This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we wrap up the long, gluttonous holiday weekend with Knudage Riisager’s ballet “Slaraffenland” (usually translated as “Fool’s Paradise”).
Inspired by Bruegel’s painting “The Land of Cockaigne,” the scenario imagines a Promised Land “where roasted pigeons fly around in the air with knives and forks in their backs, and the streets are paved with marzipan and chocolate.” The plot concerns a silly boy who wanders into the country of King Sauce and becomes ill from overindulgence. Along the way, he encounters Robin Hood, the Three Musketeers, Captain Fear, Fountains of Liqueur, Cigarettes, and the Candy Princess.
Riisager was born in 1897 to Danish parents living in Estonia. He studied music at Copenhagen University and then in Paris with Albert Roussel. Though he was a prolific composer, with some 400 works to his name, including symphonies, concertos, chamber music and songs, he is probably best known, if at all, for his ballet works.
I hope you’ll join me, even as you’re zoning under the influence of tryptophan, for “Fool’s Paradise” – Knudage Riisager’s “Slaraffenland” – this Sunday night at 10 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and at wwfm.org.
Today is the birthday of two notable Philadelphians.
Hershy Kay (1919-1981) is known mainly for his arrangements for George Balanchine’s New York City Ballet and for his work on Broadway. He studied at the Curtis Institute of Music, where Randall Thompson was his composition teacher and Leonard Bernstein a classmate. He started making arrangements to get out of playing the cello in pit bands. Along the way, he taught himself how to orchestrate.
The success of Kay’s orchestrations for Bernstein’s “On the Town” put him much in demand. He would later collaborate with Bernstein on “Peter Pan” and “Candide.” His work as an orchestrator can also be heard in such varied projects as Marc Blitzstein’s “Juno,” Cy Coleman’s “Barnum” and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Evita.”
For Balanchine he wrote the sub-Copland “Western Symphony” and the splashy “Stars and Stripes Ballet,” after Sousa. He also reconstructed and orchestrated works of Louis Moreau Gottschalk, resulting in the “Grande Tarantelle,” for piano and orchestra, and the ballet “Cakewalk.”
David Amram (b. 1930) has always been equally at home in classical music, jazz, folk and world music. He’s composed over 100 orchestral and chamber works, music for Broadway and film (including scores for “Splendor in the Grass” and “The Manchurian Candidate”), and two operas. He’s also written three books, with a fourth in the works.
He was raised on a farm in Bucks County, where he was introduced to classical, jazz and cantorial music by his father and uncle. He took piano lessons and experimented with instruments of the brass family, finally settling on the French horn. Following a year at Oberlin, he lit out for George Washington University, where he studied history. While there, he performed as an extra hornist with the National Symphony. He also studied privately with two musicians in the orchestra.
Amram became a pioneer of the jazz French horn, as well as the New York Philharmonic’s first composer-in-residence (named in 1966). He’s worked with artists ranging from Dizzy Gillespie to Bob Dylan, from Jack Kerouac to Arthur Miller, from Christopher Plummer to Johnny Depp. He’s a musician without boundaries, who has always been open to new experiences.
Happy Birthday, Hershy Kay and David Amram!
Kay’s arrangement of the “Grande Tarantelle”:
Some of Amram’s music for “The Manchurian Candidate”:
This one is over the top even by Strauss standards.
Today marks the 100th anniversary of the premiere of Richard Strauss’ only full-length ballet, “Josephslegende” (“The Legend of Joseph”), which was first performed at the Paris Opera on this date in 1914.
The biblical story of the attempted seduction of Joseph by Potiphar’s wife was suggested by frequent Strauss librettist Hugo von Hoffmansthal, between their work on “Ariadne auf Naxos” and “Die Frau ohne Schatten.”
Strauss confessed in a letter, “The chaste Joseph himself isn’t all up my street, and if a thing bores me I find it difficult to set it to music. This God-seeker Joseph – he is going to be a hell of an effort!”
Perhaps it was to alleviate his boredom that Strauss bolstered his orchestration with four harps, organ, celesta, glockenspiel, xylophone, large and small cymbals, four pairs of castanets and a double-bass clarinet.
The composer himself conducted the premiere, which ran for seven performances. Vaslav Nijinsky choreographed and danced the lead. Sir Thomas Beecham conducted an additional seven performances in London. He had put up the money for the “Diaghilev” commission. However, with the war looming, Strauss never received his fee.
Follow the link to listen to the rarely-heard complete ballet.
The work also exists as a “symphonic fragment,” in reduced orchestration. But where’s the fun in that?
I must say, I had a blast Google image-searching for paintings of this one. Seemingly everyone painted Joseph and Potiphar’s wife.
Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we anticipate April Fool’s Day with Knudage Riisager’s ballet “Slaraffenland” (usually translated as “Fool’s Paradise”). Inspired by Bruegel’s painting “The Land of Cockaigne,” the scenario imagines a Promised Land “where roasted pigeons fly around in the air with knives and forks in their backs, and the streets are paved with marzipan and chocolate.”
Riisager was born in 1897 to Danish parents living in Estonia. He studied music at Copenhagen University and then in Paris with Albert Roussel. Though he was a prolific composer, with some 400 works to his name, including symphonies, concertos, chamber music and songs, he is probably best known, if at all, for his ballet music.
Tune in Sunday at 10 pm ET, with a repeat Thursday at 11 pm ET, at wwfm.org.
