Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

Restoration Era Film Scores & Charles II

Get out the pancake makeup, and don’t skimp on the beauty marks. This week on “Picture Perfect,” the focus will be on Charles II and the Restoration.

The film “Restoration” (1995) featured quite a cast, with a pre-“Iron Man” Robert Downey, Jr., as a young doctor torn between duty and debauchery. He succumbs to the latter at the court of Charles II, played by Sam Neill, before finding redemption as he battles the Great Plague and braves the Fire of London. The film also stars David Thewlis, Polly Walker, Meg Ryan, Ian McKellan and Hugh Grant.

The main title of James Newtown Howard’s score takes its impetus from Henry Purcell’s “The Fairy Queen.” And indeed there are baroque inflections throughout.

George Sanders plays Charles in “The King’s Thief” (1955). Edmund Purdom is a highwayman who pilfers an incriminating book from David Niven. An aristocratic schemer, Niven will stop at nothing to get it back. The swashbuckling score is by Miklós Rózsa.

I don’t recall Charles making an appearance in “The Draughtsman’s Contract” (1982), Peter Greenaway’s saucy though strangely aloof Restoration opus. However, there is plenty of licentiousness and an abundance of outlandish wigs. And, it being a Greenaway film, it is certainly strange in more ways than one. Michael Nyman’s score puts a minimalist spin on baroque sources.

Finally, “Forever Amber” (1947) is based on a then-scandalous novel by Kathleen Winsor, about an ambitious young woman’s rise through the bedchambers of the Royal Court. The film was directed by Otto Preminger. Linda Darnell is Amber. Once again, George Sanders plays Charles, eight years before reprising the role for “The King’s Thief.” Cornel Wilde, Richard Greene and Jessica Tandy are also in the cast. Philadelphia-born composer David Raksin, of “Laura” fame, plays fast and loose with music of the era.

Bwoo-hoo-hoo-hoo! It’s so naughty! Join me for music from movies set during the Restoration, on “Picture Perfect,” this Friday evening at 6, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

September 15, 2017
Richard Arnell Centenary on WPRB

It’s all-Richard Arnell this Thursday morning on WPRB, on this, the eve of the centenary of his birth.

My special guest will be Warren Cohen, music director of the MusicaNova Orchestra, who has conducted a good many of Arnell’s works, including all of the symphonies. In fact, MusicaNova will perform Arnell’s Symphony No. 6 on October 29th, in Phoenix, AZ, on the same program as Sir Malcolm Arnold’s Symphony No. 5 and Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Concerto Grosso for String Orchestra. You can learn more at http://musicanovaaz.com/orchest…/2017-18-orchestra-concerts/.

Cohen will join me at 8:00 EDT. We’ll anticipate his visit by listening to his recording of Arnell’s Symphony No. 4, beginning around 7:35. It’s all the Arnell you can eat, until 11:00 EDT, on WPRB 103.3 FM and wprb.com.

September 14, 2017
Richard Arnell Rediscovered Centenary

Recollects his friend, Patrick Jonathan, of composer Richard Arnell, “He loved the ladies, and the ladies loved him. When he was in his late sixties I would sit in on his classes at LIFS (London International Film School) and then we’d go and have a ‘liquid lunch’ at a drinking club in Covent Garden called the Seven Dials. At this stage he wasn’t in the best shape… but he still had tremendous charisma and a stately bearing that made him stand out in a crowd.

“One lunchtime we were drinking at this club and an older lady was working the tables, clearing up and cleaning up. She came to our table and asked Tony if he was empty. He didn’t understand and asked her to explain. She said she wanted to know if he was empty because she’d been told that she should go and pick up the empties!

“Even at that age, he still had it…”

I think you’ll agree, even now, Arnell still has it. Tune in this Thursday morning for a mini-marathon of his equally charismatic, though puzzlingly neglected music.

At 8:00, I’ll be joined by Warren Cohen, music director of the MusicaNova Orchestra and champion of deserving though lesser-heard repertoire, who will help celebrate this outstanding English composer. Arnell flourished in the 1940s and ‘50s, before falling into relative obscurity. Even with the recorded revival of his symphonies in the 2000s, he still can’t truthfully be said to be a household name. Here’s hoping his centenary brings him further recognition.

We’ve got an arsenal of Arnell, all cued-up and ready to go, this Thursday morning from 6 to 11 EDT, on WPRB 103.3 FM and wprb.com. I hope you’ll join me for an English breakfast, on Classic Ross Amico.

September 14, 2017
Richard Arnell Rediscovered on WPRB

Why he is not better known is a mystery worthy of “The Great Detective” himself. Richard Arnell composed his Sherlock Holmes ballet for the Sadler’s Wells in 1953. We’ll hear the composer’s own recording, among our featured works, this Thursday morning on WPRB, as we anticipate the 100th anniversary of Arnell’s birth on September 15th.

We’ll also hear Sir Thomas Beecham’s classic recording of “Punch and the Child,” composed for Lincoln Kirstein’s Ballet Caravan in 1948. (The Caravan also launched Aaron Copland’s “Billy the Kid” and Virgil Thomson’s “Filling Station.”)

I’ll be joined by conductor Warren Cohen in the 8:00 hour. Cohen has performed many of Arnell’s orchestral works with the MusicaNova Orchestra. The Symphonies Nos. 4 and 5 have been issued commercially on the Con Brio Recordings label. We’ll hear the authorized release of the Symphony No. 4, and then enjoy a real treat in the form of a blazing live concert performance of the Symphony No. 5. Cohen will also conduct his own arrangement for string orchestra of the “Elegy,” from Arnell’s String Quartet No. 3.

On October 29th, MusicaNova will perform Arnell’s Symphony No. 6 in Phoenix, AZ, on the same program as Sir Malcolm Arnold’s Symphony No. 5 and Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Concerto Grosso for String Orchestra. I’d say that’s just about worth a plane ticket. You can find out more at http://musicanovaaz.com/orchestra-concerts/2017-18-orchestra-concerts/.

Recordings set down by Martin Yates, one of Arnell’s composition students at Trinity College of Music, will also feature on the morning’s playlist, as he conducts the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and the BBC Concert Orchestra, on the Dutton Vocalion Records label.

Criminally, none of Arnell’s symphonies received studio recordings until 2005. Happily, the composer was still around to enjoy the belated recognition. He died in 2009, at the age of 91.

Even so, I suspect he remains unknown to many. I hope you’ll join me for this well-crafted and frequently inspired music by one of the most-neglected of England’s mid-century symphonists. As his friend, Patrick Jonathan, sums up in his liner notes to the Con Brio release, “ Wherever these works are listened to, I am sure they will speak directly to the heart.”

The game’s afoot, this Thursday morning from 6 to 11 EDT, on WPRB 103.3 FM and wprb.com. The music is far from elementary, my dear Watson, on Classic Ross Amico.

September 13, 2017
Alban Berg: Romantic Serialist

Alban Berg! Dead ahead!

On this week’s “Music from Marlboro,” we’ll hear Berg’s two-movement String Quartet of 1910. Berg, a pupil of Arnold Schoenberg (whose birthday it is today) was always the Romantic among serialists – one critic described him as “the Puccini of twelve-tone music” – so it’s not difficult to divine a shimmering, unresolved longing common to the works of his more traditionally-minded Viennese contemporaries. Like much of Berg’s music, the quartet is not really a strict adherent to any system. The music wafts spectrally, sharing tonal and atonal characteristics, a kind of fever dream of uncertainty.

There will be no lack of commitment in the performance, which dates from 1984. We’ll experience Marlboro excellence in the form of Ida Levin and Felix Galimir, violins; Benjamin Simon, viola; and Sara Sant’Ambrogio, cello.

Then we’ll emerge from the fin de siècle hothouse to unwind in the late summer radiance of Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet in A major. It will be performed, from 1968, by chamber music luminaries Harold Wright, clarinet; Alexander Schneider and Isadore Cohen, violins; Samuel Rhodes, viola; and Leslie Parnas, cello.

I hope you’ll join me for another “Music from Marlboro,” this Wednesday evening at 6, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

Marlboro School of Music and Festival: Official Page

PHOTO: Alban Berg cools down

September 13, 2017

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