Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Princeton University

Princeton Reunions Weekend Music on WPRB

Tomorrow, get ready for a ton of princely music on WPRB, as we kick off Princeton University Reunions Weekend with a morning full of works composed or performed by Princeton faculty and alumni.

Needless to say, Princeton University has had an exceptionally rich musical history, between the mid-century experimentalists, the visiting professors and talented students from around the world, and at least two Pulitzer Prize winners (three if you count Milton Babbitt’s lifetime achievement award). The scene remains vibrant, and we’ll hear works representative of Princeton’s current faculty composers and performers. Music by Babbitt, Paul Lansky, Steven Mackey, and Roger Sessions will be presented cheek-by-jowl with that of Johann Sebastian Bach, Camille Saint-Saëns, Isaac Albéniz, and Benjamin Britten.

We’ll have the eye of The Tiger, or at least his or her ear, as we present music composed and performed by Princeton University faculty and alumni, this Thursday morning from 6 to 11 EDT on WPRB 103.3 FM and wprb.com. Orange is the color of our true love’s hair, on Classic Ross Amico.

You’ll find more about this year’s Reunions, including a complete schedule of events, when following this link:

http://alumni.princeton.edu/goinback/reunions/2017/

May 31, 2017
Chamber Music Concerts in Princeton & Solebury

Good things come in small packages on upcoming concerts of two area chamber music ensembles. Richardson Chamber Players will present “England’s Green and Pleasant Land” at Princeton University’s Richardson Auditorium on Sunday, and Concordia Chamber Players will present “All Things Strings” at Trinity Episcopal Church, Solebury, PA, on Feb. 26. Both concerts will begin at 3 p.m.

The Princeton University Concerts program will highlight folk-inflected works by Ralph Vaughan Williams (“Merciless Beauty,” on texts of Geoffrey Chaucer), Gerald Finzi (“Five Bagatelles” for clarinet and piano), John McCabe, and Benjamin Britten, with a classic example of the renowned English facility for writing for string orchestra, Edward Elgar’s “Serenade for Strings in E minor.”

Concordia will present string music on a more intimate scale, with quartets by Philip Glass and Claude Debussy alongside a quintet by Antonin Dvořák.

Glass, who turned 80 on Jan. 31, wrote his String Quartet No. 2 in 1983. It grew out of incidental music he composed for a production of Samuel Beckett’s “Company.” Debussy’s String Quartet in G minor, from 1893, is universally regarded as one of the greatest of French string quartets; it is certainly one of the most popular.

Dvořák wrote his String Quintet No. 3 in E-flat major, also from 1893, during the same trip that yielded his more famous “American” String Quartet. The composer had been lured to the United States from Bohemia to take up the directorship of the National Conservatory of Music in New York. He summered at a Czech community in Spillville, IA. The environment obviously agreed with him, as both works share an ingratiatingly sunny disposition. The music brims with Bohemian inflections and American inspiration.

You can read more about it in my article in today’s Trenton Times.

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

PHOTOS (clockwise from left): Concordia artistic director Michelle Djokic, Glass, Debussy and Dvořák

February 17, 2017
NJ Classical Concerts Your 2017 Resolution

No matter what 2017 may hold, you should make it a New Year’s resolution to catch as many concerts as you can. Check out representative enticements from the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, the Princeton Symphony Orchestra, McCarter Theatre Center, the Capital Philharmonic of New Jersey, Princeton University Concerts, Downtown Concert Series, Princeton University Glee Club, Princeton University Orchestra, Princeton Pro Musica, Boheme Opera NJ, Westminster Opera Theatre, VOICES Chorale, and Westminster Community Orchestra, in my article in today’s Trenton Times.

http://www.nj.com/times-entertainment/index.ssf/2017/01/classical_music_several_local.html

IMAGE: While we’re on the subject of musical resolutions…

January 6, 2017
Stravinsky at Princeton A 50 Year Remembrance

When an artist like Igor Stravinsky comes to town, you’re not likely to forget – even 50 years later.

Stravinsky was 84 years-old in 1966, and regarded as perhaps the greatest composer of his day, when he was commissioned by Princeton University and Stanley Seeger to write his “Requiem Canticles.” The work was written to the memory of Seeger’s mother, Helen Buchanan Seeger, a benefactor of the university and especially the university’s music department.

Stravinsky described the piece as his “pocket requiem,” six movements spanning roughly 15 minutes. The work is sung in Latin and rendered in the composer’s later, twelve-tone idiom. It was given its debut at McCarter Theatre Center on October 8 of that year. It would be Stravinsky’s last major work. It was played at his own funeral in Venice in 1971.

To mark the 50th anniversary of Stravinsky’s visit, the composer will be remembered, musically, on two programs to be performed at the university this weekend. Michael Pratt will conduct the Princeton University Orchestra in a suite from the composer’s ballet “The Firebird” on Friday at 7:30 p.m., and Gabriel Crouch will lead the Princeton University Glee Club in the choral masterpiece “Les Noces” on Sunday at 3 p.m. Both works will be presented at Richardson Auditorium.

Find out more, and read first-hand accounts of the composer’s visit from Maida Pollock, then manager of the university’s concerts, and Bill Lockwood, then, as now, McCarter’s programming director, in my article in today’s Trenton Times:

http://www.nj.com/times-entertainment/index.ssf/2016/12/classical_music_puo_pugc_so_pe.html

PHOTO: Stravinsky (right) with his assistant, Robert Craft, in 1964

December 9, 2016
Stravinsky’s Princeton Premiere 50th Anniversary

It was 50 years ago that Igor Stravinsky came to Princeton to give the world premiere of his new work for chorus and orchestra, the “Requiem Canticles.” The composer, then 84 years-old, was seen lying flat on his back in the McCarter Theatre box office, trying to conserve his energy. He stunned everyone by leading the work’s first performance in October of 1966. (Many had expected to see his assistant, Robert Craft, take over following rehearsals.)

Tomorrow morning on WPRB, we honor the 50th anniversary of Stravinsky’s Princeton University residency. We’ll have a full morning of his music, including the early Symphony in E-flat, composed while he was yet an apprentice of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, the ballet “Le baiser de la fée” (“The Fairy’s Kiss”), written in homage to Tchaikovsky, and his final masterpiece, the “Requiem Canticles.”

Dropping by at 10:00 will be Michael Pratt, who will conduct the suite from Stravinsky’s “The Firebird” on two concerts of the Princeton University Orchestra, on Dec. 8 & 9, and Gabriel Crouch, who will lead a program including Stravinsky’s “Les Noces,” with the Princeton University Glee Club and So Percussion, on Dec. 11. All three concerts will be held at Richardson Auditorium.

And we’ll have yet another special treat: some recorded comments by Maida Pollock, whose job it was to pull the concert together in 1966, culled from a phone conversation she granted from her current home in Hawaii. We’ll hear those around 9:00.

I hope you’ll join me for this multi-faceted salute to Igor Stravinsky, tomorrow morning from 6 to 11 EST, on WPRB 103.3 FM and at wprb.com. We’ve always got an ear for Igor, on Classic Ross Amico.

December 1, 2016

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