Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

Jonathan Biss to Lead Marlboro Music

In foreign lands, cries of “Bis!” at the end of a concert signify an audience’s desire to hear more. It is a happy coincidence, then, that at the Marlboro Music School and Festival, Biss happens to be the surname of its incoming co-artistic director.

Earlier this week, it was announced that the pianist Jonathan Biss will join Mitsuko Uchida as co-director of the celebrated chamber music retreat, which is situated in Vermont’s Green Mountains. Uchida has served in a leadership capacity at Marlboro for over 20 years. For the past five of these, she has been the festival’s sole artistic director. Prior to that, she was assisted in the festival’s direction by Richard Goode (1994-2013) and Andras Schiff (1994-1999).

Biss first attended the Marlboro Music Festival in 1997. He was invited to return as a senior artist in 2006 – in classic Marlboro fashion, giving back to new generations of young musicians the kind of mentorship and comradery he himself experienced there.

Biss, who is on the faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, is acclaimed not only as a performer and recording artist, but also as a teacher and a writer, wholly comfortable exploring unique opportunities of the digital age, offering online lectures and publishing a bestselling eBook, “Beethoven’s Shadow.”

We’ll celebrate Biss’ appointment on this week’s “Music from Marlboro,” with a performance of Franz Schubert’s Piano Trio No. 1 in B-flat major, D. 898. Biss will be joined by violinist David Bowlin and cellist Marcy Rosen, from the 2008 Marlboro Music Festival.

Then we’ll hear Marlboro legends, soprano Benita Valente, clarinetist Harold Wright, and pianist Rudolf Serkin, in Schubert’s “The Shepherd on the Rock.” The three set down a classic recording of the work in 1960; we’ll hear a live performance, captured at Marlboro nine years later.

The Marlboro Music School and Festival was co-founded in 1951 by Serkin, Adolf Busch, and Marcel Moyse. Serkin served as Marlboro’s first artistic director until his death in 1991.

Today happens to be the anniversary of Busch’s birth. Tune in this afternoon, between 4 and 6 p.m., prior to today’s “Music from Marlboro” broadcast, for a little bonus, in the form of one of Busch’s own compositions.

“Music from Marlboro” begins at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

Marlboro School of Music and Festival: Official Page

PHOTO: Uchida (left), with Marlboro’s incoming co-artistic director

August 8, 2018
Baroque & Sea Music on The Classical Network

AAAaaAaAaaaRRRRgh!

We’ll bust open a sea chest full of Baroque treasures on today’s Noontime Concert on The Classical Network. Harpsichordist Elena Zamolodchikova and violinist Natalie Kress will perform music by Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber, William Byrd, Girolamo Frescobaldi, and Johann Heinrich Schmelzer.

The program was presented on December 7, 2017 at St. Bartholomew’s Church, 50th Street and Park Avenue, in Midtown Manhattan, where free lunchtime concerts are held every Thursday at 1:15 p.m. The 2017-2018 schedule has run its course, but concerts will resume in the fall.

Today’s broadcast is made possible in part by Gotham Early Music Scene, or GEMS. GEMS is a non-profit corporation that supports and promotes artists and organizations in New York City devoted to early music – music of the Middle Ages, Renaissance, Baroque, and early Classical periods. For more information and updates to GEMS’ events calendar, look online at gemsny.org.

Then we bid farewell to landlocked humidity and strike out for the high seas. We’ll feel the spray in our faces and the wind in our hair, courtesy of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “A Sea Symphony,” Georg Philipp Telemann’s “Water Music” (written in celebration of the centennial of the Hamburg Admiralty), and Anton Rubinstein’s “Ocean” Symphony.

Start queuing up now for your mermaid tattoos. It’s anchors aweigh, from 12 to 4 p.m. EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

August 7, 2018
Cool Classical Music for Hot Summer Days

It’s going to be another hot one! Before air conditioning, one struck out for the country, hit the local watering hole, or staggered to the shade of the nearest grove. The 17 year-old Felix Mendelssohn composed his overture to “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” while secluding himself in the family garden. The work was completed on this date in 1826.

Join me this afternoon as we seek relief with music inspired by gardens, fountains, and forests. We’ll think cooling thoughts, from 4 to 7 p.m. EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

August 6, 2018
Rued Langgaard Eccentric Genius Rediscovered

Even by composer standards, Rued Langgaard (1893-1952) was a little bit of a strange bird. Despite a promising start – born to musical parents, a precocious childhood, meetings with major conductors, and a symphony performed by the Berlin Philharmonic – his personal and creative eccentricities worked against him.

Langgaard followed his personal muse deep into the realm of late Romanticism at a time when most of the musical world was exploring modernist territory. Though he was given a state grant at 30, he failed to secure a permanent job until the age of 46, as an organist at the cathedral in Ribe, the oldest town in Denmark – which somehow seems appropriate for this most anachronistic of Danish outsiders.

An eccentric, shabby figure with wild hair, Laangaard died in Ribe 13 years later, in 1952, just shy of his 59th birthday, still largely unrecognized as a composer.

His reputation would not begin to gain traction for another 16 years. In all, he composed over 400 works, including 16 symphonies – which bear evocative titles such as “Yon Hall of Thunder” and “Deluge of the Sun” – and an opera, “Antikrist.”

It was in 1968 that no less a personage than György Ligeti found himself on a jury alongside Danish composer Per Nørgård. In this capacity, he examined a large number of new scores by Scandinavian composers. Unbeknownst to his fellow jurors, Nørgård had slipped in the score of Langgaard’s “Music of the Spheres.” Ligeti became captivated by what he found. When the ruse was revealed, he exclaimed, with a twinkle in his eye, “Gentlemen, I have just discovered that I am a Langgaard epigone!”

Langgaard had anticipated some of the technical aspects – tone clusters, layers, and so forth – which would appear in Ligeti’s avant garde experiments of the 1960s, in works such as “Atmosphères.”

Hear “Music of the Spheres,” alongside Langgaard’s String Quartet No. 3, this week on “The Lost Chord.” That’s “Rued Awakenings,” this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwm.org.

August 5, 2018
Remembering Bill Shedden a Radio Voice

So much for news traveling fast.

Every once in a while, if I think of it, I’ll take to the Google to check up on some of my old radio acquaintances. Over thirty years, I’ve gotten to know a lot of folks and, I don’t have to tell you, the obligations of the present make it very easy to lose touch.

Well, it must have been a longer gap than usual, because last night, I am sorry to say, I only just learned of the passing of Bill Shedden. 3 ½ years ago, Bill lost control of his SUV, went off a snow-covered road in upstate New York, and struck a tree. According to a news report, he was alert and talkative after the crash, but was taken to the hospital and later died of internal injuries.

Bill was a radio presence in Eastern Pennsylvania and Central/Southern New Jersey for decades. I got to know him pretty well when we worked together at WWFM – The Classical Network, located in the Trenton-Princeton area. But I felt a special bond with him going to back to his days at WFLN. WFLN, if you don’t know, was Philadelphia’s classical music station for 48 years, until a format change to “popular hits” (as the short-lived WXXM Max 95.7) in 1997. I was but a listener at the time, but I always connected with Bill’s enthusiasm for the music of Ralph Vaughan Williams, and called him occasionally during his WFLN shifts to chat briefly and to thank him for his work.

By the time WFLN folded, I had been working at WWFM for a few years, so when I heard Bill had applied for an air shift, I put in a good word. It was an honor to finally get to meet him and to actually be able to work with him. Bill was one of the most genial personalities in classical radio. His secret, he professed, was that whenever he spoke on the air, he didn’t speak to everyone, but to one person only, and as if that person were in the room with him.

In 2001, Bill left to take over the music directorship of WCNY in Syracuse, NY. There, he continued to play plenty of English music, as the station’s weekday morning host. He also produced a program of sacred choral music and co-hosted a Saturday opera show with his wife, Maureen.

I am happy for his success in Syracuse, where he was evidently – and not surprisingly – much loved by his listeners, but I am sorry that it had to be curtailed so soon. Bill was 62 years-old. R.I.P., my friend.

Bill’s obituary:
https://www.tjpfuneralhome.com/obituaries/William-Shedden-Iii/#!/Obituary

News report of the crash:
https://cnycentral.com/news/local/liverpool-man-dies-after-driving-into-a-tree

The demise of WFLN:
http://www1.udel.edu/nero/Radio/readings/Classical/lastclass.html

For Bill:

August 4, 2018

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