Classic Ross Amico

Tag: American Music

Turkey Day Thomson

It’s breakfast in bed for Virgil Thomson on his birthday.

Thomson was not only a composer, he was a writer on music, who wielded power of a kind unimaginable, in this day of eroded standards, as a critic at the New York Herald-Tribune.

Perhaps his brand of “faux-naïf” Americana is not for everyone. Still, it earned him a wide and enduring audience. His music for Robert Flaherty’s “Louisiana Story” (1948) remains the only film score ever to be awarded a Pulitzer Prize.

For Thomson’s birthday, here’s some music to get you in the mood for Thanksgiving.

His “Symphony on a Hymn Tune” was composed during his Paris years. Thomson, like Aaron Copland and so many others, studied in France with Nadia Boulanger. The symphony was inspired by the composer’s memories of his Kansas City boyhood. The “Sunday best” of the church hymns occasionally gets tangled up in a few modernistic burrs – the exchanges between the violin, cello, trombone, and piccolo at the end of the first movement, for instance – but in 1928, it was a landmark in terms of helping to establish a distinctly American idiom.

More austere, perhaps, is Thomson’s symphonic poem “Pilgrims and Pioneers” – but just stick around for the fiddle tunes.

Finally, a seasonal work: the Concertino for Harp, Strings and Percussion, “Autumn” – according to Thomson, actually more of a “portrait of an artist ageing.”

Happy birthday, Virgil Thomson (1896-1989) – and Happy Thanksgiving!

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PBS documentary on Thomson from 1986, for his 90th birthday – opening with “Symphony on a Hymn Tune”

Thomson, sharp as a tack and full of personality, in this transcript of an interview from 1985 with radio host Bruce Duffie

https://www.bruceduffie.com/vt.html

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PHOTO: Virgil Thomson, enjoying all his pleasures at once

November 25, 2025
Lincoln’s Birthday Music and Legacy

Abraham Lincoln was born on this date in 1809. They sure don’t make ‘em like they used to.

James Earl Jones in Aaron Copland’s “Lincoln Portrait”

Roy Harris (born on this date in 1898), Symphony No. 6 “Gettysburg”

Paul Turok, “Variations on an American Song: Aspects of Lincoln and Liberty”

February 12, 2025
Labor Day Road Trip American Music

Labor Day weekend. Road trip!

This week on “The Lost Chord,” I hope you’ll join me for summer’s last hurrah, as we burn rubber with an hour of quintessentially American music about travel by car.

Frederick Shepherd Converse’s “Flivver Ten Million” celebrates the Ford Motor Company’s affordable assembly line automobile, from its creation in a Detroit factory to the manifest destiny of America’s roadways.

John Adams’ “Road Movies” has nothing to do with Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, alas; what it is, however, is a violin sonata written firmly within the American tradition, with a special affinity at its core with Copland’s Violin Sonata.

Virgil Thomson’s “Filling Station,” written for Leon Kirstein’s Ballet Caravan, may have the distinction of being the only ballet set at a gas station. The work’s success gave Copland the confidence to follow through on a Caravan commission which resulted in “Billy the Kid.”

Finally, we’ll hear one of Michael Daughtery’s most performed works, the exuberant “Route 66,” inspired by the storied “Main Street of America.”

Put the pedal to the metal. American composers hit the road for Labor Day, on “The Last Roads of Summer,” on “The Lost Chord, now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:

PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT

SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – ALL NEW! – Saturday at 11:00 AM EDT/8:00 AM PDT

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EDT/4:00 PM PDT

Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

August 31, 2024
Leonard Bernstein Genius Conductor and More

Leonard Bernstein did so much so well.

Even if we were to restrict ourselves to his achievements as a conductor, he was one of the very top interpreters of American music, Haydn, Schumann, Mahler, Nielsen, Shostakovich – on the evidence of his recordings, too many others to catalogue.

Here’s just an example of his artistry: in London, from 1966, Lenny captured in his prime, conducting Stravinsky’s primal “Le Sacre du printemps” (“The Rite of Spring”) – without a score.

At the end of the performance, the musicians refuse to rise, but only continue to applaud him from their seats.

An appropriately orgiastic salute to Leonard Bernstein on his birthday!

PHOTO: Bernstein’s magic elevator only goes in one direction: up!

August 25, 2024
Koussevitzky Champion of American Music

Friday was the 150th anniversary of Serge Koussevitzky’s birth, but I had just finished recording one of my radio shows, and I couldn’t muster the energy and focus to post about it. Even a photo with a link to one of his recordings would have been something, albeit inadequate in proportion to his significance as one of the great champions of modern music and, more specifically, American music.

It’s been calculated that, between 1924 and 1944, Koussevitzky presented 162 American works, 66 of which were world premieres. On his Concerts Koussevitzky, conducted in Paris in the 1920s, he also introduced Ravel’s enduring orchestration of Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition” and Honegger’s “Pacific 231.” As music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, he gave first performances of Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra and Copland’s “Appalachian Spring” suite.

“Kouss” was in on the ground floor at Tanglewood. He mentored Leonard Bernstein and others. When his wife, Nadia, died, he set up the Koussevitzky Music Foundation in her memory, to support and promote living composers. Early Foundation commissions yielded Britten’s “Peter Grimes” and Messiaen’s “Turangalîla-Symphonie.”

Kouss began his career as a double-bassist and blossomed into one of the most important conductors of the 20th century. I was remiss in not acknowledging him on his birthday anniversary. Mea culpa, and happy 150, Serge Koussevitzky!

First recording of “Pictures at an Exhibition”

Broadcast premiere of Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra (with the original wet-noodle ending, soon to be revised by the composer)

Live performance of Sibelius’ Symphony No. 7

Roy Harris’ Symphony No. 3

Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5

Rehearsing the BSO in Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Scheherazade”

Filmed performance of Randall Thompson’s “The Last Words of David”

Playing the slow movement of his Double-Bass Concerto, with piano

10-minute documentary, “The Story of Tanglewood” (1949)

Serge Koussevitzky, holding hat, with (left to right) Olivier Messiaen, Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein (lighting up), and Lukas Foss at Tanglewood in 1949 (photo by Ruth Orkin)

July 30, 2024

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