Classic Ross Amico

  • French Classical Music Birthday Salute

    French Classical Music Birthday Salute

    by 

    Ross Amico
    in
    5 responses

    “We seek him here, we seek him there, Those Frenchies seek him everywhere.”

    While those “Frenchies” may search heaven and hell for that damned, elusive Pimpernel, listeners to The Classical Network should have no difficulty locating the French today, as we salute conductor Paul Paray on his birthday. We’ll also have music by the esteemed French hornist (pun intended) Louis François Dauprat.

    Join me for a French toast, aujourd’hui, from 4 to 7 p.m. EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

  • Georg Tintner A Centennial Rediscovery

    Georg Tintner A Centennial Rediscovery

    by 

    Ross Amico
    in
    7 responses

    Yesterday would have been conductor Georg Tintner’s 100th birthday. Already at the age of 20, Tintner was one of Vienna’s rising stars. Following the Anschluss, however, he had to sue his employers in an attempt to retain his post at the Vienna Volksoper, then wound up fleeing for his life.

    The bulk of his career played out outside the international limelight of the great capitals of Europe and the United States. He labored mostly in obscurity in New Zealand, Australia, and finally Canada. (His last post was as music director of Symphony Nova Scotia.) Then, suddenly, late in life, he recorded a Bruckner cycle that struck the critics like a thunderbolt. After 60 years, Tintner was an overnight success.

    Stick around following today’s Noontime Concert (a program from Brooklyn’s Concerts on the Slope) to enjoy one of Tintner’s acclaimed Bruckner recordings. It will be among our featured works this afternoon, between 12 and 4 p.m. EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

  • Park Slope Concerts on the Radio Today

    Park Slope Concerts on the Radio Today

    by 

    Ross Amico
    in
    6 responses

    Time again to hit the Slope.

    I hope you’ll join me for Tuesday’s Noontime Concert on The Classical Network. when I’ll be introducing music from Concerts on the Slope, from Saint John’s Episcopal Church, located in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY. On the program will be music by Princeton University Ph.D. candidates Andy Akiho and Caroline Shaw (recipient of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Music), John Cage, and the series’ composer-in-residence Ke-Chia Chen.

    Concerts on the Slope’s next program, “The Flowering Viola,” will be presented this Sunday at 3 p.m. The concert will include music by Charles Martin Loeffler, Robert Sirota, Bohuslav Martinu, Rebecca Clarke, and Max Bruch.

    Concerts on the Slope was founded in 2012 to present top-notch chamber music concerts, featuring rising young artists from New York City and around the world. You can find out more about the series at concertsontheslope.org.

    Tune in today at 12:00 p.m. EDT to WWFM – The Classical Network or wwfm.org.

  • Wagner A Love-Hate Birthday Serenade

    Wagner A Love-Hate Birthday Serenade

    by 

    Ross Amico
    in
    4 responses

    “Of all the bête, clumsy, blundering, boggling, baboon-blooded stuff I ever saw on a human stage, … and of all the affected, sapless, soulless, beginningless, endless, topless, bottomless, topsiturviest, tongs and boniest doggerel of sounds I ever endured the deadliness of, that eternity of nothing was the deadliest, so far as the sound went. I never was so relieved, so far as I can remember in my life, by the stopping of any sound – not excepting railway whistles – as I was by the cessation of the cobbler’s bellowing.”

    – John Ruskin on “Die Meistersinger”

    “For me Wagner is impossible… he talks without ever stopping. One just can’t talk all the time.”

    – Robert Schumann

    “One can’t judge Wagner’s opera ‘Lohengrin’ after a first hearing, and I certainly don’t intend hearing it a second time.”

    – Gioachino Rossini

    “I love Wagner. But the music I prefer is that of a cat hung up by its tail outside a window and trying to stick to the panes of glass with its claws.”

    – Charles Baudelaire

    “I like Wagner’s music better than any other music. It is so loud that one can talk the whole time without people hearing what one says. That is a great advantage.”

    – Oscar Wilde

    “Is Wagner a human being at all? Is he not rather a disease? He contaminates everything he touches – he has made music sick. I postulate this viewpoint: Wagner’s art is diseased.”

    – Friedrich Nietzsche

    “Every time I listen to Wagner, I get the urge to invade Poland.”

    – Woody Allen

    “I have witnessed and greatly enjoyed the first act of everything whichWagner created, but the effect on me has always been so powerful that one act was quite sufficient; whenever I have witnessed two acts I have gone away physically exhausted; and whenever I have ventured an entire opera the result has been the next thing to suicide.”

    – Mark Twain

    “Wagner’s music is better than it sounds.”

    – Edgar Wilson “Bill” Nye

    Happy Birthday, Richard Wagner (1813-1883). Tune in today to make what you will of his art, from 4 to 7 p.m. EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

  • Vintage Wagner on The Lost Chord

    Vintage Wagner on The Lost Chord

    by 

    Ross Amico
    in
    3 responses

    Time to get out the crazy helmets. Tomorrow, May 22, is the birthday of Richard Wagner (1813-1883). This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll honor his legacy with a handful of historic recordings.

    American baritone Lawrence Tibbett never actually sang the role of Wotan on-stage, in the context of a “Ring” cycle. However, he did record “Wotan’s Farewell and Magic Fire Music,” magnificently, in 1934, with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Leopold Stokowski.

    Karl Muck was a victim of anti-German sentiment during his time as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which, unfortunately, happened to coincide with the First World War. Be that as it may, he was held in the highest regard by fellow musicians and thought by many to be one of Wagner’s finest interpreters. We’ll hear a fascinating 1927 recording of the Transformation music and the beginning of the Grail Scene from Act III of “Parsifal,” made at the Festspielhaus in Bayreuth. The recording employs the original bells designed by Wagner, which would be melted down by the Nazis for ammunition during the Second World War. So this will be a rare opportunity to experience the “Parsifal” Wagner actually knew. Muck was principal conductor of the Bayreuth Festival since 1903. He conducted “Parsifal” at Bayreuth 14 times between 1901 and 1930.

    Finally, we’ll return to “Die Walkure” to wrap things up on a buoyant note with Siegmund and Sieglinde’s love music from Act I, which concludes with the lovers fleeing together into the welcoming spring. Nine months later, Sieglinde gives birth to Siegfried, the saga’s hero-without-fear. Lotte Lehmann strikes sparks with legendary Danish heldentenor Lauritz Melchoir in a 1935 recording with Bruno Walter and the Vienna Philharmonic.

    The power of these performances has been undiminished by the passage of time. Join me for “Vintage Wagner,” this Sunday night at 10 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

    PHOTOS: Lotte Lehmann as Sieglinde and Lauritz Melchior as Siegmund

Tag Cloud

Aaron Copland (93) Beethoven (95) Composer (114) Film Music (144) Film Score (143) Film Scores (255) Halloween (94) John Williams (195) KWAX (229) Leonard Bernstein (104) Marlboro Music Festival (125) Movie Music (159) Mozart (91) Opera (213) Philadelphia Orchestra (89) Picture Perfect (174) Princeton Symphony Orchestra (109) Radio (88) Ross Amico (244) Roy's Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner (290) The Classical Network (101) The Lost Chord (269) Vaughan Williams (105) WPRB (397) WWFM (881)

DON’T MISS A BEAT

Receive a weekly digest every Sunday at noon by signing up here

RECENT POSTS