All I need is couscous, a metal plate, and a bow, and I am never bored. This video has been bouncing around the internet for a few years now, but somehow, just this week, climbed aboard the Twitter Express.
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Couscous Art Viral Bow Plate Patterns
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Doppelganger Movie Music for Disoriented Times
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Do the holidays already have you feeling a little disoriented? This week, on “Picture Perfect,” we’re literally seeing double.
James Stewart plays Scottie Ferguson, a traumatized police detective who becomes obsessed with the woman he loves – and loses – in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” (1958). Kim Novak portrays both the enigmatic beauty and her spitting image, who Ferguson, rather creepily, attempts to mold. Bernard Herrmann wrote the hypnotic score. Not too long ago, the love theme was recycled in the Academy Award winning film, “The Artist.”
Krzysztof Kieślowski’s “La double vie de Véronique”/“The Double Life of Véronique” (1991) features parallel characters living in Poland and France who are mysteriously linked, both of them played by Irène Jacob. The performance earned Jacob an award for Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival. The music, which plays a significant role in the actual plot, is by Zbigniew Preisner. (Again, thanks to Bill Zeltman for sending me a copy of the soundtrack!)
For the second time in her career, Bette Davis gets a chance to play an evil twin in “Dead Ringer” (1964). The first was in the 1946 good twin-bad twin melodrama, “A Stolen Life.” When asked what the difference was between the two performances, Davis quipped, “About 20 years.” “Dead Ringer” was directed by her longtime friend and “Now, Voyager” co-star Paul Henreid. The music is by André Previn, whose score employs a stock-in-trade sinister harpsichord, yet when he comes to write the love theme, he manages to whip up one hell of a tribute to Erich Wolfgang Korngold.
Korngold scored a number of Davis’ films in the 1940s, though he is principally remembered for his work on the swashbucklers of Errol Flynn. To capitalize on Flynn’s star-making performance in “Captain Blood,” Warner Brothers produced a big screen adaptation of Mark Twain’s Tudor switcheroo, “The Prince and the Pauper” (1937). Flynn steals the show as Miles Hendon, the devil-may-care guardian of Prince Edward and Tom Canty, Edward’s mirror image, played by real-life twins Bobby and Billy Mauch. If you’re a Korngold fan, or an enthusiast of violin concertos, you may recognize some of the music. Korngold recycled the theme for use in the last movement of his Violin Concerto in D, championed by Heifetz and others. (By coincidence, today is Twain’s birthday!)
Double your pleasure with music from movies about doppelgangers, twins, and dual identities, on “Picture Perfect,” this Friday evening at 6:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
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Marlboro Festival: Hindemith & Beethoven Unleashed
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A chamber music festival takes a break from chamber music this week, as musicians from Marlboro band together under two legendary artists.
Paul Hindemith was evidently feeling his oats when he launched into his series of Kammermusiken, 20th century analogues to the Bach Brandenburg Concertos, only with a little more vinegar. Hindemith was about 26 when he wrote his exuberant Kammermusik No. 1 in 1922, the piece sounding like a post-modern mash-up of “Petrushka,” the Rondo-Burleske from Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, and hot jazz. Watch out for that siren! The performance, from 2016, will feature an ensemble of 12 Marlboro musicians under the direction of a figure better known as a pianist, Leon Fleisher.
Then Pablo Casals will preside over a makeshift orchestra at the 1969 Marlboro Music Festival for a spiritually potent performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7. Casals’ loving, humanistic interpretations of the orchestral works of Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann, and of course Bach form a remarkable capstone to an enviable career. The legendary cellist was affiliated with Marlboro for the last 13 years of his life, from 1960 to 1973.
Wagner characterized Beethoven’s Seventh as “the apotheosis of the dance,” but not even he could have foreseen Hindemith’s foxtrot. We’ll be dancing up a storm on the next “Music from Marlboro,” this Wednesday evening at 6:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
Marlboro School of Music and Festival: Official Page
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Pianist Poizat on The Classical Network Today
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When you tune in to The Classical Network this afternoon at 4:00 EST, you’ll be able to enjoy a conversation with François-Xavier Poizat, pianist. Poizat will perform a recital of works by Liszt and Ravel at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall this Sunday at 7:30 p.m. We’ll also hear selections from his new album, “PianOrchestra 2,” on the ARS Produktion label.
Then I hope you’ll stick around, as we’ll celebrate the birthdays today of composers Jean-Baptiste Lully and Ferdinand Ries (a Beethoven pupil); pianist, composer, and one time director of the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, Anton Rubinstein; guitarist Celin Romero (of Los Romeros fame); and Spanish polymath and movie star José Iturbi.
At 6:00, it will be a special “Music from Marlboro,” as musicians from the famed chamber music retreat band together under legendary artists Leon Fleisher and Pablo Casals for performances of orchestral works by Hindemith and Beethoven.
There will be much versatility in evidence, between 4 and 7 p.m. EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
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Giving Tuesday on The Classical Network
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To mark Giving Tuesday, The Classical Network will salute a number of non-profit organizations that continue to make a difference in our community. WWFM hosts will conduct brief interviews throughout the day, from 10:30 a.m. to 6 p.m., with representatives of the following: SAVE, A Friend to Homeless Animals (10:30 a.m.), Joan Dancy & PALS – People with ALS Foundation (11:30 a.m.), TASK – Trenton Area Soup Kitchen (2:15 p.m.), Princeton Senior Resource Center – PSRC (3:15 p.m.), HomeFront – Helping Families Break the Cycle of Poverty (4 p.m.), Trenton Music Makers (5 p.m.), and Good Grief, Inc. – Putting the GOOD in GRIEF (6 p.m.). Tune in to learn more and to see how you, too, can lend a hand.
Of course, we’ll also enjoy ample helpings of great music along the way, including a Noontime Concert from Concerts on the Slope. “Voices of Latin America” will feature “Á Tres Voces” by Cuban-born composer Tania León (who is Slopes’ composer-in-residence) and “Fuego de ángel” by Puerto Rican-born composer Roberto Sierra. Also on the program will be the Symphony No. 2 by Ludwig van Beethoven – a composer who had very strong notions about the brotherhood of man – in a rarely-heard version for piano trio. Concerts on the Slope is a chamber music series presented at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Brooklyn.
Following the broadcast concert and between interviews, I’ll be peppering my playlist with music of love, thanks, and concern for our fellow human beings, including Beethoven’s “Bundeslied,” Peter Ilych Tchaikovsky’s “Ode to Joy” (yes, you read that correctly), Aaron Copland’s “The Promise of Living,” and Alan Hovhaness’ Symphony No. 11 “All Men Are Brothers.”
Music is the gift that keeps on giving, from 12 to 4 p.m. EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
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