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Mexican Music for Cinco de Mayo Weekend

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Ross Amico

May 4, 2014

in Daily Dispatch

3 responses

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” it’s all Mexican music on the eve of Cinco de Mayo. We’ll hear a fun solfeggio piece (“Sol-fa de Pedro”) by the baroque composer Manuel de Zumaya. Zumaya, born in Mexico around 1678, is believed to have written the first opera in the western hemisphere. He became chapel master of Mexico City Cathedral in 1715.

Blas Galindo is best known in the United States for the evocative “Sones de Mariachi.” But he composed over 150 works, including seven ballets. One of these was “La Manda,” or “The Vow,” written in 1951. The scenario is a bit of downer, about an ailing wife on a pilgrimage who believes she is losing her husband to another woman, but the music is full of distinct nationalist character.

Manuel Ponce is one of Mexico’s most famous composers. He’s probably best recognized for his guitar music, thanks to his association with Andrés Segovia. Less frequently heard is his Violin Concerto of 1942. We’ll have the soloist who gave the work its premiere, Henryk Szeryng, in a recording made some forty years later.

Pour yourself a Corona, mix up some guacamole, and enjoy “Mayo My,” Mexican music for Cinco de Mayo, Sunday night at 10 ET, with a repeat Thursday night at 11, or listen to it later as a webcast at http://www.wwfm.org.
Tchaikovsky’s Devilish Opera

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Ross Amico

May 3, 2014

in Daily Dispatch

One response

Okay, so the Kentucky Derby is today. But I’m not here to write about that. I’m here to write about Tchaikovsky and the Devil.

Opera aficionado Sandy Steiglitz will be broadcasting Tchaikovsky’s “Cherevichki” (“The Slippers”), tomorrow on WPRB’s “Sunday Morning Opera with Sandy.”

Part fairy tale and part farce, Yakov Polansky’s libretto features such incidentals as the theft of the moon, amorous peasants secreting themselves in burlap sacks, and a ride through the air on the Devil’s back to collect the Tsarina’s slippers (hence, the title). All this takes place against the backdrop of a Ukrainian Christmas.

“Cherevichki” (sometimes spelled “Tcherevichki”) is Tchaikovsky’s reworking of an earlier opera, “Vakula the Smith,” which the composer believed unjustly ignored. Even in its revised form, the work is arguably more obscure than Rimsky-Korsakov’s neglected gem, “Christmas Eve,” which was drawn from the same source material (a story from Nikolai Gogol’s collection, “Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka,” of which you will hear more on June 23, Saint John’s Eve).

Fun fact: there was a complicated rivalry between Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov, each composer supportive of the other in public, while in private nagged by suspicion and envy. Though Tchaikovsky was sufficiently awed to swear his publisher to secrecy about his use of the then-new celesta in “The Nutcracker,” lest Rimsky steal his thunder, Rimsky had no qualms about following in Tchaikovsky’s footsteps when setting “Christmas Eve.” His version of the Gogol tale appeared ten years later, in 1895.

The only thing crazier than airing a Christmas opera in May is writing a Christmas opera about the devil. Needless to say, I can resist neither.

Check out “Cherevichki” on WPRB’s “Sunday Morning Opera with Sandy,” tomorrow at 6:45 a.m. ET. If you’re an early riser, tune in around 5:30. Sandy’s there spinning arias and duets at a time when the roosters are still wiping the sleep out of their eyes.

You can hear the show locally (Princeton, NJ) at 103.3 FM, or anywhere online at wprb.com. While you’re listening, visit her Facebook page – Sunday Morning Opera with Sandy – and leave nice comments.

PHOTO: Ivan Mozzhukhin in a silent film version of Gogol’s tale, “The Night Before Christmas” (1913)
Trenton Princeton Orchestral Weekend Brahms Abounds

by

Ross Amico

May 2, 2014

in Daily Dispatch

2 responses

No less than three orchestras descend on the Trenton-Princeton area this weekend. The New Jersey Symphony Orchestra and the Princeton Symphony Orchestra will perform at Princeton University’s Richardson Auditorium (tonight at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 4 p.m., respectively), and the New Jersey Capital Philharmonic will perform at the Trenton War Memorial’s Patriots Theater (tomorrow at 8 p.m.).

In this three-ring orchestral circus, the clown car is seemingly chock full of Brahms, as he and Beethoven appear on two of the three programs (NJSO & PSO). The NJCP will do their best to keep all the plates spinning with Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Scheherazade.”

Anthony McGill will unveil Richard Danielpour’s Clarinet Concerto, “From the Mountaintop” (NJSO); Aisha Dossumova will tread the highwire with two violin showpieces, Franz Waxman’s “Carmen Fantasy” and Saint-Saëns’ “Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso” (NJCP); and Joseph Kalichstein, of the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio, will lend a touch of gravitas with Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 (PSO).

Two of Brahms’ four symphonies, fully half of his symphonic output, will be performed on the Richardson concerts. You can read more about it in my articles in today’s Trenton Times:

http://www.nj.com/times-entertainment/index.ssf/2014/05/scheherazade_at_heart_of_new_j.html

http://www.nj.com/times-entertainment/index.ssf/2014/05/2_orchestral_concerts_to_featu.html
Picaresque Novels on Film: Rogues & Road Trips

by

Ross Amico

May 1, 2014

in Daily Dispatch

It’s May Day! This week on “Picture Perfect,” revel in some freewheeling lack of judgment, as we present an hour of films based on picaresque novels.

In case you weren’t an English major, picaresque novels are generally characterized by rogues or anti-heroes as protagonists; episodic, wayward structure; and not infrequently, lowly humor.

We’ll hear music from “The Reivers,” after William Faulkner’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, a coming-of-age story about a boy swept into automobile theft and illicit horseracing in the American south. Mark Rydell directed the 1969 film, which starred Steve McQueen as the rakish Boon Hogganbeck and featured narration by Burgess Meredith. John Williams wrote the breezy Americana score.

Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” is frequently characterized as an American picaresque. It’s certainly one of the funniest of “serious” books. A middling film adaptation was made in 1960, directed by Michael Curtiz, with Tony Randall given top billing, shifting the focus of the story to the con artistry of the King and the Duke. It features an evocative score by Jerome Moross.

If Hervey Allen’s “Anthony Adverse” had any humor to begin with, it was definitely lost in translation. (Too bad the novel was written in English.) However, the 1936 screen adaptation certainly does sprawl. One could say it’s picaresque in the worst way. It just doesn’t go anywhere. It does, however, feature a top-notch cast (Frederic March, Olivia De Havilland, Claude Rains, etc.) and an Academy Award-winning score by Erich Wolfgang Korngold.

While the modern picaresque novel had its roots in the Renaissance, the genre really seemed to hit its stride in the 18th century, with comic novelists like Henry Fielding. Fielding’s “Tom Jones,” perhaps the quintessential picaresque, was made into a film in 1963. It went on to win Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director (Tony Richardson), Best Adapted Screenplay (John Osborne) and Best Original Score (John Addison). Addison’s music suits Richardson’s quirky virtuosity like an off-kilter powdered wig.

Tune in for an hour of picaresque adventures, this Friday evening at 6 ET, or listen to it later as a webcast, at http://www.wwfm.org.
Walpurgis Night Witches Bonfires and Faust

by

Ross Amico

April 30, 2014

in Daily Dispatch

Strap on your goat leggings! Tonight is Walpurgis Night, the eve of the feast day of 8th century abbess Saint Walpurga. It’s a great witches’ holiday – the “other” Hallowe’en – and therefore a popular celebration in Europe, where they still know how to make everything festive creepy. And more power to them.

Music lovers and devotees of German romantic literature, of course, already know a thing or two about Walpurgisnacht. It’s the night Mephistopheles escorts Faust to the Harz Mountains, where they encounter witches and warlocks cavorting on the Brocken. It’s also the night Faust, Mephistopheles and Homunculus travel to ancient Greece to encounter the shade of Helena (a.k.a Helen of Troy).

Mendelssohn wrote a fairly tame cantata, “Die erste Walpurigisnacht” (“The First Walpurgis Night”), on another Goethe poem about prankish Druids freaking out some Christians. Brahms wrote a song, “Walpurgisnacht,” about a mother freaking out her daughter, by telling her a thunderstorm is actually the sound of witches celebrating on the Brocken; as if that isn’t enough, she tells her she herself is a witch. Ha ha! So German.

It is a holiday for leaping over bonfires, vandalizing neighbors’ property and rioting, all in the name of welcoming spring. It is not to be confused with St. John’s Eve (June 23), the night the demon Chernobog emerges from the Bald Mountain. More on that later, I’m sure.

Have fun, but remember… keep Walpurga in Walpurgis Night!

Samuel Ramey doing his thing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuRZUlAnXVc

“The Goat of Mendes! The Devil himself.”

PHOTOS: Goya’s “Walpurgis Night”, The Goat of Mendes from “The Devil Rides Out,” Norman Treigle as Mefistofele

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