Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

Support Classical Music & Get Cool Perks

By this point of the membership campaign, I think everyone could use a stiff drink. Why not enjoy it in style?

For your contribution of $35, WWFM The Classical Network is now offering these snazzy wine vests, designed and created by Professor Barbara Behrens of Mercer County Community College (home base to The Classical Network). Behrens is a longtime supporter of the station.

Bump up your contribution to $100, and in addition we’ll toss in our in-house produced CD of a recreation of a 1930s-style radio broadcast from the Strings Music Festival of Steamboat Springs, CO. World-class musicians, drawn from the some of the country’s great orchestras (including those of Cleveland, Los Angeles, and Atlanta), perform music by George Gershwin (“Rhapsody in Blue”), Jerome Kern, Vernon Duke, and more. Sportscaster Verne Lundquist serves as master of ceremonies. The program is introduced by the speaking voice of Gershwin himself.

The bottle vests will be offered starting at 3 p.m. Join Michael Kownacky and me for Happy Hour at 4, when we’ll be serving up platters of musical aperitifs to help enhance the mood, including David Shire’s “Sonata for Cocktail Piano.”

Then stick around for a special membership edition of “Music from Marlboro” at 6, including chamber music performances by Jonathan Biss, Lara St. John, Yo-Yo Ma, Mitsuko Uchida, and others, from the legendary Marlboro Music Festival.

It’s all made possible through the contributions of our listener-members. If you haven’t joined us yet, the party’s underway. Donate now by calling 1-888-232-1212 or online at wwfm.org. Thank you for supporting WWFM – The Classical Network.

June 27, 2018
Gordon Turk’s New Heckelphone at Ocean Grove

Organist Gordon Turk can’t wait to be “heckeled.”

I’m talking about the imminent arrival of a new heckelphone stop, the latest enhancement of the massive instrument at the Great Auditorium at Ocean Grove, NJ. The Great Auditorium sports one of the largest organs in the world. A grand hall demands a grand instrument!

Read all about it and the magnificent auditorium, an acoustic marvel from the days before amplification – its construction spearheaded by Methodist ministers in 1894 and completed by strapping shipbuilders in only 90 days – in my profile of Turk, now in his 45th season as Ocean Grove’s resident organist, in this week’s edition of U.S. 1 Newspaper – PrincetonInfo, out today.

http://princetoninfo.com/index.php/component/us1more/?Itemid=6&key=6-27-18turk

June 27, 2018
Celebrating Women in Classical Music Today

It should be a truth universally acknowledged that, historically, women have not been given the same opportunities as men.

Even so, when putting together a checklist for the purpose of today’s programming on The Classical Network, which will be devoted entirely to women in music, I was astonished when the number of women composers that sprang readily to mind overflowed the space I had allotted. Okay, maybe I have a broader knowledge of repertoire than your average man- or person-on-the-street, but there is an awful lot of really fine and/or historically significant repertoire from which to draw.

On the whole, the field has been a lot kinder to female instrumentalists and especially singers. Women being accepted as conductors, however, remains an uphill climb, at least among the major orchestras. But I don’t intend to make this about gender politics. (Lord knows, there are plenty of mediocre male conductors.) Instead, we’ve set aside this day to celebrate the contributions of women to the art and enjoyment of music.

It’s only one of our special themes this week, as we continue to stockpile your contributions against the end of our fiscal year, which will arrive with the chimes of midnight on June 1.

Do you like what we’re doing? Do we add to the quality of your days? Help us help YOU by calling us now at 1-888-232-1212, or by making your contribution online at wwfm.org. As always, we thank you for your support of WWFM – The Classical Network!

A few of the voices we will hear from today: those of (clockwise from left) conductor JoAnn Falletta, guitarist Sharon Isbin, and pianist Barbara Nissman. Then join us at 8 p.m. EDT for a special concert of music by composer Amy Beach (bottom right).

June 26, 2018
WWFM End-of-Year Fundraiser On Now

This is it! Our end-of-the-fiscal year fundraiser is underway! Thrill to a different programming focus every day this week – women in music, for example, and American music, and something we’re calling “We Wednesday” – as together we work to shore up the station’s finances. We need your help so that we can continue to do what it is we do so well, undiminished. We’ll dazzle the ear, even as we celebrate our members, partners, and community.

Make your donation now at 1-888-232-1212 or online at wwfm.org. We’re willing to perform quadruple somersaults in order to keep bringing you the music you love. But we’re counting on you to be there for us. The spangled and leotarded staff of WWFM – The Classical Network thanks you for your support!

June 25, 2018
Midsummer Bonfires: Music for St. John’s Eve

Why is it whenever man feels the urge to celebrate, his first impulse is to set things on fire? We see it today in the hot-dogging conflagrations that follow on the heels of championship sports victories. In the ancient world, bonfires were already a mainstay of any festive occasion.

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we listen to music for St. John’s Eve. The Feast Day of St. John holds a place on the Christian calendar akin to that of Christmas, in that it coincides with solstice time. Midsummer was originally a pagan festival, which was absorbed by the Church for the observance of John the Baptist’s birth, which St. Luke implies took place six months before that of Jesus.

Though the actual summer solstice may occur anytime between June 21 and June 25, it was designated that June 24 would be the Feast Day of St. John.

St. John’s Eve 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 was seen as a surety of prosperity and good luck. Not to light a bonfire was seen as offering up one’s own house for destruction by fire. The bigger the fire, the further at bay were 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.

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

PHOTO: St. John’s Eve celebration in Northern Ireland

June 24, 2018

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