Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

Remembering Richard Hickox Champion of English Music

It’s sobering to think that Richard Hickox would have been 70 years-old today. Hickox, one of the great champions of English music, died of a dissecting thoracic aneurysm, suffered while recording Gustav Holst’s “First Choral Symphony,” in 2008.

For decades, Hickox applied his indefatigable zeal to filling out the catalogue with fine recordings of established classics and poor stepchildren. His early passing came especially hard at the end of what seemed like a run on great British conductors – Bryden Thomson (died in 1991), Sir Alexander Gibson (1995), and Vernon Handley (2008, only two months before) – that kept alive a venerable tradition too often dismissed abroad.

Hickox was the founder of the City of London Sinfonia and Collegium Musicum 90. He was also choral director of the London Symphony Orchestra, artistic director of the Northern Sinfonia, and principal conductor of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. At the time of his death, he was music director of Opera Australia.

Hickox recorded prolifically – orchestral works, oratorios, and operas – for the EMI and Chandos labels. The recipient of many honours and awards, he was also president of the Elgar Society. He was the only conductor ever to program the complete symphonies of Ralph Vaughan Williams as a series in concert. Who knows how much more he would have accomplished had he lived another 20 or 25 years?

This afternoon on The Classical Network, we’ll remember Hickox and the Spanish conductor Jesús López-Cobos, who died on Friday at the age of 78. López-Cobos will conduct music of Heitor Villa-Lobos on the anniversary of the birth of Brazil’s most famous composer. I hope you’ll join me from 4 to 7 p.m. EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

March 5, 2018
Golden Age of Film Scores on WPRB This Sunday

Holy cow! One of my favorite movies is 80 years-old this year? Then again, that is SO me.

Join me this Sunday morning on WPRB, as we look back on Oscar history – WAY back.

We’ll hear a rare 1938 recording of selections from “The Adventures of Robin Hood,” by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, with Sir Guy of Gisborne himself, Basil Rathbone, the narrator, and Korngold conducting.

Sir Thomas Beecham will direct the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in music by Brian Easdale, written for the 1948 Powell-Pressburger classic, “The Red Shoes.”

And virtually every major composer in Hollywood will come together at the Hollywood Bowl for a concert of now-classic film scores that was originally broadcast on CBS Television in 1963. The event is now looked back upon as “the greatest film music concert in history.” Participants included, among others, Alfred Newman (“How the West Was Won”), David Raksin (“Laura”), Alex North (“Cleopatra”), Johnny Green (“Raintree County”), Franz Waxman (“A Place in the Sun”), Bernard Herrmann (“North by Northwest”), Dimitri Tiomkin (“High Noon”), and Miklos Rozsa (“Ben-Hur”).

An album was released on LP, but understandably the three-hour concert was severely truncated. This was somewhat remedied on a CD-reissue, that included 70 minutes of music. Among the casualties, however, was Elmer Bernstein conducting the theme to “The Magnificent Seven.” We’ll restore that cut when we hear the concert this morning.

Also in the audience was Max Steiner, whose music for “A Summer Place” and “Gone with the Wind” were on the program. “Gone with the Wind” didn’t make the album, but we will more than remedy the exclusion with an extended suite conducted by Steiner himself.

Collectively, these composers earned over sixty Academy Awards and over 300 Oscar nominations.

I hope you’ll travel back with me to a time when Oscar really was gold, this Sunday morning from 7 to 10 EST, on WPRB 103.3 FM and wprb.com. Scores will be settled, on Classic Ross Amico.

More about the legendary “Music in Hollywood” concert here:

http://www.filmmusicsociety.org/news_events/features/2013/092313.html

March 4, 2018
Film Composers’ Concert Music

What’s that you say? You could care less about the Oscars? Perhaps then you’d be interested in a little counterprogramming. This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll both deny and complement the ceremony by listening to concert works by composers better known for their work in film.

Franz Waxman was a two-time Academy Award winner, honored with back-to-back Oscars, in 1950 and 1951, for his work on “Sunset Boulevard” and “A Place in the Sun.” Some of his other classic scores include those for “The Bride of Frankenstein,” “Rebecca,” “Rear Window,” “Peyton Place” and “The Nun’s Story.”

In 1955, he was traveling from California to Zurich to conduct a new piece commissioned by Rolf Liebermann. When Waxman reached New York he was met with a request from Lieberman’s office for program notes for the impending premiere. Waxman was forced to admit he hadn’t yet begun work on the piece, which he had planned to write during the ocean voyage. Fortunately, he was accustomed from his experience in Hollywood to write very quickly. The result was his “Sinfonietta for String Orchestra and Timpani.”

Five-time Academy Award winner John Williams – whose 51st nominated score, for “Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” is in contention tonight – is of course very well-known for his collaborations with George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. Over the years, he’s also accrued an impressive quantity of concertos. One of the more immediately attractive of these is his Tuba Concerto of 1985, written for the 100th anniversary of the Boston Pops.

Finally, we’ll turn to three-time Academy Award winner Miklós Rózsa, honored for his work on Alfred Hitchcock’s “Spellbound” in 1945, the Ronald Colman thriller “A Double Life” in 1947, and “Ben-Hur” in 1959. He also composed quite a bit of concert music, including concertos for Jascha Heifetz, Gregor Piatigorsky, Janos Starker, Leonard Pennario and Pinchas Zukerman.

Rózsa, Hungarian by birth, turned to film after a period of struggle as a young artist in Paris, where he learned from Arthur Honegger that he was able to pay the rent by supplementing his concert music with cinematic efforts. Rózsa’s “Theme, Variations and Finale,” Op. 13, of 1933, preceded the start of his film career by a few years. He revised the piece in 1943, by which time he had already completed his classic fantasy scores for Alexander Korda’s “The Thief of Bagdad” and “Jungle Book,” and was on the verge of becoming a leading composer of film noir.

“Theme, Variations and Finale” received performances by Charles Munch, Karl Böhm, Georg Solti, and Eugene Ormandy. It was also one of the works that featured on the legendary concert that launched Leonard Bernstein with the New York Philharmonic, on November 14, 1943, when the young assistant conductor substituted at the last minute for an ailing Bruno Walter.

I hope you’ll join me for an hour of concert music by composers better known for their work in film – “Against Type” on “The Lost Chord” – this Sunday night at 10:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

PHOTOS: Has anyone here seen Kelly? (Clockwise from left) John Williams wins the Oscar for “Star Wars;” Franz Waxman and Miklós Rózsa receive their awards from the hands of Gene Kelly

March 4, 2018
Hollywood’s Golden Age Remembered on WPRB

What the hell happened to Hollywood? As those of us who remember “the way it used to be” brace ourselves for another year of insipid red carpet banter, I thought we’d take a look back, this Sunday morning on WPRB, and revisit a lost era of glamour and dreams by way of recordings of music from Hollywood’s Golden Age.

Join me for highlights from a concert originally broadcast on CBS Television back in 1963. The program, “Music from Hollywood,” was made up of classic film scores mostly conducted by the composers themselves at the Hollywood Bowl. These included “How the West Was Won” (Alfred Newman), “Laura” (David Raksin), “Cleopatra” (Alex North), “Raintree County” (Johnny Green), “A Place in the Sun” (Franz Waxman), “North by Northwest” (Bernard Herrmann), “High Noon” (Dimitri Tiomkin), and “Ben-Hur” (Miklos Rozsa). You couldn’t find that much compositional talent in Hollywood now if you tried.

We’ll also hear a rare 1938 recording of selections from Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Academy Award winning music from “The Adventures of Robin Hood,” with Sir Guy of Gisborne himself, Basil Rathbone, the narrator, and Korngold conducting.

And Sir Thomas Beecham will take the podium for award-winning music by Brian Easdale written for the unnerving Powell-Pressburger classic, “The Red Shoes.”

Get ready to steel yourself for the Oscars with relics of bygone quality, this Sunday morning from 7 to 11 EST, on WPRB 103.3 FM and wprb.com. At what point did they call “class dismissed,” wonders Classic Ross Amico?

March 3, 2018
Oscar Scores Webcast Your Movie Music Party

Due to its timely nature, my annual WWFM Oscar Party has been posted as webcast. I can’t promise you it’s the greatest thing ever (I didn’t eat lunch yesterday), but there’s plenty of enjoyable music from 18 films, including all five of this year’s nominees for Best Original Score (“Phantom Thread,” “Dunkirk,” “The Shape of Water,” “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” and “Star Wars: The Last Jedi”). Get yourself primed for the Oscars with three hours of classic and contemporary film scores. Follow the link, and crunch away.

http://wwfm.org/post/enjoy-picture-perfect-oscar-party-friday-afternoon

March 3, 2018

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