Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Carnegie Hall

Choir from Princeton to Carnegie Hall via Kansas

Force of nature that I am, my reportage is now churning up Tornado Alley. My story on Alicia Brozovich and Westminster Community Chorus, written for the November 20 edition of the Princeton weekly U.S. 1 Newspaper – PrincetonInfo, has been picked up by Times-Sentinel Newspapers in Kansas.

https://princetoninfo.com/reaching-beyond-the-community/

Brozovich, who hails from Conway Springs, Kansas, about 30 miles south of Wichita, is a graduate of Westminster Choir College and now on the faculty of Westminster Conservatory. Her debut as principal conductor of the Westminster Community Chorus may have come and gone, but the concert, in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the moon landing, is now archived on YouTube and the ensemble’s Facebook page, complete with associated projections and NASA media.

The choir will head to Carnegie Hall in May, to sing for choral music legend John Rutter.

You can still read the original story here.

https://princetoninfo.com/community-chorus-takes-vocal-journey-through-space/

Thanks to Times-Sentinel Newspapers, I can now afford to take my editor out to breakfast.

November 30, 2019
Pianist Poizat on The Classical Network Today

When you tune in to The Classical Network this afternoon at 4:00 EST, you’ll be able to enjoy a conversation with François-Xavier Poizat, pianist. Poizat will perform a recital of works by Liszt and Ravel at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall this Sunday at 7:30 p.m. We’ll also hear selections from his new album, “PianOrchestra 2,” on the ARS Produktion label.

Then I hope you’ll stick around, as we’ll celebrate the birthdays today of composers Jean-Baptiste Lully and Ferdinand Ries (a Beethoven pupil); pianist, composer, and one time director of the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, Anton Rubinstein; guitarist Celin Romero (of Los Romeros fame); and Spanish polymath and movie star José Iturbi.

At 6:00, it will be a special “Music from Marlboro,” as musicians from the famed chamber music retreat band together under legendary artists Leon Fleisher and Pablo Casals for performances of orchestral works by Hindemith and Beethoven.

There will be much versatility in evidence, between 4 and 7 p.m. EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

November 28, 2018
Trio Vitruvi Carnegie Debut & New Album

This is a big week for Trio Vitruvi. The Copenhagen-based ensemble will make its Carnegie Hall debut, in Weill Recital Hall, tomorrow at 7:30 p.m. The program will include piano trios by Schubert, Shostakovich, and Dvořák.

Then on Friday, Vitruvi’s first album, of Schubert chamber music, will be released on Bridge Records, Inc. The recording features a performance of the rarely-heard Bärenreiter Urtext edition of Schubert’s Piano Trio No. 2 in E-flat major, D. 929, which contains extra music not included in previous editions.

Join me this afternoon at 4:00 EDT on The Classical Network, as we sample from this impending release; then learn more about the prize-winning trio and its Carnegie appearance through a conversation with Vitruvi pianist Alexander McKenzie. McKenzie, who began his piano studies at the age of six, attended the Danish Academy of Music. He is also one half (with Vitruvi’s Niklas Walentin) of the violin-piano duo Walentin & McKenzie.

Following our interview, I’ll mark the birthday anniversaries of Leó Weiner (we’ll enjoy his “Hungarian Folk Dance Suite”), Federico Mompou (the “Variations on a Theme by Chopin”), and Henry Mancini (a selection of music from the Pink Panther films).

All told, we’ll be in the pink, from 4 to 7 p.m. EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

April 16, 2018
Ives’ Symphony No. 4: Stokowski’s 1965 Premiere

It was on this date in 1965 that Leopold Stokowski gave the world premiere of Charles Ives’ Symphony No. 4. The performance took place at Carnegie Hall with the American Symphony Orchestra and the Schola Cantorum of New York. At the time, the work’s complex, kaleidoscopic tempos and layered, shifting meters required multiple conductors, and Stokowski enlisted the aid of David Katz and a young Jose Serebrier (pictured).

The piece was composed between 1910 and the mid-1920s. Given the source, it’s hardly surprising that the music was decades ahead of its time. The first two movements had been performed by members of the New York Philharmonic under the direction of Eugene Goossens in 1927. This was the only occasion on which Ives would hear any of the music from the Fourth Symphony performed live by an orchestra. The composer died in 1954.

Bernard Herrmann conducted an arrangement of the lovely third movement, the simplest and most conservative of the four (why, then, the need for an arrangement?), in 1933. The music as Ives wrote it was not heard until the complete performance in 1965.

The composer’s biographer, Jan Swafford, describes the work as “Ives’ climactic masterpiece.”

Stokowski recorded the symphony a few days after the premiere and led a televised studio performance, which can be seen here:

Stokey kicks off twenty minutes of spoken introductory material (including commentary from producer John McClure) at the 4:30 mark. The symphony proper begins 25 minutes in.

When’s the last time you saw anything like this on television?

April 26, 2016
Stokowski Two Sides of a Conducting Legend

Two faces of Leopold Stokowski:

First, from the 1947 potboiler “Carnegie Hall,” which contrives to string together appearances by some of the greatest classical music talent of the day (including Jascha Heiftez, Gregor Piatigorsky, Arthur Rubinstein, Rise Stevens, Ezio Pinza, Bruno Walter and Fritz Reiner) using the flimsiest and hokiest of plots (renegade young pianist scandalizes – and ultimately makes good – with his new jazz concerto).

Stokowski provides the musical high point of the picture, with the director, low budget maestro Edgar G. Ulmer – who was a set designer on “Metropolis” and “M” – indulging in Expressionist tricks (low-angle camera set-ups and stark lighting) to accentuate Stoky’s majesty, to say nothing of his hair.

Second, Stokowski rehearsing the American Symphony Orchestra in 1968, at the age of 85. He still had ten years of conducting ahead of him. His talent, temperament – and hair – remain undiminished.

Happy birthday, Leopold Stokowski (1882-1977).

April 18, 2016

Tag Cloud

RECENT POSTS