Classic Ross Amico

  • Remembering Sir David Willcocks at 100

    Remembering Sir David Willcocks at 100

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    Ross Amico
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    Today would have been the 100th birthday of Sir David Willcocks.

    Willcocks, one of Britain’s premiere choral directors, died in 2015 at the age of 95. He is especially identified with his tenure as director of music at King’s College, Cambridge, where he served from 1957 to 1974. He was also director of the Royal College of Music.

    Willcocks conducted the Choir of King’s College on its annual Christmas Eve broadcasts of Nine Lessons and Carols and made countless records. His recording of Allegri’s “Miserere” is a notable landmark. He was also renowned for his performances of Bach masterworks. His interpretation of Fauré’s Requiem is regarded by some as definitive.

    In 1981, he presided over the music at the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana. The event was observed by a global television audience of 750 million. Earlier, in 1968, he achieved notoriety when he led the London Bach Choir on the Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.”

    Join me this afternoon as we sample the artistry of Sir David Willcocks. Of course, this guarantees music by Ralph Vaughan Williams (if not the Stones). We’ll also remember composers Josef Bohuslav Foerster and Dmitri Kabalevsky on the anniversary of their births.

    It turns out you really can get what you want. Lift up your voices, from 4 to 7 p.m. EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

  • Tippett & Tomlinson New Year’s Music

    Tippett & Tomlinson New Year’s Music

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    Ross Amico
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    This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll have contrasting works for the New Year by two English composers whose surnames begin with “T.”

    Sir Michael Tippett’s fifth and final opera is an especially abstruse one, even by Tippett standards. Composed on his own libretto, “New Year” is set in Terror Town, an imaginary city that exists “somewhere today.” The dramatis personae includes such diverse characters as a child psychiatrist, her Rastafarian foster brother, a shaman, and three time-travelers from the future – or, as Tippett specifies, “nowhere tomorrow.”

    The orchestral suite opens and closes with music for the arrival and departure of a spaceship, represented electronically, on New Year’s Eve. Other striking touches include the use of saxophones, and, at the work’s climax, a quotation of “Auld Lang Syne,” pitted against a rather turbulent backdrop.

    “New Year” was first performed at Houston Grand Opera in 1989, with the British premiere taking place at Glyndebourne the following year. The opera was not well received. The wholly reimagined suite was commissioned by the San Francisco Symphony in 1990. Tippett noted that the primary metaphor of the opera is dance. Hey, man, whatever.

    The balance of the program will be devoted to works by a composer of a very different sensibility – master of British Light Music, Ernest Tomlinson. It is Tomlinson’s tongue-in-cheek assertion that the melody of “Auld Lang Syne” underlies most of the world’s great masterpieces. He goes on to support his thesis with no less than 152 examples in his dizzyingly clever “Fantasia on ‘Auld Lang Syne.’”

    We’ll conclude with a waltz from Tomlinson’s “Cinderella,” someone else who clearly understands the transformative power of 12.

    The kettle is on. Turn over a new leaf and join me for a cuppa, with “’T’ Time” – welcoming the New Year with music by Tippett and Tomlinson – this Sunday night at 10:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

  • Broadway Legend Jerry Herman Dies at 88

    Broadway Legend Jerry Herman Dies at 88

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    Ross Amico
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    Broadway legend Jerry Herman has died. Herman wrote the music and lyrics for “Mame,” “Hello, Dolly!,” and “La Cage aux Folles.” He was nominated for the Tony five times and won twice. He was also the recipient of a special Tony for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre, in 2009. In 2010, he became a Kennedy Center honoree. Herman died on Thursday at the age of 88.

    George Hearn sings “I Am What I Am”:

    Jerry Herman talks about his career.

    PHOTO: With Carol Channing, who died in January

  • Time & Cinema Kings Row to The Leopard

    Time & Cinema Kings Row to The Leopard

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    This week on “Picture Perfect,” with another year nearly burnt to nub, it’s an hour of cinematic reflections on time and impermanence.

    “Kings Row” (1942), based on the bestselling novel of Henry Bellamann (the one-time dean of the Curtis Institute of Music), takes place over a span of decades in a small Midwestern town. The community’s dark underbelly, gradually revealed, proves especially challenging to the story’s three protagonists, played by Robert Cummings, Ann Sheridan and Ronald Reagan.

    The deteriorating health of Cumming’s character’s grandmother (Maria Ouspenskaya, best known as Maleva, the gypsy fortune teller, in the 1943 version of “The Wolfman”) moves one of the film’s supporting characters to eulogize the passing of “… a whole way of life. A way of gentleness and honor and dignity. These things are going… and they may never come back to this world.” The story straddles the turn of the 20th century, even incorporating a New Year’s scene set in the year 1900.

    Erich Wolfgang Korngold composed the music. The opening fanfare, which we’ll hear from a rare 1961 recording, is said to have been one of the principal inspirations on John Williams in the writing of “Star Wars.”

    Director Orson Welles made his stunning Hollywood debut with back-to-back explorations of change and the passage of time: “Citizen Kane” (1941), about the rise and fall of a larger-than-life newspaper magnate – who, at his core, longs only for a simple pleasure of his childhood – and “The Magnificent Ambersons” (1942), after Booth Tarkington’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, documenting a prominent family’s declining fortunes over three generations. Both films sport scores by the ever-versatile Bernard Herrmann. We’ll hear some of the more upbeat selections assembled by the composer into a concert suite called “Welles Raises Kane.”

    “The Leopard” (1963) must be one of the most poignant meditations on mutability and time. One could argue whether or not director Luchino Visconti manages to capture the images of decay so pervasive in Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s novel. What he does achieve is an achingly poetic study of the fall from prominence of an aristocratic Sicilian family, and the impact upon its patriarch (played by Burt Lancaster) during the time of Italian unification. Along the way, he also succeeds in staging one of the great set-pieces: an opulent ball that spans nearly a third of the film’s 187-minute running time. The operatically moving score is by Nino Rota.

    The hour will conclude with one final selection for the New Year, a lively overture to “The Four Poster” (1952). Rex Harrison and Lili Palmer appear in a series of vignettes – bedroom scenes – featuring a novelist husband and his wife. Collectively, they encapsulate the history of a marriage. The film became the basis for the musical “I Do! I Do!” The music is by Dimitri Tiomkin.

    Mark the sands of the hourglass and heed selections for the New Year. Nought may endure but Mutability, this Friday evening at 6:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

  • Peter Schreier, Celebrated Tenor, Dies at 84

    Peter Schreier, Celebrated Tenor, Dies at 84

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    Ross Amico
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    The great tenor Peter Schreier has died.

    Schreier was born in Saxony in 1935. Though he continued to live in East Germany under Communist rule, he yet managed to achieve international success. He was especially praised for his lieder singing, though was also lauded for his work in some of the world’s great opera houses, where he appeared in works from Mozart to Wagner. Reportedly, Hans Pfitzner’s “Palestrina” was a particular favorite.

    Schreier died on Christmas Day, a notable coincidence, considering he sang so much Christmas music throughout his career, beginning as a boy chorister in the Dresden Kreuzchor. When his voice broke at the age of 16, he continued to pursue his dream of becoming a tenor. He was especially desirous to tackle the Evangelist roles in the oratorios of Johann Sebastian Bach. At the time of his death, Schreier – who had also become a noted conductor – was 84 years-old.

    We’ll remember him this afternoon on The Classical Network, by way of some of his recordings, alongside those of pianist Abbey Simon and chorus master Laszlo Heltay, both of whom we also lost within the past week. In addition, we’ll celebrate musical humorist Anna Russell and pianist, composer, and mordant wit Oscar Levant, on the anniversary of their births.

    At 6:00, it’s another “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies. This week, with the turn of the year only days away, the theme is change and the passage of time.

    Of course, the more things change, the more they stay the same. The parade of musical artistry continues, from 4 to 7 p.m. EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

    Schreier sings Peter Cornelius’ Christmas song, “The Kings,” from his Kreuzchor days:

    Schreier sings Schubert’s “Ständchen” (Serenade):

    Schreier conducts Bach’s “Christmas Oratorio”:

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