Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Johannes Brahms

Academic Music on WPRB Radio

Okay, BMOC. How much do you really know about “academic” music? Time to hit the books on WPRB.

We’ll have selections to put you in the mindset of school and study this morning, including symphonies inspired by Cambridge (Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry), Texas Christian University (Don Gillis), Charterhouse (Ralph Vaughan Williams), and a finger-wagging schoolmaster (Franz Joseph Haydn). There will also be a march for the Yale-Princeton Football Game by Charles Ives and episodes of inappropriate hard drinking at graduation with Johannes Brahms and Hugo Alfven.

For extra credit, tune in for test pieces written for student musicians, music performed by university ensembles, and possibly even a few etudes (literally “studies”).

Remember, there will be plenty of time to sleep in class, so join me this Thursday morning from 6 to 11 EDT, on WPRB 103.3 FM and wprb.com. It’s a perpetual school of hard knocks, on Classic Ross Amico.

September 7, 2017
Albert Dietrich & Friends Birthday Broadcast

Albert Dietrich (1829-1908) was a pupil of Robert Schumann, who was also a good friend of Johannes Brahms. In fact, the three artists sat down to compose a collaborative sonata, known as the “FAE” (“frei aber einsam,” “free but lonely”) for their mutual friend, the violinist Joseph Joachim. A virtually forgotten figure, Dietrich was born on this date.

Join me this afternoon to enjoy some of his worthwhile music, alongside contributions of Karl Böhm, Ivor Gurney, Istvan Kertesz, John Shirley-Quirk, and Richard Tucker, whose birthday anniversaries we’ll also celebrate, between 4 and 7 p.m. EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

PHOTOS (clockwise from left): Albert Dietrich, Johannes Brahms, Robert Schumann and Joseph Joachim

August 28, 2017
Antique Sounds Time’s Passage

To start the new week – the first of the new year – I invite you to join me as I marvel at the passage of time by way of these antique recordings.

Some I’d heard before. For instance, here’s Brahms speaking and playing (1889), first from the original cylinder, then from a 78 transfer:

This recording of Joseph Joachim playing a Brahms Hungarian Dance (1903) was made when the legendary violinist was in his ‘70s:

Here’s Alessandro Moreschi, the last castrato (and the only one to record, albeit past his prime), singing the “Crucifixus” from Rossini’s “Petite messe solonnelle” (1902):

Grieg plays “Wedding Day at Troldhaugen” (1903):

The earliest complete recording of music known to exist? Sir Arthur Sullivan’s “The Lost Chord” (1888):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8D0SXIANTLM

Most fascinating of all is this recording of the human voice – allegedly the first – captured in smoke from an oil lamp (1860)! Listen as what sounds like a ghostly mosquito transmogrifies into a soprano in song:

Eerie.

More about the phonautograph, the remarkable invention that documented the sound waves, here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonautograph

As always, Will said it best:

“We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.”

Or if you want to get all Biblical, “Our days on earth are as a shadow.”

January 4, 2016

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