Classic Ross Amico

  • Salieri: More Than Mozart’s Rival?

    Salieri: More Than Mozart’s Rival?

    by 

    Ross Amico
    in
    7 responses

    He was a generous teacher, who fostered Beethoven, Schubert, Liszt, and even the son of the genius he was rumored to have poisoned.

    His first act, when he was appointed Austrian Imperial Kapellmeister in 1788, was to revive Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro.” He was responsible for arranging first performances of his alleged nemesis’ Piano Concerto No. 22, the Clarinet Quintet, and the Symphony No. 40, and he had nothing but praise for “The Magic Flute.” He even took it upon himself to educate Franz Xaver Mozart, the composer’s son, who was born four months after his father’s alleged murder.

    Already during the latter years of his life, Antonio Salieri’s enormous compositional output (37 operas, in addition to orchestral works, concertos, chamber music, and sacred pieces) gradually faded from public memory. Ironically, it is the scandalmongers who kept his name alive.

    Rumors of Salieri’s involvement in Mozart’s death were codified by Alexander Pushkin in 1831 in the tragedy “Mozart and Salieri,” which appeared a few years after Salieri himself had passed. This was later set as an opera in 1898 by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.

    Was this any way to treat such a generous, hard-working composer? While he was certainly no Mozart – who was? – his music is finely crafted and often quite enjoyable, certainly no worse than that of a majority of his contemporaries.

    But, as the saying goes, there’s no such thing as bad publicity. In a way, Peter Schaffer’s “Amadeus” was the best thing to happen to Salieri in nearly 200 years. How many people remember Mozart’s quartet partners (with Haydn), Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf and Jan Křtitel Vaňhal, both also talented and prolific composers?

    By coincidence (?), Rimsky-Korsakov’s chamber opera is being performed today at Bard College, on the second half of a 1:30 p.m. program titled “Domestic Music Making in Russia,” as part of the 29th Annual Bard Music Festival: Rimsky-Korsakov and His World.

    In another context, it would be a peculiar way to mark a composer’s birthday – but as I’m sure Dittersdorf and Vaňhal would agree, the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.

    Happy birthday, Antonio Salieri, Patron Saint of Mediocrity!

    Russian film version of Rimsky’s “Mozart and Salieri” (without subtitles): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilw7oIkrDj4

    In English, if a bit fuzzy:

    Salieri’s Concerto for Flute, Oboe and Orchestra:

    “I absolve you.”

  • Arabian Nights Cinematic Delights

    Arabian Nights Cinematic Delights

    by 

    Ross Amico
    in
    3 responses

    Open sesame! It’s an Aladdin’s Cave of cinematic delights.

    This week on “Picture Perfect,” the focus is on tales from “The Arabian Nights.”

    These traditional folk stories from the Orient have come down to us filtered through the sensibilities of Western translators. Further translation was required to get the stories from page to screen; so it’s hardly surprising to find Sinbad, for instance, fighting a giant walrus at the North Pole.

    The film versions are often showcases for the work of production designers and special effects artists, but composers have certainly gotten in on the act with appropriately imaginative scores.

    Bernard Herrmann lent plenty of color and wit to the skeleton duel in “The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad” (1958) by employing a battery of castanets, xylophone and brass. Stop motion artist Ray Harryhausen was responsible for the memorable effects. “Sinbad” proved to be a dry run for the climax of “Jason and the Argonauts,” in which Harryhausen outdid himself by animating not one, but seven skeletons, and again, Herrmann supplied the music.

    Harryhausen animated two further Sinbad adventures – “The Golden Voyage of Sinbad” (1974), and “Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger” (1977). Over the course of the three “Sinbad” films, audiences were treated to fantastic encounters with, in addition to the skeleton, a Cyclops, a roc, a dragon, a statue of the goddess Kali, a centaur, a giant walrus, and a saber-tooth tiger, among others.

    “Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger” was scored by Roy Budd. Budd’s reputation was largely that of a jazz musician and composer. He wrote scores for over 50 films, including “Get Carter” and “The Wild Geese,” before his early death of a brain hemorrhage at the age of 46, in 1993.

    Walt Disney created a modern classic in “Aladdin” (1992). The music was by Alan Menken, with lyrics by Howard Ashman and Tim Rice. “Aladdin” won Academy Awards for Best Original Score and Best Original Song (“A Whole New World”). Menken has a whole shelf full of Oscars for his work for Disney. Need I say, Robin Williams was the voice of the manic, freewheeling Genie?

    Rex Ingram’s Genie steals the show in “The Thief of Bagdad” (1940). Ingram emerges from his magic lamp and looms over a cowering Sabu, whom he addresses as “Little Master of the Universe.” The beach resounds with his maniacal laughter. There had been an earlier, justly celebrated, silent version of “Thief,” with Douglas Fairbanks. The remake splits the thief and the prince into two separate characters. Sabu plays the incorrigible Abu (the thief), and Conrad Veidt is his nemesis, the treacherous vizier Jaffar.

    The score is by three-time Academy Award winner Miklós Rózsa. Rózsa was in London, in the employ of Alexander Korda, when the lavish Technicolor production was moved to Hollywood on account of the Blitz. Rózsa would go on to become one of Hollywood’s greatest composers. His music for “Ben-Hur” alone has earned him a place in the film music pantheon. He never wrote a more charming score, however, than he did for this.

    I hope you’ll join me for an hour of cinematic enchantments. It’s “A Thousand and One Nights at the Movies,” on “Picture Perfect,” this Friday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

  • Rachmaninoff’s Lost Symphonic Dances Rediscovered

    Rachmaninoff’s Lost Symphonic Dances Rediscovered

    by 

    Ross Amico
    in
    2 responses

    On September 4, Marston Records will release a newly rediscovered document of Sergei Rachmaninoff performing his “Symphonic Dances.”

    The work is heard in a reduction for solo piano, with the composer himself going over the score with Eugene Ormandy, who conducted its premiere with the Philadelphia Orchestra. The recording includes audio of the pianist speaking and singing his instructions. The Marston release will also feature a meticulously edited version, with Rachmaninoff playing through 2/3 of the score without interruption.

    Any unknown audio of Rachmaninoff at the keyboard is a major discovery, and to hear him play, as might a fly on the wall, outside of a commercial setting, is extremely rare. The bonus material will include every known non-commercial recording ever made of the legendary pianist.

    The remarkable Ward Marston, blind from birth, lives outside Philadelphia with his seeing eye dog, Vinnie, and a collection of over 30,000 records. He is one of the industry’s most revered audio engineers. His remasterings of the great performers of the past have been acclaimed as revelatory and even miraculous.

    The liner notes of the Rachmaninoff release are by musicologist Richard Taruskin, also at the forefront of his field. Taruskin, particularly renowned for his knowledge and insights into Russian music, is a visiting scholar this week at the 29th Annual Bard Music Festival: Rimsky-Korsakov and His World at Bard College.

    Interestingly, Rimsky’s score for “Le Coq d’or” (“The Golden Cockerel”) was the only work by another composer that Rachmaninoff brought with him when he left Russia in 1917. The three-note motif that opens his “Symphonic Dances” recalls the Queen of Shemakha’s theme from Rimsky’s opera.

    Rachmaninoff and Vladimir Horowitz once played through Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto together in 1928, in an impromptu performance in the basement of Steinway Hall. Can you imagine? Rachmaninoff later approached Victor Records about recording the “Symphonic Dances” with Horowitz on a second piano. The label dismissed the proposal out of hand as being commercially unviable.

    The album “Rachmaninoff Plays Symphonic Dances:”

    Rachmaninoff Plays Symphonic Dances

    More information on Marston:

    http://www.wardmarston.com/about.html

    A sample from the upcoming release:

  • Aretha Franklin & Blues Brothers Reunion R.I.P.

    Aretha Franklin & Blues Brothers Reunion R.I.P.

    by 

    Ross Amico
    in
    5 responses

    Aretha Franklin is reunited with Jake Blues. R.I.P., the Queen of Soul.

  • Dvořák & Janáček: Czech Masterworks from Marlboro

    Dvořák & Janáček: Czech Masterworks from Marlboro

    by 

    Ross Amico
    in
    5 responses

    What’s a party without a little Czechs Mix?

    On the next “Music from Marlboro,” for your Wednesday cocktail hour, we’ll snack on two masterworks by Antonin Dvořák and Leoš Janáček.

    Dvořák’s unpretentious “Serenade for Winds” was given its premiere in 1878. The composer was 37 years-old. The serenade is written in the tried-and-true “Slavonic style” that established Dvořák’s fame. Its instrumentation and emphasis on melody recall occasional and ceremonial serenades of the 18th century.

    We’ll hear a recording made in 1957, with oboists Alfred Genovese and Earl Shuster, clarinetists Harold Wright and Richard Lesser, bassoonists Anthony Cecchia and Roland Small, hornists Myron Bloom, Richard Mackey, and Christopher Earnest, cellists Yuan Tung and Dorothy Reichenberger, and double bassist Raymond Benner, all under the direction of Louis Moyse.

    Janáček String Quartet No. 2 is a serenade of a different sort. The composer’s remarkably prolific Indian summer can be attributed in part to the sublimated passion he felt for Kamila Stösslová, a married woman some 38 years his junior. The quartet, composed in 1928, when the composer was about 74 years-old, was inspired by their long and intimate – though unconsummated – relationship, detailed in their more than 700 letters. The work has been described as a “manifesto on love.”

    We’ll hear Janáček’s “Intimate Letters” performed at the 2002 Marlboro Music Festival by violinists Nicholas Kendall and Hiroko Yajima, violist Richard O’Neill, and cellist Alexis Pia Gerlach.

    You bring the drinks; I’ll supply the music – on the next “Music from Marlboro,” this Wednesday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

    Marlboro School of Music and Festival: Official Page

Tag Cloud

Aaron Copland (93) Beethoven (95) Composer (114) Film Music (145) Film Score (143) Film Scores (255) Halloween (94) John Williams (195) KWAX (229) Leonard Bernstein (104) Marlboro Music Festival (125) Movie Music (160) 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