Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Lost Chord

Quincy Porter Lost Thanksgiving Gem New England Episodes

Here’s another piece I used to play every year for Thanksgiving, but like so many other recordings I drew from my own collection, it disappeared from the air waves when I was given the boot during COVID and was never asked back. One of these days, I’ll have to send it out into syndication on “The Lost Chord.”

Quincy Porter is yet another one of those largely forgotten American composers of the generation of Aaron Copland and George Gershwin. Born in New Haven, CT, in 1897, he attended Yale, where he studied with Horatio Parker (Charles Ives’ longsuffering teacher) and David Stanley Smith. He also studied with Vincent d’Indy at the Schola Cantorum in Paris and Ernest Bloch in New York.

In 1923, he joined the faculty of the Cleveland Institute of Music. He was there for five years, until he made the decision to devote himself exclusively to composition. A Guggenheim Fellowship allowed him to return to Paris. The money held out for three productive years, but in the end he was back at the Cleveland Institute. Briefly. The next year he was teaching at Vassar. In 1938, he was appointed dean and later director of the New England Conservatory of Music. In the 1946, he returned to Yale, where he taught until 1965.

With Copland and Howard Hanson, he cofounded the American Music Center in 1939. He served as chairman of the organization’s board from 1958 until his death in 1966.

In 1944, he received the Pulitzer Prize for Music for his “Concerto Concertante” for two pianos and orchestra. Where is he now?

“New England Episodes” was given its premiere in Washington, D.C., in 1958. According to the liner notes to my recording, “The subject of this evocative suite is the puritan past of New England with its hymns, its rigidities, its moments of lightness and its melancholy.”

There’s a moment when the chimes take on the character of church bells, which I find an especially nice touch, but I find the entire work transporting. I hope you do too.

November 27, 2024
Laurie Johnson Avengers Composer Remembered on KWAX

This week on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll honor English composer and bandleader Laurie Johnson, who died on Tuesday at the age of 96.

Among other things, Johnson was the composer of super-cool TV music for shows such as “Jason King,” “The Professionals,” and of course “The Avengers,” the elegant and often surreal spy-fi series, at its peak starring Patrick Macnee and Diana Rigg.

He also wrote for film, providing scores for Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove,” “The First Men in the Moon” (with special effects by Ray Harryhausen), and the Hammer cult-classic “Captain Kronos – Vampire Hunter.”

Johnson’s “Symphony (Synthesis)” will be the main attraction on a triple feature of concert works by composers better known for their work in film.

Gramophone Magazine described the symphony, composed in 1971, as a masterpiece. “The work becomes increasingly fascinating with each listening,” writes the critic. “This is perhaps the first truly successful combination of the Jazz and European music traditions.”

The recording, made under the composer’s direction, features a number of prominent jazz artists, including Tubby Hayes, Don Lusher, Joe Harriott, Kenny Wheeler and Stan Tracey.

Also on the program will be music by Jerome Moross, who has been ensured a kind of immortality in the hearts of moviegoers by his Academy Award nominated score for “The Big Country.” He composed music for 16 films in all – comparatively few, actually, on account of a bicoastal career. (He was based in New York City.)

Off-screen, he wrote music for five ballets, a symphony, a flute concerto, various works for orchestra and chamber ensemble, and a one-act opera, “Sorry, Wrong Number.” His best-known musical theatre piece is “The Golden Apple,” which spawned the ever-green “Lazy Afternoon.”

We’ll hear Moross’ delightful “Sonatina for Clarinet Choir” of 1966.

Very little need be said of John Williams. The most successful film composer of all time, Williams has been a household name since the 1970s, thanks to the one-two punch of “Jaws” and “Star Wars.” But by then, he was already two decades into a career that’s now spanned some 70 years. With 54 Academy Award nominations and five wins, he is the second most nominated figure in the history of the Academy, behind only Walt Disney.

For the concert hall, Williams has written music for just about every instrument, including an impressive body of concertos. We’ll hear his “Essay for Strings,” composed in 1965, when he was 33 years-old.

It’s not always about images. Film composers cast themselves against type, on “Typecast IV: The Curse of Typecast” – including a salute to Laurie Johnson – on “The Lost Chord,” now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Remember, KWAX is on the West Coast, so there’s a three-hour difference for those of you listening in the East. Here are the respective air-times for all three of my recorded shows (with East Coast conversions in parentheses):

PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday on KWAX at 5:00 PM PACIFIC TIME (8:00 PM EST)

SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – ALL NEW! – Saturday on KWAX at 8:00 AM PACIFIC TIME (11:00 AM EST)

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday on KWAX at 4:00 PM PACIFIC TIME (7:00 PM EST)

Stream all three, at the times indicated, by following the link!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

January 27, 2024
Explore Viking Lore Hear the Lur on Lost Chord

Experience the lore of the lur!

This week on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll embrace our hirsute stoicism with a “low key” (like Loki, get it?) hour of music inspired by the Icelandic Eddas.

Experience selections from “The Rheingold Curse,” after the “Volsunga Saga,” the earliest written sources of the ancient Germanic myths (including those of Sigurd, Loki, and Fafnir). We’ll hear them in imaginative, though scholarly-informed, realizations by Benjamin Bagby and the ensemble Sequentia.

Then we’ll turn to “The Creation of the World,” Part One of a bold, massive “Edda” oratorio by Icelandic composer Jón Leifs. Odin and his brothers defeat the giant Ymir, and from him fashion Earth, Sea, and Heavens, and soon after create the first man and woman from two trees. With its horn-helmeted, grunting choruses, laconic pounding, and austere poetry, this one will have you shouting for more mead.

Swan’s bone flutes, tuned rocks, and Nordic lurs (reconstructions of ancient Viking horns) lend “Cold Comfort,” on “The Lost Chord,” now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Remember, KWAX is on the West Coast, so there’s a three-hour difference for those of you listening in the East. Here are the respective air-times for all three of my recorded shows (with East Coast conversions in parentheses):

PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday on KWAX at 5:00 PM PACIFIC TIME (8:00 PM EST)

SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – ALL NEW! – Saturday on KWAX at 8:00 AM PACIFIC TIME (11:00 AM EST)

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday on KWAX at 4:00 PM PACIFIC TIME (7:00 PM EST)

Stream all three, at the times indicated, by following the link!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

January 13, 2024
Aurora Borealis Music on KWAX’s Lost Chord

All signs point north!

On the next edition of “The Lost Chord,” with so much geomagnetic activity this week, we encourage you to keep looking up, with musical responses to the uncanny, natural phenomenon known as the Aurora Borealis.

Uuno Klami studied in Helsinki, with Erkki Melartin, then in Paris and Vienna. Following the premiere of his “Northern Lights” in 1948, some critics questioned whether the content of the piece lived up to the expectations engendered by its title. Klami remarked, “The northern lights can be much more than the superficial play of colors in the sky. They can be an expression of the infinite loneliness of the human spirit.” Personally, he thought it his best work.

Geirr Tveitt was born in Bergen, Edvard Grieg’s native city. Though he was very much influenced by folk music of the Norwegian countryside, he too acquired further polish abroad. He studied first in Leipzig and then in Paris, with Arthur Honegger, Heitor Villa-Lobos, and Nadia Boulanger.

In 1970, a very great tragedy occurred, when a fire swept through Tveitt’s home, a farmhouse in Nordheimsund, destroying most of his unpublished manuscripts – 300 pieces, stored in wooden chests – fully 4/5ths of his compositional output. It also crippled his ability to compose. Tveitt succumbed to alcoholism and died a broken man, with little hope of being remembered, in 1981.

Happily, since then, a number of these “lost” works have been reconstructed. In the case of his Piano Concerto No. 4, subtitled “Aurora Borealis,” from 1947, the orchestral parts survived, along with a two-piano reduction and an archived broadcast recording.

The restored concerto falls into three movements: “The Northern Lights awaken above the autumn colors,” “Glittering in the winter heavens,” and “Fading away in the bright night of spring.”

I hope you’ll join me for an hour of radiant music, on “Aural Borealis, on “The Lost Chord,” now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Remember, KWAX is on the West Coast, so there’s a three-hour difference for the Trenton-Princeton area. Here are the respective air-times of my recorded shows (with East Coast conversions in parentheses):

PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday on KWAX at 5:00 PACIFIC TIME (8:00 PM EST)

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday on KWAX at 4:00 PACIFIC TIME (7:00 PM EST)

Stream them here!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

December 2, 2023
Lost Chord’s Persian Sunset WWFM

You might say I’m on a Seemorgh diet. I see ‘Morgh, and I play it!

This Sunday night that all comes to an end, as last week I received notice that, after 20 years, “The Lost Chord” will be “sunsetting” on WWFM.

I hope you’ll join me for a final go ‘round, with an hour of Persian polyphonic music – that is to say, music by Persian (or Iranian) composers, based on native folk and classical melodies, but tailored specifically to western instruments.

We’ll hear two works by Behzad Ranjbaran, recorded in 1994 for the Delos label. I had heard Ranjbaran’s lyrical Piano Concerto at a concert of the Philadelphia Orchestra some years ago, but it did not prepare me for the beauty and opulence of his “Persian Trilogy.”

Ranjbaran, born in Tehran in 1955, is currently on the faculty of the Juilliard School. Many of his works are influenced by Persian culture and literature. The “Persian Trilogy” was inspired by the “Shahnameh,” the national epic of 11th century poet Ferdowsi.

We’ll hear two of the three pieces, including “Seven Passages,” about the hero Rostam, who undergoes seven trials along the path to rescue the Persian king Kavus; and “Seemorgh,” about the mythical bird (“seemorgh” is Persian for “phoenix”) that raises the abandoned hero Zaal, who is able to summon her in times of crisis.

Ranjbaran proves himself a master orchestrator. If you enjoy the music of Rimsky-Korsakov, Debussy, Paul Dukas, or Ottorino Respighi, I think you’ll really enjoy his “Persian Trilogy.”

We’ll also hear music by Reza Vali, born in Ghazvin in 1952. Vali, currently on the faculty of Carnegie Mellon University, has been called “the Iranian Béla Bartók” for his ability to successfully meld native folk elements with established western classical forms. His “Folk Song (Set No. 9)” is composed for the combination of flute and cello. The flutist switches between various instruments of the flute family, and the cellist plays tuned crystal glass and tom-toms. As you’ll hear, the musicians are also required at various points to sing and whistle.

It may be sunset, but we’ll keep looking to the sunrise for new possibilities. For now, it’s the last flight of the phoenix for “The Lost Chord.” I hope you’ll join me for “Roses of Persia,” a bouquet of Persian polyphonic music, this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

April 30, 2023

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