Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Choral Music

Happy 70th Birthday, John Rutter!

Today is the 70th birthday of John Rutter. How did that happen? Ah well, none of us are getting any younger.

Rutter, of course, is one of England’s most successful choral composers and conductors. It’s impossible to get through the Christmas season without hearing oodles of his work. The bigger pieces can be a little hit and miss (the “Gloria” gets too close to Walton at times, and “big” is not really Rutter’s forte, if you’ll pardon the inadvertent play on words), but when he hits, as in the lovely “Requiem,” he is well nigh irresistible – at least for someone with a cotton candy soul like myself.

Perhaps his music is not your cup of tea, but the choir he built, the Cambridge Singers (founded in 1981), sounds like nobody else. For better or worse, Like Ormandy’s Philadelphians, they bring their distinctive sound to everything they touch. The soft glow inspires contentment.

As a young man, he collaborated with the legendary Sir David Willcocks on four volumes of the extraordinarily successful “Carols for Choirs” anthology series, now the most widely used source of carols in the British Anglican tradition, and very popular among choral societies. By coincidence, I’ll be honoring Willcocks this Sunday night on “The Lost Chord.” Willcocks died on September 17, at the age of 95. Join me for rarities by Gustav Holst and Ralph Vaughan Williams at 10 ET, at 89.1 FM or online at wwfm.org.

Happy birthday, John Rutter, and many happy returns.

Selections from John Rutter’s “Requiem” (1985), the perfect music for autumn, with the Cambridge Singers. Accept no substitutes!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HP7oYnXfyh0&list=PLMUnB4vc6zhWN_q7TidWNIABZaZzOnj9s

By the 2 minute mark, after an ominous opening, you get a pretty good idea of what you’re in for.

September 24, 2015
Sir David Willcocks Remembered RIP

I’m sorry to share the news that Sir David Willcocks has died. He may have been the senior lion of English music. With Sir Colin Davis, Vernon Handley, and even Richard Hickox gone, I can’t think of anyone else. Of course, the big choral works were a specialty. I will honor him soon on “The Lost Chord.” R.I.P.

His obituary in The Guardian:

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/sep/17/david-willcocks

An appreciation in The Telegraph:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/music/classical-music/sir-david-willcocks-appreciation/

September 17, 2015
Irving Fine: Celebrating the Neglected Composer

Today is the 100th birthday of Irving Fine. Who? Well, if you’ve sung in a chorus for any length of time, you may already know. Among Fine’s best-known works are arrangements of Copland’s “Old American Songs” and settings of texts from “Alice in Wonderland.”

He also wrote a woodwind quintet that gets recorded from time to time and certainly deserves more exposure. His “Serious Song,” for string orchestra, is another among his most frequently recorded works.

He was an American composer of the “Stravinsky school,” one of the so-called “Boston Six” (which also included Arthur Berger, Copland, Leonard Bernstein, Lukas Foss and Harold Shapero).

In some of his later works he experimented with serial techniques, though he never wholly abandoned tonality. On the other hand, in his early pieces he never shied away from dissonance. His was a tart brand of graceful neo-classicism that occasionally bubbled over into romanticism, as in the “Serious Song” and his “Notturno for Strings and Harp.” No matter what language he embraced, he was always an elegant and attractive composer.

Fine died of heart disease in 1962. He was only 47 years-old.

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll offer a slightly belated salute to this unjustly neglected figure. The program, titled “Everything’s Fine,” will air at 10 ET, with a repeat next Wednesday at 6. You can listen to it at http://www.wwfm.org. I’ll post more about it over the weekend.

In the meantime, here’s a listing of Fine celebrations around the country:

http://www.irvingfinesoc.org/#!events/c9a0

And Fine’s “Notturno for Strings and Harp”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aDTULoEJQ4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmtpyqGT8IE

PHOTO: Irving Fine (second from right) with (left to right) Claudio Spies, Lukas Foss, Harold Shapero, Esther Geller, Verna Fine and Leonard Bernstein, Tanglewood, 1946

December 3, 2014
NJ Choirs Sing in Princeton & Jersey Shore

Cicada song is not the only music to be heard in New Jersey over the next week or so, as VOICES Chorale and the New Jersey Gay Men’s Chorus – NJGMC invite amateur singers to join them for concerts in Princeton and at the Jersey shore.

The NJGMC will hold its annual “summer sing” at Nassau Presbyterian Church in Princeton, Monday at 7:30 p.m. The Hopewell-based VOICES will perform at the Long Beach Island Foundation of the Arts and Sciences in Loveladies, August 24 at 7 p.m.

You can read more about it in my article in today’s Trenton Times:

http://www.nj.com/times-entertainment/index.ssf/2014/08/new_jersey_gay_mens_chorus_to_1.html

August 15, 2014

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