If you wake up this morning with an appetite for unusual and neglected repertoire, here are some of the composers whose music you can expect to hear between 6 and 11 a.m. ET, when you set your dial to WPRB 103.3 FM, or listen online at wprb.com: Walter Leigh, Lalo Schifrin, George Walker, Henry Holden Huss, Pavel Haas, Kurt Schwertsik, Harry Partch and Terry Riley, all of whom had or have birthday anniversaries this week. We’ll also do a make-good on retired Princeton professor Paul Lansky, whom I am ashamed to say I missed last week. The late Gunther Schuller and James Horner will also be remembered.
Daniel Spalding, music director of the New Jersey Capital Philharmonic Orchestra, will drop by around 10:00 to talk a bit about his orchestra and its appearance in a free concert at Mercer County Park Pavilion, Sunday at 7:30 p.m., as part of this year’s Freedom Fest. I’ll also be bringing some of Dan’s recordings of American music with the Philadelphia Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra.
Be there, or be… zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
PHOTO: Slappin’ the roosters awake with Classic Ross Amico
Is it possible that I am still asleep and dreaming? For the first time since the restructuring of the paper, one of my stories has actually hit the front page, a seemingly regular occurrence under the old system.
But conductor Daniel Spalding and I both presented cases for the importance of heightened exposure for the New Jersey Capital Philharmonic Orchestra, as it is about to commence its first complete season. The orchestra, rising from the ashes of the Greater Trenton Symphony, will perform at the Trenton War Memorial Saturday night at 8.
The program will include works by Beethoven, Shostakovich and American composer Ron Nelson. Awadagin Pratt will be the soloist in Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4.
The Times of Trenton did the right thing and actually sent a photographer to one of the orchestra’s rehearsals.
Please consider attending the concert, if you can. The area can never have too many orchestras, if people will only go, and the greater the support, the better the NJCP is bound to get. It’s your call whether or not you think the city of Trenton should have its own orchestra.
Personally, I’m looking forward to George Antheil’s “Capital of the World,” which the NJCP will perform on May 9. Antheil, the self-proclaimed “Bad Boy of Music,” was born in Trenton in 1900. He turned Paris on its ear with his “Ballet Mécanique,” which incited one of the great musical riots in 1926. Spalding made an acclaimed recording of the work with his other group, the Philadelphia Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra, at the War Memorial, which was issued on the Naxos label. He’s also recorded Antheil for New World Records.
The Greater Trenton Symphony, founded in 1921, was New Jersey’s oldest professional symphonic ensemble. The orchestra performed its last concert – the first since 2010 – on New Year’s Eve, 2012. You can read more about what happened next in my article in today’s Trenton Times.
PHOTO: Awadagin Pratt, who will be the soloist tomorrow night in Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4, wowed the judges of the Naumburg International Piano Competition with his performance of the piece in 1992
Today I have a song in my heart for Vittorio Giannini.
Giannini was born in Philadelphia in 1903. He studied at the Milan Conservatory, after which he earned his graduate degree from Juilliard. He then taught at Juilliard, the Manhattan School of Music and the Curtis Institute.
Arguably his most important contribution as an educator was the foundation in 1965 of the North Carolina School of the Arts, which he envisioned as a Juilliard of the South. The school attracted to its faculty such luminaries as Ruggiero Ricci and Janos Starker. Giannini died the year after it opened, in 1966.
He was from a family of opera singers. His father founded the Verdi Opera House in Philadelphia. One sister taught voice at the Curtis Institute of Music and the other sang at the Metropolitan Opera. Giannini himself composed 14 operas, including “Lucedia,” “The Scarlet Letter,” “The Taming of the Shrew,” and one for radio, “Beauty and the Beast.” Two, “Casanova” and “Christus,” remain unperformed.
Not surprisingly, in his day he was known largely for his vocal music, but his Symphony No. 3 for wind band has fared best on disc. There are seven recordings in the current catalogue, from the classic release directed by A. Clyde Roller on the Mercury label to one of the later-in-life, digital recordings of Frederick Fennell.
Daniel Spalding, music director of the New Jersey Capital Philharmonic Orchestra, recorded the Symphony No. 4 with the Bournemouth Symphony, for Naxos. The companion piece is Giannini’s Piano Concerto, with Gabriela Imreh, the soloist.
Apparently the release was a revelation for at least one John Williams fan!
Spalding will conduct the NJ Capital Philharmonic this Saturday, Oct. 25, at the Trenton War Memorial. The program will include Ron Nelson’s “Savannah River Holiday,” Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 (with Awadagin Pratt), and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5.
The following week, Spalding will embark on a tour of Russia with the Philadelphia Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra. Among the American-heavy repertoire will be Giannini’s Concerto Grosso for Strings.
Here it is, performed by a Russian orchestra:
BONUS: Rare recording of Mario Lanza singing Giannini’s “Tell Me, Oh Blue, Blue Sky”:
