Classic Ross Amico

  • Walpurgis Night Faust Symphony on The Classical Network

    Walpurgis Night Faust Symphony on The Classical Network

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    Ross Amico
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    When the sun sets this evening, we will be in the grip of Walpurgisnacht!

    Walpurgis Night, the eve of the feast day of Saint Walpurga, is a time when evil spirits are believed to roam the earth. Tradition holds that this is the night of a witches’ sabbath and orgy of the damned, held high atop the Brocken, the tallest peak of the Harz Mountains in central Germany. It’s the last blast of diablerie before May Day. In Goethe’s “Faust,” Mephistopheles guides his imperiled charge into a swirling cauldron of witches and demons so as to complete his moral degradation.

    This Tuesday afternoon on The Classical Network, we’ll anticipate the worst (or the best?), with Franz Liszt’s “A Faust Symphony.” That will be followed by another work inspired by Goethe, Felix Mendelssohn’s “Die erste Walpurgisnacht” (“The First Walpurgis Night”), in which prankish Druids get the best of their superstitious occupiers. It ain’t exactly “Faust,” but it will do.

    First, on today’s Noontime Concert, a ray of light, as we listen to Marianna Prjevalskaya – Concert Pianist, in recital from Merkin Hall at Kaufman Music Center,129 West 67th Street, in New York City. Merkin’s Tuesday Matinees present a new generation of critically acclaimed, extraordinary young performers in a concert hall known for its near-perfect acoustics.

    On Prjevalskaya’s program will be the Piano Sonata in A major, Op. 2, No. 2, by Beethoven; two Rhapsodies, Op. 79, by Johannes Brahms; and six selections from the two books of Preludes, by Claude Debussy.

    Then the Brocken, she’ll be rockin’. Join me, if you dare, from 12 to 4 p.m. EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

  • Marlboro Music Festival Spotlight on Exploring Music

    Marlboro Music Festival Spotlight on Exploring Music

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    Ross Amico
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    6 responses

    It’s an embarrassment of riches for chamber music enthusiasts on this week’s Exploring Music with Bill McGlaughlin, as the focus will be on the legendary Marlboro Music Festival.

    Marlboro Music was established by Rudolf Serkin, Adolf Busch, Marcel Moyse and friends in Marlboro, VT, in 1951. From the start, Marlboro has offered a unique environment for the study and performance of the chamber music repertoire, with ideas and insights passed between veteran and up-and-coming musicians performing side by side in a relaxed atmosphere far removed from the pressures of daily life.

    Marlboro has benefited from the indispensible mentorship of such luminaries as Pablo Casals, Felix Galimir, Mieczyslaw Horszowski, and Sándor Végh, among others, who have helped foster then-promising musicians such as Yo-Yo Ma, Paula Robison, Richard Stoltzman, and all four members of the Guarneri Quartet (well, five, if you count Peter Wiley). The tradition continues, and Marlboro musicians now fill out many of the world’s great chamber music and orchestral ensembles.

    Bill McGlaughlin will celebrate this famed chamber music retreat in five installments, this Monday through Friday at 7:00 p.m. EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

    In the meantime, check out all this invaluable interview material with many Marlboro stalwarts, including its current directors, Mitsuko Uchida and Jonathan Biss:

    https://exploringmusic.wfmt.com/discussion/

    Enjoy a Marlboro double-whammy this Wednesday, as I’ll present “Music from Marlboro,” as always, at 6 p.m., followed by Bill’s third installment.

    Marlboro School of Music and Festival: Official Page

  • Alexander Quartet’s NYC Concert: Mozart Penderecki Dvořák

    Alexander Quartet’s NYC Concert: Mozart Penderecki Dvořák

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    Ross Amico
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    8 responses

    There must be something in human nature that pleases us in the idea that good things come in threes.

    Even so, this afternoon on The Classical Network, I’ll be interviewing violinist Frederick Lifsitz, one of four musicians that comprise the very fine Alexander String Quartet.

    The Alexander Quartet will appear on Thursday at 8 p.m. at the Baruch Performing Arts Center in New York City. On the program will be works of Mozart, Penderecki, and Dvořák. The concert will cap a day of lectures and panel discussions on the topic of Poland and the Jewish people, to coincide with the observation of Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel. The Alexander’s recital will include Penderecki’s poignant String Quartet No. 3 “Leaves of an Unwritten Diary.”

    The Alexander Quartet has been Baruch’s quartet-in-residence since 1986. My interview with Lifsitz will take place at 5:00 this afternoon.

    But if “three” is indeed your thing, then there will be plenty else to satisfy your organizational impulses, including the observations of the birthdays today of three notable conductors – Sir Thomas Beecham, Sir Malcolm Sargent, and Zubin Mehta – and three American composers – Wallingford Riegger, Harold Shapero, and Duke Ellington.

    I hope you’ll join me today from 4 to 7 p.m. EDT (that’s THREE hours), with the interview at 5. We’ll take the time to count our musical blessings, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

  • May Day Music Sullivan Bax on WWFM

    May Day Music Sullivan Bax on WWFM

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    Ross Amico
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    6 responses

    This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” with the First of May right around the corner, we don our May Day finery and caper about the Maypole, to a couple of works by English composers.

    The first is by Sir Arthur Sullivan – he of Gilbert & Sullivan fame – who, in 1897, set to music a “Jubilee Hymn,” as part of the Diamond Jubilee celebrations surrounding the reign of Queen Victoria, which were held in May of that year.

    Concurrently, he was commissioned to write a ballet to mark sixty years of the Alhambra Theatre in Leicester Square. The result was “Victoria and Merrie England,” which was made up of nationalistic tableaux celebrating the history, legends, and royalty of Great Britain.

    We’ll listen to Scenes II & III from the ballet, together titled “May Day in Queen Elizabeth’s Time” (this alluding, of course, to the reign of Elizabeth I). The suite includes colorful descriptive subsections like “Procession of the Mummers and the Revelers,” “Knights and Rose Maidens,” “Friar Tuck and the Dragon” and “Maypole Dance.”

    Then we’ll turn to one of the earliest programmatic works by Arnold Bax (later SIR Arnold Bax). “Spring Fire,” composed in 1913 and 1914, is meant to suggest the awakening of mythological beings in early spring.

    The subject matter was an attempt to cash in on the fashionable “paganism craze” sparked by the Ballets Russes and its composers. Bax’s affection for the writings of Algernon Swinburne had recently yielded the symphonic poem “Nympholept.” Quotations from Swinburne also adorn portions of the score to “Spring Fire.”

    The piece was scheduled for performance several times, but repeatedly cancelled, first because of the outbreak of war, then because of the work’s difficulty. Ultimately, it would never be performed during Bax’s lifetime. The manuscript was consumed in a fire in 1964, and all hope of ever hearing the score vanished. Fortunately, a copy was discovered, and the piece was finally recorded in 1986.

    The work is meant to evoke a woodland sunrise in early spring, as ancient denizens of the forest shrug off their winter sleep. They skip with mad antics down the glades. Forest lovers loll in their ecstatic dreams, until they are rudely awakened by a turbulent rout of satyrs and maenads. Sounds like spring to me.

    I hope you’ll join me for “Spring into May Day,” this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

  • Fuct Supreme Court A High School Reunion?

    Fuct Supreme Court A High School Reunion?

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    Ross Amico
    in
    3 responses

    One of my former high school cronies has his day in (Supreme) Court. You might not want to click if you are easily offended by homonyms.

    https://www.gq.com/story/fuct-supreme-court-hearing

    On the other hand, if you are interested in hearing the case argued, I found this on YouTube – an unconventional, if accurate, representation:

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