Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Australian Music

Percy Grainger: Eccentric Genius Revealed

In the course of working so much with Australian music over the past week, I happened to come across some interesting photos of Percy Grainger. Grainger, in addition to being an extraordinary pianist, was a visionary composer, whose music has frequently been undersold. He’s remembered largely as a collector and arranger of folk songs, especially those from the British Isles (“Country Gardens,” “Shepherd’s Hey,” “Molly on the Shore,” “Irish Tune from County Derry,” etc.).

But it’s clear he was not afraid to think outside the box, either in his life or in his music. Even in these overexposed sweetmeats, which he arranged multiple times, he plays with rhythm and harmony, and in the case of “Shepherd’s Hey,” completely alters the original mood. Some of his orchestrations can only be described as “out there.” Part of the reason so little of his music is known is that he’ll decide to drop in a bass concertina or a detuned guitar for a piece that lasts only a couple of minutes.

In life, of course, he was a force of nature. A physical fitness nut, he would throw a ball over the top of a house and run around the other side in time to catch it. He preferred to jog from engagement to engagement, sometimes with his favorite piano bench in a wheel barrow. It was not uncommon for him to take the concert stage with a running leap.

He also had his dark or queasy side. He was unusually close to his mother (who didn’t touch him until he was five years-old, for fear that she would pass on her syphilis). He held contradictory views about the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race (he married a “Nordic princess” before a crowd of 20,000 at the Hollywood Bowl), yet was enthralled by music of non-Western cultures and loved jazz (he was a friend of Duke Ellington). He endowed a museum in his birthplace of Melbourne with his collection of whips, bloodied clothes, and even his own skeleton. (As far as I know, the latter was not accepted.)

Later in life, while living in White Plains, NY, he devoted himself to the construction of machines that would help him realize his dream of what he termed “Free Music,” a music liberated from what he saw as the “goose-stepping” rigidity of Western tradition. These cumbersome beasts were, in some respects, precursors of the modern synthesizer.

Clearly so much can be written about this eccentric and his freewheeling genius, but for today my purpose is to share with you something new to me. On top of everything else, Grainger designed what he called “toweling outfits.” Here’s a link to some photos, with the composer’s own comments at the bottom of the page.

http://collectedphotographs.blogspot.com/2012/04/percy-grainger-towel-clothes-and.html

More about Grainger’s Free Music Machine here:

The ‘Free Music Machine’. Percy Grainger & Burnett Cross, USA/Australia , 1948

The multifaceted Percy Grainger

January 13, 2018
Australian Classical Music WPRB

With the recent death of composer Colin Brumby on January 3 at the age of 84, it occurred to me that I have never given Australia the WPRB treatment. Therefore, get ready to suffer some serious jet lag, as we embark for the antipodes and five hours of music from the Land Down Under.

We’ll hear from composers who found world renown in London, and others who chose to remain at home to find inspiration in their native traditions and geography. Among our featured composers will be John Antill, John Carmichael, Ross Edwards, Peggy Glanville-Hicks, Sir Eugene Goossens, Matthew Hindson, Peter Sculthorpe, and Brumby himself.

I hope you’ll join me this Thursday morning for a full playlist of didgeridoos and don’ts, from 6 to 11 EST on WPRB 103.3 FM and wprb.com. If the crocodiles don’t get you, the dingoes will, on Classic Ross Amico.

January 10, 2018
Australian Composers Brumby Sculthorpe Hill

G’day! This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” in honor of composer Colin Brumby, who died on January 3rd at the age of 84, we’ll travel once again to the Land Down Under for an hour of music from Australia.

Brumby was born in Melbourne in 1933. Like his internationally more recognized colleague, Peter Sculthorpe, he attended the Melbourne Conservatorium. He studied abroad in Spain and London, before joining the staff of the music faculty at the University of Queensland. There, he directed the Queensland Opera Company for a few years. He received his doctorate from the University of Melbourne, and then returned to the Continent for further studies in Rome. In 1981, Brumby received an Advance Australia Award for his services to music. He has written orchestral pieces, music for the stage, choral, chamber and instrumental works.

If you love the concertos of Sergei Rachmaninoff, you owe it to yourself to hear Brumby’s Piano Concerto No. 1, from 1984. The work is written in the grand romantic style for a former classmate of some 30 years earlier, the pianist Wendy Pomroy. The piece certainly is a throwback to an earlier age and an unremitting delight.

Naturally, we’ll also hear some of Sculthorpe’s music. Sculthorpe, born in Tasmania in 1929, also attended the Melbourne Conservatorium. Following a period of post-graduate struggles, he won a scholarship to study with Egon Wellesz at Oxford University. Unfortunately, he had to abandon the pursuit of his doctorate when his father became gravely ill. In 1963, Sculthorpe became a lecturer at the University of Sydney, where he remained, more or less, until his death in 2014.

He attained the status of one of Australia’s most-honored composers. Much of his music is concerned with Australia and its South Seas environs. The focus of many of his pieces over the decades reveals an admiration for, and affinity with, Australia’s indigenous cultures. Major philosophical concerns include conservation and the preservation of the environment.

We’ll listen to “Earth Cry,” an evocative piece from 1986. Scored for didgeridoo and orchestra, the work is a plea for balance, suggestive of the Aborigine mindset of living in accordance with natural law and the needs of the land.

The hour will open with music by Alfred Hill. Hill was born in Melbourne in 1870, but spent much of his early life in New Zealand. He studied abroad, at the Leipzig Conservatory, and played second violin in the Gewandhaus Orchestra, under then-Kapellmeister Carl Reinecke. He also performed in concerts conducted by Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Grieg and Max Bruch.

Throughout the course of his career, Hill founded and/or pushed for important institutions in both Australia and New Zealand, including one devoted to Maori studies. He composed more than 500 works, among them 12 symphonies, 8 operas, numerous concerti, a mass, 17 string quartets, two cantatas on Maori subjects, and 72 piano pieces. We’ll hear one of his brief though atmospheric tone pictures, titled “The Moon’s Golden Horn.”

Slip another shrimp on the barbie, crack open a Foster’s, and join me for “Left Out Back,” neglected music from Australia, this Sunday night at 10:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

January 7, 2018
Australian Classical Music Heard on “The Lost Chord”

G’day! This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’re headed Down Under, with an hour of music from Australia.

Alfred Hill was born in Melbourne in 1870, but spent much of his early life in New Zealand. He studied abroad, at the Leipzig Conservatory, and played second violin in the Gewandhaus Orchestra, under then-kapellmeister Carl Reinecke. He also performed in concerts conducted by Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Grieg and Max Bruch.

Throughout the course of his career, Hill founded, and/or pushed for, important institutions in both Australia and New Zealand, including one devoted to Maori studies. He composed more than 500 works, among them 12 symphonies, 8 operas, numerous concerti, a mass, 17 string quartets, two cantatas on Maori subjects, and 72 piano pieces. We’ll hear one of his brief, though atmospheric, tone pictures, titled “The Moon’s Golden Horn.”

Then we’ll turn to Peter Sculthorpe, who was born in Tasmania in 1929. Sculthorpe studied at the Melbourne Conservatorium. Following a period of post-graduate struggles, he won a scholarship to study with Egon Wellesz at Oxford University. Unfortunately, he had to abandon the pursuit of his doctorate when his father became gravely ill. In 1963, Sculthorpe became a lecturer at the University of Sydney, where he remained, more or less, until his death in 2014.

He became one of Australia’s most-honored composers. Much of his music is concerned with Australia and its South Seas environs. The focus of many of his pieces over the decades reveals an admiration for, and affinity with, Australia’s indigenous cultures. Major philosophical concerns include conservation and the preservation of the environment.

We’ll listen to “Earth Cry,” an evocative piece from 1986. Scored for didgeridoo and orchestra, the work is a plea for balance, suggestive of the Aborigine mindset of living in accordance with natural law and the needs of the land.

Colin Brumby was born in Melbourne in 1933. Like Sculthorpe, he attended the Melbourne Conservatorium. He studied abroad in Spain and London, before joining the staff of the music faculty at the University of Queensland. He directed the Queensland Opera Company for a few years. He received his doctorate from the University of Melbourne, and then returned to the continent for further studies in Rome. In 1981, he received an Advance Australia Award for his services to music. He has written orchestral pieces, music for the stage, choral, chamber and instrumental works.

If you love the concertos of Sergei Rachmaninoff, you owe it to yourself to hear Brumby’s Piano Concerto No. 1, from 1984. The work is written in the grand romantic style for a former classmate of some 30 years earlier, the pianist Wendy Pomroy. The piece certainly is a throwback to an earlier age and an unremitting delight.

Slip another shrimp on the barbie, open up a cold Foster’s, and join me for “Left Out Back,” neglected music from Australia, this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

July 23, 2017
Australian Music & Indigenous Instruments

G’day, mate!

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” the focus is on Australian music that incorporates authentic instruments of the indigenous peoples.

It’s possible that no composer has embraced the didgeridoo to quite the extent of Peter Sculthorpe, who lived from 1929 to 2104. Sculthorpe, in his maturity Australia’s most prominent composer, was occupied with environmental concerns, such as preservation of wildlands and climate change, and possessed an overt sympathy with aboriginal culture.

He composed 18 string quartets. Four of them have a part for didgeridoo. His String Quartet No. 12, completed in 1994, is inspired by Ubirr, a large rocky outcrop in Kakadu National Park in northern Australia, which houses some of the best and most varied aboriginal rock paintings in the country.

John Antill’s ballet, “Corroboree,” from 1944, was one of the first attempts to incorporate authentic aboriginal elements into modern classical music. Corroboree is the anglicized word for an aboriginal ceremony involving singing and dancing, in order to communicate “dreaming stories” about journeys and actions of ancestral beings which will continue to have consequences in the future.

Antill attended one of these sacred ceremonies in Botany Bay in 1913, the same year as the debut of Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring.” Antill later denied any previous knowledge of Stravinsky’s ballet, even at the point he came to write the work 30 years later.

In addition to the use of the didgeridoo, the orchestration also includes a part for bullroarer, a kind of blade on a long cord that when swung in a large circle makes a roaring vibrato sound.

“Corroboree” received its first complete recording on the Naxos label in 2008. That’s the version we’ll hear, though in terms of unbridled primitivism, it’s difficult to match the suite, as recorded by Sir Eugene Goossens and the London Symphony Orchestra, back in 1958. If you like what you hear, definitely seek that one out.

I hope you’ll join me for this musical walkabout through the Australian outback. “Didya Hear the One About the Didgeridoo?” Tonight at 10 ET, with a repeat Wednesday evening at 6; or listen to it later as a webcast at wwfm.org.

To get you in the mood, here’s ten hours of didgeridoo music:

And a demonstration of the bullroarer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ODGE2f7gLQ

August 2, 2015

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