Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Aaron Copland

Support Classic Ross Amico on WPRB #wprb75

Do you like what I’ve been doing at WPRB? Have you enjoyed the music? The guests? The five-hour exercises in thematic excess? Then, please, call in today and help cement my standing there with a strong show of listener support, at 609-258-1033.

Classical Discoveries’ Marvin Rosen will join me from 6 to 11 ET, to beat the drum and cry for your pennies. Hopefully you’ll have some dough left over after your outstanding show of support for Marvin’s show yesterday.

Like Marvin (though on a more modest scale), I’ve got some special “thank you” gifts to sweeten the pot (click on the image below). PLEASE NOTE: Because of the limited quantities of the titles, only those who pledge by telephone will be able to collect these special gifts.

Listen in for music by Aaron Copland, Lou Harrison, Zoltán Kodály, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Steven Mackey, Miklós Rózsa, Florent Schmitt, Marcel Tyberg, and more Reinhold Gliere than you could comb out of your Stalinesque mustache. And to our telephone volunteers: good luck distinguishing E.J. Moeran (the English pastoralist) from Robert Moran (composer of “Game of the Antichrist”)!

This is my first WPRB 103.3 FM pledge drive, and it would be great if we could drum up a few thousand dollars to help validate my existence. Pledge early and often for Classic Ross Amico, at 609-258-103.3 or wprb.com – and thank you!

In addition to the authorized WPRB swag –the 75th anniversary commemorative pin and sticker set ($15), the t-shirt ($45), the lunch box and history booklet ($103.30), the retro bag ($250), a grab at immortality (and our eternal gratitude) through having your named inscribed on a station wall plaque ($500), and the anniversary banquet reservation ($1000) – consider picking up one of the following tasties for the low, low price of $45 dollars:

BUILT FOR BUFFALO – World premiere concertos by Aguila, Hagen and Ewazen (SIGNED BY JOANN FALLETTA), BEAU FLUEVE RECORDS 610708-094951

COPLAND, AARON – CELLULOID COPLAND, TELARC 80583

DEBUSSY, CLAUDE – THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER (with Edgar Allan Poe-inspired music by Andre Caplet & Florent Schmitt), EMI 47921

FLEISHER, LEON – ALL THE THINGS YOU ARE, BRIDGE 9429

GLIERE, REINHOLD – MACAL CONDUCTS GLIERE (Symphony No. 2 & “The Red Poppy,” w/the New Jersey Symphony), DELOS 3178

GLIERE, REINHOLD – Symphony No. 3 “Ilya Muromets” (SIGNED BY JOANN FALLETTA), NAXOS 8.573161

HARRISON, LOU – A PORTRAIT, ARGO 455 590-2

KODALY, ZOLTAN – SUMMER EVENING: WORKS BY ZOLTAN KODALY AND JOSEF SUK, DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON 447 109-2

KORNGOLD, ERICH WOLFGANG – THE SEA HAWK: PREVIN CONDUCTS KORNGOLD, DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON 471 347-2

MACKEY, STEVEN – AMERICAN GRACE, CANARY CLASSICS 11

MORAN, ROBERT – GAME OF THE ANTICHRIST (SIGNED BY THE COMPOSER), INNOVA 251

MOERAN, E.J. – Cello Concerto (SIGNED BY JOANN FALLETTA), NAXOS 8.573034

ROZSA, MIKLOS – CONCERTOS FOR VIOLIN AND CELLO, TELARC 80518

TYBERG, MARCEL – Symphony No. 2 (SIGNED BY JOANN FALLETTA), NAXOS 8.572822

#wprb75

October 15, 2015
John Henry Labor Day A Resonating Metaphor

A metaphor that continues to resonate. For all you John Henrys…

Paul Robeson:

Aaron Copland:

Happy Labor Day.

September 7, 2015
Remembering Lenny Bernstein Classical Music’s Lost Stars

Wow, Lenny, what happened? Almost 25 years in the grave. I remember receiving the news of your death, on October 14, 1990, only 12 days after the passing of Aaron Copland. It was a horrible one-two for American music.

The classical music scene still seemed robust when you were alive, and it was actually exciting to walk into Tower Records, pre-internet, and find one of your new releases, with the gold Deutsche Grammophon cartouche – back when Deutsche Grammophon was still Deutsche Grammophon – displayed in one of those ludicrous blister packs.

Those were the days before much of the more interesting material you recorded for Columbia had been reissued by Sony. Your earlier, fantastic Schumann cycle hadn’t even made it to CD. My adrenaline would skyrocket for a new recording of American music. Copland? Bought! A re-recording of the Roy Harris and William Schuman Symphonies No. 3? Ka-ching!

While there are so many talented performers out there today, few of them have your larger than life personality, and none of them have your media presence. Where are the Bernsteins? The Horowitzes? The Pavarottis?

Of course, a lot of the change has to do with a break of the stranglehold on the market by major record labels with major marketing budgets. Also, in a sense, the mystique of the classical superstar has been swapped for the grass roots efforts of musicians eager to reach out to the public by way of performances at bars and in pop-up concerts. Not a bad thing for the performers or the music, but the landscape is certainly different.

There was a time when opera singers and violinists would be featured on late night talk shows, or pianists and guitarists would turn up on television commercials. They were artists, but they were also celebrities. In a sense, it was what was really needed to keep classical music in the public eye, if not the public ear, so that people understood that the music was out there, and it could be big, a viable alternative to pop.

Even when you were doing something purely educational, they would put you on TV. You were that rare combination of first rate music-making and Hollywood pizzazz. Happy birthday, Lenny. You sure are missed.

Rudolf Firkušný sells sneakers for Nike:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVKWBrVqCzs

Pavarotti on “The Tonight Show”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDMrLuK24r4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dC1vaeU1UQk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWNJRou4lKs

Leonard Bernstein “Young People’s Concerts”: What is Melody?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AFovpvDRCI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O09V4NQkOKI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_pPeBg3Tb8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTmrGbwmX7w

August 25, 2015
Carlos Chávez Mexican Musical Innovator

In the wake of the Mexican Revolution, Carlos Chávez (1899-1978) appeared like Quetzalcoatl, the creator-deity of Aztec lore, to forge a distinctive sound in Mexican music.

Chávez was regarded as the foremost Mexican composer and conductor. He became director of the Orquesta Sinfónica Mexicana, the country’s first permanent symphony orchestra. He was appointed director of the National Conservatory of Music. Later, he served as director-general of the National Institute of Fine Arts. At the same time, he formed the National Symphony Orchestra, which supplanted the old OSM.

In 1937, he conducted the world premiere of “El Salón México,” the work which essentially launched Aaron Copland into the mainstream.

Chávez himself was one of the first exponents of Mexican nationalism in music, writing ballets on Aztec themes. His most famous work is probably the Symphony No. 2, composed in 1935-36. Known as the “Sinfonia India,” it is based on melodies by indigenous tribes of northern Mexico.

The percussion section originally included a large number of traditional Mexican instruments, including the jicara de agua (half of a gourd inverted and partly submerged in a basin of water, struck with sticks), güiro, cascabeles (a pellet rattle), tenabari (a string of butterfly cocoons), a pair of teponaxtles, tlapanhuéhuetl, and grijutian (a string of deer hooves).

However, when the score was published, the composer sensibly substituted the nearest equivalents commonly used by most orchestras, though he requested that the originals be employed wherever possible.

Here is Chávez’s recording of the “Sinfonia India”:

Everyone else seems to take it a tad slower. Here’s a spirited live performance with the SCM Symphony Orchestra (Sydney Conservatorium of Music), under the direction of Mexican conductor Eduardo Diazmuñoz:

¡Feliz cumpleaños, Carlos Chávez!

June 13, 2015
Copland’s Memorial Day Sonata

Memorial Day.

Aaron Copland dedicated his one and only Violin Sonata, composed in 1942 and 1943, to the memory of his close friend, Lieutenant Harry H. Dunham (a Princeton alumnus), who died in action in the South Pacific shortly after the work was completed.

Virgil Thomson wrote in the New York Herald Tribune, “I suspect it is one of the author’s most satisfying pieces… It has a quality at once of calm elevation and buoyancy that is characteristic of Copland and irresistibly touching.”

Here’s a performance by Louis Kaufman (who advised the composer on bowings and fingerings), with Copland himself at the keyboard:

Mov’t I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8kY1jO4Z34
Mov’t II https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKr4ZZrT3Sw
Mov’t III https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUvAi33DkXQ

PHOTO: Aaron Copland, American music’s secret weapon

May 25, 2015

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