Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Philadelphia Orchestra

Dudamel to New York Philharmonic: The Dude Moves East

The Dude is headed to New York!

It was announced yesterday that Gustavo Dudamel will be leaving the Los Angeles Philharmonic to take up the post of “music and artistic director” of the New York Philharmonic, beginning in 2026. The double-barrel title is bestowed in the same week as the announcement that Yannick Nézet-Séguin will now be “music and artistic director” of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Nézet-Séguin, who has been music director in Philly since 2012, renewed his contract through 2030.

Granted, both these gentlemen do a lot of heavy-lifting, more than justifying the compound-if-cumbersome descriptors. Dudamel, 42, has been a transformative force in L.A. He is, with the possible exception of Nézet-Séguin, our most visible and energetic young man of the podium. (Yannick, 47, is also music director of the Metropolitan Opera and his home orchestra, the Orchestre Métropolitain de Montréal.) I don’t know if the East Coast can handle the combined kinetic energy of Yannick and The Dude.

Dudamel carved out time for a whirlwind residency in Princeton in 2018. Although I got to meet him, our interview had to be conducted via email. Knowing Dudamel, he probably dashed off his responses in a limo on the way to the airport. You can learn more about The Dude and read our exchange at the link.

https://www.communitynews.org/princetoninfo/artsandentertainment/princeton-concerts-celebrating-125-years-with-the-dude-gustavo-dudamel/article_a2905abc-098d-5bf5-a56c-20625675fdbe.html

Brace yourselves, New York, and congratulations, Gustavo Dudamel!

Press release from the New York Philharmonic

https://nyphil.org/~/media/pdfs/newsroom/2223/GD-press-release-final.ashx?la=en

February 8, 2023
Farrenc’s Third Symphony Shines in Philly

After attending a performance of Louise Farrenc’s Second Symphony by The Philadelphia Orchestra back in February 2020 (only weeks before everything would be shut down due the pandemic), I tagged the organization on Facebook, lauding its decision to include it in its programs and urging them to tackle Farrenc’s Third. The most compelling of her symphonies, the Third is bold and energetic, and it’s got some genuinely good tunes. I’ve played it on the radio many times. And now, lo and behold, here it is, this weekend, on a series of concerts with Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 2.

If you’re unfamiliar with Farrenc, she was the only female professor at the Paris Conservatory during the whole of the 19th century. A pupil of Moscheles (teacher of Mendelssohn) and Hummel (who studied with Mozart), she was a formidable pianist, who also took private lessons with Conservatory professor Anton Reicha. She paused in her career as a performer in order to start a successful publishing house with her husband, Éditions Farrenc, that flourished for nearly 40 years.

In 1842, at the age of 38, Farrenc was finally hired as a professor at the Conservatory. There, she taught piano, but not composition. And she was only allowed to teach women. However, her stature was such that she was able to demand – and receive – equal pay.

Before the Philadelphia performance of her Second Symphony, I have only ever encountered her works on recordings, issued on some of the more enterprising independent labels.

With apologies to Brahms, a marvelous composer, but so insanely overexposed that his Second Piano Concerto appears on no less than three series of concerts in my area within a month (by the New Jersey Symphony, the Princeton Symphony Orchestra, and of course Philadelphia), I will be rocketing in to Philly this afternoon to attend the first half of today’s matinee, then will be on the road back at intermission, arriving home in time to enjoy a cup of coffee and get ready for tonight’s appearance on Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner.

Brahms is great, but he only wrote so many concertos (four, to be exact, and – even more abused – an equal number of symphonies). I’m not discouraging anyone from attending the second half of the Philadelphia concerts. The Second Piano Concerto is an inspiring piece, and the soloist, Seong-Jin Cho, was First Prize winner at the Chopin International Competition in Warsaw in 2015. But this month, he’s also in competition with Daniil Trifonov (with the New Jersey Symphony) and Inon Barnatan (with the Princeton Symphony Orchestra) in this repertoire. And they’re both performing in my hometown.

BTW, the Philadelphia ticket was only $22 (before the handling fee). So don’t think you have to mortgage your house in order to hear some good music. This isn’t like attending a rock concert or a baseball game.

The program will be presented at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, Broad & Spruce Sts., today at 2 p.m. and tomorrow at 8 p.m. For more information, visit philorch.org.

Thank you, Philadelphia Orchestra. I just want to let you know that it is Farrenc, not Brahms, that pulled me in!

January 20, 2023
Eugene Ormandy Philadelphia’s Underrated Genius

What’s the big deal about this guy, Jenő Blau? Well, you probably know him better by his adopted name, Eugene Ormandy.

Ormandy, a Hungarian-born violinist who had studied with Jenő Hubay (for whom he was named), became a naturalized American citizen in 1927. He ultimately wound up directing The Philadelphia Orchestra for 44 years. In that capacity, he became one of the world’s most-recorded conductors.

However, in some respects, he remains a vastly underrated one. Sure, he was a superb interpreter of 19th century and post-Romantic classics (his Columbia stereo recording of Tchaikovsky’s “Pathétique” was one of my go-to favorites as a teen, and he was an authoritative conductor of Rachmaninoff and Sibelius), but he also championed much contemporary music and new works written by his adopted countrymen. Also, if ever there was a more sensitive accompanist in the concerto repertoire, I don’t know of him.

One of my favorite Ormandy records was also one of his later ones. Throughout his career Ormandy succeeded in selling Sibelius’ “Four Legends from the Kalevala,” a collection of tone poems inspired by the Finnish national epic the “Kalevala,” for the early masterpiece that it is.

Here again is the final section, “Lemminkainen’s Homeward Journey,” even more thrilling, in 1940. Not on YouTube, for some reason, but I found it posted on archive.org. You may have to adjust the volume under the video.

https://archive.org/details/Lemminkainens_Journey

The legendary Philadelphia strings in Vaughan Williams’ “Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis”

Hindemith, “Concert Music for Strings and Brass”

Ivan Davis joins Ormandy and the Philadelphians for Liszt’s “Hungarian Fantasy,” slight abridged

Bruckner “Te Deum” with Temple University Choir

World premiere performance of Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto

Shostakovich Symphony No. 4

Reinhold Glière’s “Russian Sailor’s Dance”

Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 2, with Eugene Istomin

Ormandy conducts “Scheherazade” (complete). This is the Philly Orchestra I remember from my college years.

Debussy, “Reverie”

Saint-Saens’ Symphony No. 3 “Organ”

Happy birthday, Eugene Ormandy (1899-1985)!

November 18, 2022
George Crumb Halloween Haunt

It is fortuitous indeed that George Crumb’s birthday falls so close to Halloween. It’s not for nothing that his work for electric string quartet, “Black Angels,” was used in “The Exorcist” (though it was actually inspired by the Vietnam War).

It’s a piece I first encountered on a Friday night radio show, called “Music Through the Centuries,” broadcast on Philadelphia’s now-defunct classical music station, WFLN. The host, George Diehl, was at one time WFLN’s program director, if you can believe it. He also provided program notes for the Philadelphia Orchestra. I credit his show with having inspired my own radio program, “The Lost Chord,” on WWFM The Classical Network.)

What made this particular episode so indelible (I heard it probably 35 years ago) is that Diehl introduced Crumb’s otherworldly, often hair-raising quartet by placing it in context, deftly illuminating its structure, and supplementing it with recordings of other works referenced within the piece. It was fascinating radio.

Also, having cut my teeth on the station’s usual, more traditional fare, my mind was officially blown. “Black Angels” scared the hell out of me and enthralled me completely. I immediately determined to pick up everything I could find by George Crumb.

A few years later, I heard “A Haunted Landscape” on a Philadelphia Orchestra concert, with William Smith conducting. On the same program was Maurice Ravel’s “Le tombeau de Couperin” and Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “A London Symphony!” By then, I already owned the work’s first recording, with Arthur Weisberg conducting the New York Philharmonic.

Crumb didn’t compose that many orchestral works. He was more like a master jeweler, working in miniature, and revealing a surprising number of facets in his unique – and uniquely memorable – creations.

Of course, he was more than just a “horror” composer, though his music could be creepy as hell. Many of his chamber works, especially those that employ percussion and voice, are models of economy and elegance. I always think of him as a kind of spiritual descendent of Charles Ives, in that many of the curious sonorities he explored, especially in the context of his song settings, seem to suggest truths beyond our workaday concerns.

That said, here’s some sensational Crumb to play when you’re alone with the lights out.

Happy birthday, George Crumb!

“Black Angels” in concert

“Black Angels” with score

“A Haunted Landscape”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWa4eXg-Jdo

“Star-Child” (Watch out for that “Musica Apocalyptica,” beginning at 11:47!)

“Ancient Voices of Children” in concert (“Ghost Dance” at 17:55)

October 24, 2022
Remembering Vincent Persichetti

Vincent Persichetti was born in Philadelphia on this date in 1915. He died there in 1987. Although he seems to have had more of a lasting influence as a teacher – having molded legions of budding composers through his work at Combs College of Music, the Philadelphia Conservatory, and the Juilliard School – his own compositions are invariably well-crafted and certainly well worth listening to.

Somewhere, I’ve got one of his manuscripts in a box of musical collectibles I acquired at Freeman’s Auction House, back in the day when, if no one bid on a lot, it would go down to a dollar. It may have been in with a box of conductor James De Preist’s homework. I ought to make a point to dig that out. Nothing major, maybe a fanfare or something, a short work for brass.

The Philadelphia Orchestra used to play his work from time to time, but I haven’t seen any of Persichetti’s music on their programs for years. There is a document from the Muti era, on New World Records, a CD of live performances of the Symphony No. 5 for strings and the Piano Concerto, with Robert Taub as soloist. Frankly, I prefer this symphony, recorded by Ormandy and posted here in four movements:

I. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ajw4Ayhd1AA

II. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hkAvb3Gx7A

III. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BASajjHG08

IV. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rONwSSdlDE

A 1983 documentary on Persichetti

An interview with Bruce Duffie

http://www.bruceduffie.com/persichetti.html

An afternoon with Tim Page

https://www.wnyc.org/story/an-afternoon-with-vincent-persichetti/

Happy birthday, Vincent Persichetti!

PHOTO: The Vincent Persichetti historical marker outside the Curtis Institute of Music, from which he graduated in 1939

June 6, 2022

Tag Cloud

RECENT POSTS