A few weeks back, I posted a cartoon by Jeffrey Curnow, associate principal trumpet of the Philadelphia Orchestra. I suppose it shouldn’t come as any surprise that he would be just as witty and inventive in real life. Here’s a YouTube video he whipped together demonstrating his unique solution to the challenges of practicing on the road.
Phil Smith, in case you don’t know, is principal trumpet of the New York Philharmonic. Joseph Alessi is the Philharmonic’s principal trombone. Matthew Vaughn is co-principal trombone of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Now that you’ve been forearmed with that brassy esoterica, enjoy!
More Curnow Cartoons and doctored photos on Jeffrey Curnow’s Facebook page.
OMG! He attended Wilson Area High School. As a native Eastonian, I would say that explains a lot.
Playing right now: Jay Krush’s Concerto for Bass Trombone, with Blair Bollinger of the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Temple University Wind Symphony. I’ll be spinning the new releases until 5 p.m. on WRTI 90.1 FM and at wrti.org.
Right now on WPRB, we’re listening to the final symphony of the great Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara – the Symphony No. 8, subtitled “The Journey” – commissioned by the Philadelphia Orchestra. It was given its first performance at Philadelphia’s Academy of Music, under the direction of Wolfgang Sawallisch, in the year 2000.
Though Rautavaara would live another 16 years, he would compose no more symphonies. He suffered an aortic dissection in 2004, which put him in intensive care for half a year. He spent most of his final decade in frail health, though he continued to compose prolifically.
We are honoring Rautavaara, who died on July 27 at the age of 87, with FIVE HOURS of his music. Coming up in the 9:00 hour, we’ll hear his large-scale liturgical work, “Vigilia,” a mystical creation that grew out of childhood memories of a visit to an island monastery. Tune in if only to catch that basso-profondo!
It’s all Rautavaara until 11:00 EDT on WPRB 103.3 FM and at wprb.com.
On this, the day after Memorial Day, I’ve stumbled across a YouTube video of a concert broadcast of Eugene Ormandy conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra in Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “A Pastoral Symphony” (his Symphony No. 3), which was completed in 1922.
While a good many of Vaughan Williams’ pieces are indeed pastoral, this one has something of a haunted undertow that belies its placid moniker. The composer was serving with the Royal Army Medical Corps in France during the First World War. At the end of the day, he would drive his ambulance up to the top of a hill and listen to a bugler practicing. On one occasion, the bugler accidentally played the interval of a seventh, as opposed to an octave. The trumpet solo in the second movement of the symphony enshrines this memory.
It is pastoral, all right. As peaceful as the dead. The great Benita Valente sings the wordless soprano part in the final movement, like a distant milkmaid wandering the countryside. The contrast with the waste and destruction of the war leads to a moving and intense elegy that takes over, in this particular recording, around the 31 minute mark.
Vaughan Williams’ next symphony, the Symphony No. 4, spilled over with rage and violence, clearing the air for one of the most hopeful utterances in all of music, his Symphony No. 5, composed, oddly enough, during the darkest days of World War II.
Peter Warlock, who famously characterized Vaughan Williams’ music as “just a little too much like a cow looking over a gate,” called the Pastoral Symphony “a truly splendid work” and “the best English orchestral music of this century.”
Ormandy and the Philadelphians performed the piece on October 12, 1972, to mark the centennial of Vaughan Williams’ birth. 1972 also happened to mark the semicentennial of “A Pastoral Symphony.”
