Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Early Music

GEMS Early Music Concerts in NYC on The Classical Network

I’ll be arriving by gondola for today’s Noontime Concert, as The Classical Network continues its partnership with Gotham Early Music Scene (GEMS).

We’ll hear selections from another one of GEMS’ Downtown Concerts: The Queens Consort will present a program titled “Venetian Masters,” with music by Dario Castello, Biagio Marini, Giovanni Lagrenzi, Marco Uccellini, and Antonio Vivaldi.

Concerts in GEMS Downtown Concerts series are held at Saint Bartholomew’s Church, 50th St. and Park Avenue, in midtown Manhattan. You’ll find a complete schedule of free lunchtime performances at midtownconcerts.org.

In addition, GEMS presents evening concerts, such as “Big Wig: A French Baroque Dance Mix,” with music by Rameau, Lully, Purcell, and Handel, which will be performed by New York Baroque Incorporated, directed by Grammy-winning baroque violinist Robert Mealy, and featuring virtuoso baroque dancers Caroline Copeland and Carlos Fittante. That concert will take place on December 20 at 7 p.m. at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Tickets to the event will include same day museum admission. A special 10th anniversary GEMS gala reception will follow the concert.

Other upcoming highlights include a program of “Christmas Vespers” by Johann Rosenmüller, to be presented by the ensemble Artek with members of Les Sacqueboutiers de Toulouse on December 29 at 8 p.m. at Old Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, 273 Mott Street, in Tribeca.

The next concert of The Queens Consort, “Music for Yuletide,” will take place on December 16 at 7 p.m. at Saint Mark’s Church, 30-50 82nd Street, Jackson Heights, Queens.

You’ll find more information about GEMS and a complete listing of events, at gemsny.org.

Following today’s Noontime Concert, stick around for more music, including Stephen Dodgson – composer’s cantata “Last of the Leaves,” Gerald Finzi’s “The Fall of the Leaf,” and Lawrence Ashmore’s “Four Seasons,” among others. I’ll keep mining the gems until 4:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

December 5, 2017
Mélomanie Music Mania on The Classical Network

Mélomanie means music mania! It also could be translated, more charitably, as “a love of music.”

On today’s Noontime Concert on The Classical Network, we’ll enjoy performances by Mélomanie, the Delaware-based ensemble that specializes in provocative pairings of early and contemporary music.

From the 17th century, we’ll hear from Michel-Richard Delalande (the Chaconne from “Les fontaines de Versailles”); from the 18th century, Johann Christian Shieferdecker (his Musicalisches Concert No. 1 in A minor) and Benoît Guillemant (the Sonata in C major, Op. 3, No. 4, for two bass instruments); and, from closer to our own time, Mark Hagerty (“Ultraviolet,” in its world premiere performance), Matthias Maute (“It’s Summertime: A Trilogy,” after George Gershwin), and Liduino Pitombeira (“Impressões Quixerés” and “The Sound of the Sea,” also receiving its world premiere).

Mélomanie’s next concert will take place on Sunday at 2 p.m. at The Delaware Contemporary, 200 S. Madison Street, in Wilmington, DE. You can learn more by visiting the ensemble’s website, melomanie.org.

It may be summertime for Matthias Maute, but, on this good, moody, October day, the rest of the afternoon will be seasoned with more autumnal fare, until 4 p.m. EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

October 24, 2017
Telemann The Genius Overshadowed

Poor Telemann. You were a casualty of having done your job too well.

A composer of genius, you were virtually self-taught, against the opposition of your family. In addition, you taught yourself flute, oboe, violin, recorder, double bass, etc. You spun out music by the yard. In fact, you wrote more music than Bach and Handel combined, over 3000 works, making you one of the most prolific composers of all time. Yet nothing in your oeuvre has captured the public imagination quite like the “Brandenburg Concertos” or the “Water Music.”

Of course, you wrote Water Music, too.

On the other hand, you were recognized in your lifetime. You were an innovator, taking what you needed from the Italians and the French to bolster your own style, and your contemporaries bought and studied your scores. You were offered the cantorate of the Thomaskirche in Leipzig ahead of Bach. You counted Bach among your friends, as well as Handel. Bach even requested that you become the godfather of his son, Carl Philipp Emanuel.

You lived an unusually long life (86 years), though it was not without its miseries. Your first wife died young. Your second ran up gambling debts in amounts larger than your annual income, and ultimately your friends had to bail you out. As you grew older, you suffered further indignities, including failing eyesight.

Celebrated in your own day, by the 19th century you were dismissed as a “polygraph,” someone you had simply composed too much. In a sense, you were a victim of your own success.

Still, you continue to give employment to thousands of early music specialists, who have done much to restore your reputation. I think at least you deserve a little recognition on your birthday:

Happy Birthday, Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767).

One of my favorite Telemann moments, the “Air à l’Italien” from the Suite in A Minor for Flute and Orchestra:

March 14, 2017
Dryden Ensemble: Music & Medicine

Okay, so the Philadelphia Orchestra is going to be at McCarter Theatre in Princeton on Saturday night at 8:00. Denis Kozhukhin will be the soloist for Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3, and Stéphane Denève, the orchestra’s principal guest conductor (whose contract has just been extended through the 2019-20 season), will conduct. I know. They don’t need my help. The concert is an automatic sell-out, or should be.

Instead, allow me to direct your attention to The Dryden Ensemble, which will administer “Le Médicin & La Musique,” a program that’s good for what ails you, in two concerts, on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at Trinity Episcopal Church, Solebury, PA, and Sunday at 3 p.m. at Miller Chapel on the campus of Princeton Theological Seminary.

Central to the program of medical curiosities will be a musical response by Marin Marais to his own gallbladder surgery, “Le tableau de l’opération de la taille” (“A Description of the Removal of a Stone”), rendered on bass viol and continuo.

Marais’ surgery was successful, if painful, in an era before modern anesthesia. “They held you down,” says Dryden’s artistic director Jane McKinley. “They also didn’t use alcohol, because they were afraid that it would affect the blood. Because of the particular nature of the surgery, I’m not posting a picture in the program!”

Not so fortunate was Jean-Baptiste Lully, the most powerful musician at the court of Louis XIV. “Lully had his own issues,” McKinley says. “He was performing his ‘Te Deum’ to celebrate the success of surgery that was performed on Louis XIV and inadvertently hit his foot with the pointed end of the staff that he was conducting with.” It was Lully’s custom to strike the floor with a heavy staff in order to keep time for larger ensembles.

“So that got infected and turned to gangrene, and he refused to have his toe amputated. Then it spread to his leg. He refused to have his leg amputated, because he wanted to be able to be able conduct his own compositions and to dance – he was a very fine dancer – and he died a little over two months later.”

The ensemble will perform a piece written in Lully’s memory, “Le tombeau de Monsieur Lully,” by Jean-Féry Rebel. “A tombeau is almost like a funerary tribute to a mentor or composer or writer, and this one is particularly effective,” McKinley says.

Also on the program will be two works for solo harpsichord, “La convalescente” (“The Convalescent”) by Francois Couperin and ‘L’affligée” (“The Afflicted One”) by his cousin, Armand-Louis Couperin.

Actor Paul Hecht will provide readings from French medical writings of the 17th and 18th century.

I prescribe reading more about it in my article in today’s Trenton Times.

http://www.nj.com/times-entertainment/index.ssf/2017/02/classical_music_dryden_ensembl.html

Marin Marais’ rolling stone collects no moss in two concerts to be performed by the Dryden Ensemble this weekend

February 10, 2017
Vaughan Williams Birthday Harvest on WPRB

Grab a pitchfork and prepare for an alternatingly brisk, meditative and lusty morning. Just in time for the harvest, it’s a full playlist of Ralph Vaughan Williams on his birthday. We’ll stroll the fertile fields of Gloucestershire, Norfolk and Sussex, travel back in time to Tudor England, and share the composer’s turmoil – and hope – through two world wars.

Around 9:30, recorder player John Burkhalter, a stalwart of the area’s Early Music scene, will drop by the studio to talk a little but about the 12th Annual Guild for Early Music Festival, which will take place this Sunday at Grounds For Sculpture in Hamilton. Then we’ll hear Vaughan Williams’ piece for recorder ensemble, “Suite for Pipes,” a seldom heard work, in a recording that is now as rare as hen’s teeth.

Because of Yom Kippur, Marvin Rosen’s Classical Discoveries will be heard on Thursday morning this week, from 5:30 to 11:00. We’ll be pitching hay and pitching woo; some of the music may even as black as pitch (the Symphony No. 4, with the composer conducting). I’ll be on the pitcher’s mound from 6 to 11 EDT, on WPRB 103.3 FM and at wprb.com. We put a little “English” on it, on Classic Ross Amico.

PHOTO: Vaughan Williams and Foxy engage in a shedding contest

October 12, 2016

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