera bootcamp” at Morven’s Stockton Education Center. (Tuesday June 10, 3-8 p.m.) Registration is required.

A few days later, prior to the second performance, a talk, “Exploring Tosca,” will be given by Margaret Cusack and Eve Summer, also at the Stockton Education Center. (June 15 at 2:15 p.m.)

Dance will also be represented as American Repertory Ballet presents “An Evening of Pas de deux” with members of the PSO, conducted by music director Rossen Milanov. Included will be selections from Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake” and Minkus’ “Don Quixote,” alongside Ethan Stiefel’s “Delibes Duet.” (Saturday, June 14, at 7 p.m.)

Festival favorites, the ensemble The Sebastians, will return, to perform an alliterative program, “Baroque Brilliance,” which will include works by Handel, Telemann, and an assortment of Italian composers whose names end in “i.” (Wednesday, June 18, at 3 p.m. & 7 p.m.) AT TRINITY CHURCH

Back to the Morven pavilion, Masters of Soul will appear in a Motown revue, featuring favorites by Gladys Knight & The Pips, Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell, Smokey Robinson & The Miracles, The Temptations, The Four Tops, Diana Ross & The Supremes, Martha Reeves and The Vandellas, Barry White, Sam & Dave, James Brown, and others. (Thursday, June 19, at 7 p.m.)

The concert will cap a Juneteenth celebration that will also include a flag-raising event (1 p.m. at the Municipality of Princeton) and a talk by Rochelle Ellis about Motown’s influence on the Civil Rights Movement (4 p.m. at Morven’s Stockton Education Center).

The Italian Baroque will loom large when violinist Daniel Rowland and cellist Maja Bogdanović join members of the Princeton Symphony Orchestra for “Viva Vivaldi.” But to spice it up a little, the program will also include Osvaldo Golijov’s “Tenebrae” for string orchestra and Max Richter’s “Vivaldi’s Four Seasons Recomposed.” (Friday, June 20, 7 p.m.)

The festival will conclude with a harmonic smorgasbord. Mamma mia! It’s “ARRIVAL from Sweden: The Music of ABBA!” What else do you really need to know? (Saturday, June 21, at 7 p.m.)

Perhaps of added interest, for the first time, same-day $20 “Young at Art” rush tickets will be offered for 18-to-30 year-olds for many (but not all) of the performances. The EXCEPTIONS are June 7 (Renée Fleming), June 14 (Evening of Pas de deux), and June 21 (ARRIVAL from Sweden: The Music of ABBA). Proof of age with a government-issued ID is required.

For those purchasing tickets in advance, boxed picnic lunches from Jammin’ Crepes may be reserved with 48-hours’ notice. These will be available for pick-up from the Jammin’ Crepes booth on Morven’s back lawn one-hour before showtime.

In addition, the festival will be offering a Community Day, free and open to the public. (Sunday, June 8, from 9 am.-3:30 p.m.) Yoga in the Garden will return (movement accompanied by live music), from 9-10 a.m. (registration required). That will be followed by a Festival Farmers’ Market (offering local produce and artisanal products to the strains of an historic band organ), from 10 a.m.-1 p.m. The afternoon will be alive with kid-friendly fun and magic (including musical activities, a student art exhibit, a balloon-a-thon, and yes, a magician), from 12-3:30 p.m.

For more information about concerts, concessions, and more, visit the Princeton Festival website at https://princetonsymphony.org/festival.

If you’re really rarin’ to go, an artists’ roundtable with members of the cast and crew of “Tosca,” including conductor Rossen Milanov and stage director Eve Summer, will be held at Princeton Public Library tonight at 7:00. The event is free and open to the public.

OPENING WEEKEND (clockwise from left): Capathia Jenkins and Ryan Shaw; Renée Fleming; the performance pavilion at Morven; and Melissa Errico

June 3, 2025
Elgar’s Enigmatic Violin Concerto

In 1905, the celebrated violinist Fritz Kreisler remarked to the press, “If you want to know whom I consider to be the greatest living composer, I say without hesitation Elgar… I say this to please no one; it is my own conviction… I place him on an equal footing with my idols, Beethoven and Brahms. He is of the same aristocratic family. His invention, his orchestration, his harmony, his grandeur, it is wonderful. And it is all pure, unaffected music. I wish Elgar would write something for the violin.”

Two years later, Elgar complied, beginning work on a concerto at Kreisler’s request. (In 1909, the piece was formally commissioned by the Royal Philharmonic Society.) The completed work was given its first public performance in 1910 and received immediate, widespread acclaim. Kreisler himself was not disappointed. He declared it “the greatest violin concerto since Beethoven’s.”

Heartbreakingly, plans for Kreisler and Elgar to record the work fell through. The first recording of the piece, using the acoustic process and an abridgement of the score, was in 1916, with Marie Hall the soloist and Elgar on the podium. Later, Hall would advise Ralph Vaughan Williams on the violin part of “The Lark Ascending,” which she would introduce in both versions (first for violin and piano, and then for violin orchestra).

The first COMPLETE recording, made using the electrical process, which allowed for greatly improved dynamic range and realism, was set down in 1929 by Albert Sammons with Sir Henry Wood conducting.

It was record producer Fred Gaisberg’s desire to preserve the concerto with Elgar conducting in better sound, with Kreisler reprising his interpretation, but when Kreisler proved to be elusive, he turned instead to the teenaged Yehudi Menuhin. In the event, Menuhin rose to the challenge and their recording of the concerto has remained in the catalogue since it was first issued in 1932.

The Violin Concerto is not the work of a composer whose legacy was soon to be reduced to, and sadly dismissed as, one of pomp and empire, a relic of the Edwardian era. Rather, it is a confessional work of great tenderness and intimacy.

There have been many theories as to whom the composer might have had in mind in prefacing his score with the Spanish superscription, “Aqui está encerrada el alma de…..” (“Herein is enshrined the soul of…..”). By Elgar’s own admission, the unusual ellipsis of five dots is meant to signify one of his acquaintances. Does it hint at his close friend and confidante Alice Stuart Wortley, married daughter of the painter John Everett Millais? “Windflower” was the affectionate name Elgar bestowed upon her, and he professed that the concerto is full of “windflower themes.”

Or could it be Helen Weaver, a violinist to whom Elgar was briefly engaged, before they were divided by economic and religious objections on the part of her family? When Helen contracted tuberculosis, she departed for New Zealand, and Elgar never saw her again. (It is believed that Weaver is the subject of the penultimate variation, there identified with three asterisks, in Elgar’s “Enigma Variations.” The music quotes Mendelssohn’s “Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage,” with a side-drum played in a manner perhaps suggestive of a steamer’s engine.)

Or, as Elgar scholar Jerrold Northrop Moore suggested, are there actually multiple souls enshrined (Wortley and Weaver in the first movement; Elgar’s wife, Alice, and his mother in the second; and violinist W.H. “Billy” Reed, with whom he worked closely on the concerto, and the composer’s friend and publisher Augustus Jaeger, subject of the “Enigma’s” famous “Nimrod” variation, in the third)?

Elgar, in his ceremonial music and portraits, may have projected an air of self-confidence and respectability, but beneath the veneer of that push-broom mustache and starched collar was an artist of great sensitivity, fundamental melancholy, and jealously guarded privacy.

Raised Roman Catholic in a predominately Protestant country, he rose from lowly origins (his father worked in music sales, his mother was the daughter of a farm worker, and he was largely self-taught as a composer) to become the most celebrated musician in the land as Master of the King’s Music.

It’s interesting that late in life Elgar affected to care more about attending the races than promoting his own music. Perhaps he would be amused to find himself characterized as a dark horse. On paper, he was the ultimate outsider. It’s hardly surprising that emotional and intellectual enigmas would underpin his greatest masterworks.

Happy birthday, Sir Edward Elgar.

Yehudi Menuhin and Elgar in 1932

Tasmin Little and Andrew Davis at the Proms in 2011

June 2, 2025

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