Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Arnold Bax

Shelley’s Summer Serenade on The Lost Chord

Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory…

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” ‘tis an hour of seasonal works inspired by Percy Bysshe Shelley and friends.

Hearken to Geoffrey Bush’s “A Summer Serenade,” from 1948, settings of poems by Shelley, James I of Scotland, Samuel Daniel, William Blake, Thomas Heywood, and the ever-prolific Anonymous.

Then listen, listen, Mary mine, to Arnold Bax’s “Enchanted Summer,” from 1918, the text drawn from Act II, Scene 2, of Shelley’s “Prometheus Unbound.” Composed in the midst of a run of Bax’s better-known nature poems (on the one hand, “Into the Twilight” and “In the Fairy Hills,” and on the other, “Nympholept” and “The Garden of Fand”), the work opens with the play of light and shadow on a forest floor, traverses mysterious caves and crags, and conjures woodland spirits; dallies with “voluptuous nightingales;” and eavesdrops on the exchange of two fauns, who contemplate the wondrous things they have witnessed.

In conclusion, bring hot blushes to thy cheek, with one of Romantic poetry’s most protracted pick-up lines and Roger Quilter’s “Love’s Philosophy,” from 1905.

’Tis mine hope that thou wilt join me for “Summer Shelley, Some Are Not.” The dulcet music swells, this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org!

August 1, 2021
May Day Music Sullivan Bax on WWFM

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.

April 28, 2019
British Composers at Marlboro: Vaughan Williams & Bax

On this week’s “Music from Marlboro,” we’ll be doing some real Channel surfing – the English Channel, that is – with two works by British composers who were steeped in cross-cultural currents.

Ralph Vaughan Williams studied in Paris with Maurice Ravel for three months in 1907-08. Ravel took few pupils, but he said of Vaughan Williams, “he is my only pupil who does not write my music.” For his part, Vaughan Williams credited Ravel with helping him to overcome a heavy Germanic influence. Ravel had the effect of lightening the textures in Vaughan Williams’ music and sharpening his focus.

Vaughan Williams’ “Phantasy Quintet” of 1912 was one of numerous works commissioned from England’s great composers by one Walter Wilson Cobbett, a businessman and amateur musician whose dual passions were chamber music and music of the Elizabethan era. (“Phantasy” was Cobbett’s preferred spelling.) The quintet is full of Tudor inflections and stamped by Vaughan Williams’ tell-tale love of folk music. The composer doubles his violas, and the instrument is heard to great effect throughout the piece. We’ll hear a performance from the 1975 Marlboro Music Festival, with James Buswell and Sachiko Nakajima, violins; Philipp Naegele and Caroline Levine, viola; and Anne Martindale, cello.

Sir Arnold Bax composed his evocative “Elegiac Trio” in 1916. The work, scored for flute, viola, and harp, appeared the year after Claude Debussy’s trio for the same instrumental combination. Its alluring melancholy emerged from a world at war. Bax was especially affected by escalating tensions between England and his beloved Ireland, which had just boiled over into violence with the Easter Rising. We’ll hear a performance of the trio from 1978, with Carol Wincenc, flute; Caroline Levine, viola; and Moya Wright, harp.

Ravel too had his influences. His String Quartet in F major, composed in 1903, when he was 28 years-old, bears a superficial resemblance to Debussy’s famous quartet. But whereas Debussy’s aim was to obscure the rules of classical harmony in a sensual pursuit of greater artistic freedom – he confided to his diary, “Any sounds in any combination and in any succession are henceforth free to be used in a musical continuity” – Ravel returned to classical standards, revealing his mastery through quiet innovation within traditional forms. We’ll hear a performance from 2007, with Soovin Kim and Jessica Lee, violins; Jonathan Vinocour, viola; and Scott Bae, cello; from a concert that took place at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, MA.

Musicians from Marlboro tour several times throughout the year. The final tour of this season will take place from April 29 to May 6, with stops in Greenwich, CT (at Greenwich Library); New York City (Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall); Philadelphia (Perleman Theater at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts); Washington, DC (Freer Gallery’s Meyer Auditorium); and Boston (the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum). On the program will be Haydn’s String Quartet in D major, Op. 20, No. 4; Krzysztof Penderecki’s String Trio; and Johannes Brahms’ String Quintet No. 1 in F major, Op. 88. You’ll find more information at marlboromusic.org.

It’s a Franco-British alliance this week, on “Music from Marlboro.” Join me Wednesday at 6 p.m. EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

Marlboro School of Music and Festival: Official Page

A bewhiskered Maurice Ravel in 1907, the year he met Ralph Vaughan Williams

April 25, 2018
Autumnal Music with Bax & Lloyd on WWFM

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we celebrate the eleventh month with music of an autumnal nature. We’ll open with Sir Arnold Bax’s ravishing tone poem, “November Woods,” of 1917. Then we’ll hear a symphony composed in 1981 by the criminally underrated George Lloyd.

Lloyd’s music is invariably well-crafted, even infectious, yet stubbornly tonal. It can often seem a bit old-fashioned, yet compositional integrity and musical good taste never go out of style. He’s certainly a composer well worth getting to know.

Lloyd’s Symphony No. 10, “November Journeys,” was commissioned by the BBC for the Northern Brass Ensemble. The commission coincided with the composer’s exploration by rail of a number of cathedrals. The sounds of the brass in the composer’s head paralleled his experience of taking in the magnificent buildings. At no point was he attempting to conjure an ecclesiastical air, yet he conceded that the second movement reminded him of a Christmas carol.

We’ll have just a little bit of time at the end of the hour, so I’m tossing in Bax’s “Red Autumn,” for two pianos, for good measure. The piece was originally composed in 1912, and though he never orchestrated it, it’s thought that his original intention had been to do so. In any case, it is marked by Bax’s characteristic opulence.

I hope you’ll join me for “Notions Eleven,” music for the eleventh month, this Sunday night at 10:00 EST – did you remember to change your clocks? – on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

November 5, 2017
Viola Love from Marlboro Music Festival

The viola gets some love on this week’s “Music from Marlboro.” We’ll hear two very different quintets, composed over a century apart, that yet reveal their creators’ shared affinity for the instrument’s dark, rich timbre.

Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “Phantasy Quintet,” written in 1912, was one of numerous works commissioned from England’s great composers by one Walter Wilson Cobbett, a businessman and amateur musician whose dual passions were chamber music and music of the Elizabethan era. (“Phantasy” was Cobbett’s preferred spelling.) The work is full of Tudor inflections and stamped by Vaughan Williams’ tell-tale love of folk music. Vaughan Williams doubles his violas, and the instrument is heard to great effect throughout the piece. We’ll hear a performance from the 1975 Marlboro Music Festival, with James Buswell and Sachiko Nakajima, violins; Philipp Naegele and Caroline Levine, viola; and Anne Martindale, cello.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, too, adds a second viola to his String Quintet No. 5 in D Major, K. 593. Composed in 1790, the work was recollected by the composer’s widow, Costanze, to have been written for another musical amateur, speculated to be Johann Trost. Trost must have been quite the gifted dilettante. He also knew Haydn from Esterhaza, and Haydn dedicated some of his quartets to him. When Haydn and Mozart played through the D Major Quintet together before Haydn’s first visit to London, the two men took turns indulging in the first viola part.

The work was known for centuries as the “Zigzag” because of an alteration to the original manuscript that modified what had been a descending chromatic figure in the final movement into something decidedly more humorous. We’ll hear a performance from Marlboro in 2005, with Sarah Kapustin and Diana Cohen, violins; Mark Holloway and Sebastian Krunnies, viola; and David Soyer, cello.

The two quintets will be divided by an evocative “Elegiac Trio” by Sir Arnold Bax, composed in 1916. The work, scored for flute, viola, and harp, appeared the year after Debussy’s trio for the same instrumental combination (which Bax may or may not have known). Its alluring melancholy emerged from a world at war. Bax was especially affected by escalating tensions between England and his beloved Ireland, which had just boiled over into violence with the Easter Rising. We’ll hear a performance of the trio from 1978, with Carol Wincenc, flute; Caroline Levine, viola; and Moya Wright, harp.

Leave your viola jokes in the comments section, if you must; then join me for more exceptional music-making from the archives of the Marlboro Music Festival, this Wednesday evening at 6 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

Marlboro School of Music and Festival: Official Page

October 11, 2017

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