Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Rachel Barton Pine

Enjoy Your Coffee Black on “Sweetness and Light”

Very little is known about the Chevalier de Meude-Monpas. Among what we DO know is that he was a musketeer in the service of Louis XVI, who went into exile with the onset of the French Revolution. He also studied music in Paris and published six concertos for violin in 1786. In 1997, violinist Rachel Barton (now Rachel Barton Pine) put together a revelatory album for Cedille Records, “Violin Concertos by Black Composers of the 18th and 19th Centuries.” Meude-Monpas’ Violin Concerto No. 4 will be among the featured works this morning on “Sweetness and Light,” cumulatively guaranteed to put a smile on your face.*

Much better known, William Grant Still was regarded in his day as the “Dean of Afro-American Composers.” He the first composer of color to have a symphony performed by a major orchestra, the first to have a symphony widely performed, the first to conduct a major orchestra, and the first to have an opera televised nationally. A pupil of both George Whitefield Chadwick and Edgard Varèse, Still certainly had “serious” credentials, but he also worked in pit bands and wrote arrangements for Hollywood musicals. In many senses, he was the quintessential American composer. Also, he always knew how to write a good tune. This morning we’ll enjoy his “Danzas de Panama,” performed by the Oregon String Quartet.

It took nearly 90 years for Florence Price to become an overnight success. Price was the first African American woman to have a symphony performed by a major orchestra. Her Symphony No. 1 was played by the Chicago Symphony, conducted by Frederick Stock, in 1933. But it’s only fairly recently, after decades of comparative neglect, that her music has finally begun to gain traction. From a 2-disc set devoted to her piano works on the Guild label, we’ll hear Kirsten Johnson play “Dreamboat.”

Duke Ellington requires little introduction. He was a major figure in American music, especially in the field of jazz. But for the past hundred years or so, there has been quite a bit of “blurring of the lines” between genres of art music. In 1943, Ellington composed “New World a-Comin’,” a work for piano and 15-piece band. He never wrote down the piano part, so it was reconstructed by ear by Maurice Peress from a recording made of an Ellington concert at Carnegie Hall in 1943. Subsequently, Peress expanded the jazz band to full orchestra. The soloist on the recording we’ll hear, Jeffrey Biegel, obtained permission from Sir Roland Hanna to transcribe the improvised final cadenza from a recording Hanna made with the American Symphony Orchestra under Peress’ baton.

We’ll be enjoying our coffee black on “Sweetness and Light,” this Saturday morning at 11:00 EST/8:00 PST, exclusively on KWAX Classical Oregon!

Stream it, wherever you are, at the link:

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

——–

* Please note: Meude-Monpas is not to be confused with that other swashbuckling composer, the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, whose music also appears on Barton Pine’s record.

February 21, 2026
Roque Cordero Panama’s Only Composer

He’s not only Panama’s greatest composer. He’s Panama’s ONLY composer. At least according to Roque Cordero, stated half-jokingly in an interview he gave in 1989, when he had just turned 72 years-old.

Cordero’s music tends to balance Panamanian folklore with more advanced techniques, as exemplified in perhaps his most frequently performed work, the “Eight Miniatures for Small Orchestra” of 1948.
More challenging is his Violin Concerto from 1962. I only just came across a concert performance of the piece from 2010 with Rachel Barton Pine as soloist – in the work’s Panamanian premiere? – which I’m adding to the links below.

I was already familiar with the concerto from Paul Freeman’s “Black Composers Series,” which originally appeared on vinyl, on Columbia Records, back in the 1970s (reissued as a box set of CDs by Sony Classical only in 2019). Sanford Allen was the soloist in the world premiere recording. Barton Pine’s performance is distinguished not only by her characteristically superb commitment, but also because the concert actually took place in the composer’s home town of Panama City. Cordero was born there on this date in 1917.

He won a scholarship to pursue music education at the University of Minnesota. There he studied conducting with Dmitri Mitropolous. It was Mitropolous who introduced him to Ernst Krenek, with whom he studied composition at Hamline University. (Mitropolous, recognizing his promise, paid all his expenses.)

Back in Panama, Cordero became director of the National Music Institute and was appointed artistic director and conductor of the Panama National Symphony. Later, he was assistant director of the Latin American Music Center, professor of composition at Indiana University, and, from 1972, distinguished professor emeritus at Illinois State University. He died in Dayton, Ohio, in 2008, at the age of 91.

“I am Panamanian,” he told Bruce Duffie, in the 1989 interview linked below. “I am not an American citizen, simply because I represent something to my country. If I become an American citizen, I would be just one more composer of the United States. I am a composer from Panama. When you read about me, you will find that I am the only composer from Panama, and because I am the only one, I am called the best. If there were two, I wouldn’t be the best [laughs], and I have to be the best. Unfortunately, Panama doesn’t have a musical tradition. How I became a composer is a mystery to me, and to anyone who has studied the music of Latin America.”

Start with the “Adagio trágico” or “Sonatina Rítmica.” Then move on to “Eight Miniatures for Small Orchestra.” When you feel like your ears are awake, only then, check out Barton Pine’s performance of Cordero’s Violin Concerto.

Happy birthday, Roque Cordero!

“Adagio trágico” (1946-55), begun after the death of the composer’s mother; taken up again after the assassination of Panamanian President José Antonio Remón Cantera, whose wife had been one of Cordero’s benefactors

“Sonatina Rítmica” (1943)

“Eight Miniatures for Small Orchestra” (1948)

Symphony No. 2 (1957)

Violin Concerto (1962)

Interview with Bruce Duffie

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

August 16, 2022
Rachel Barton Pine on The Classical Network

When you tune in to The Classical Network this afternoon at 4:00 EST, you’ll be able to enjoy a conversation with Rachel Barton Pine, Violinist. Pine will be a guest of the Princeton Symphony Orchestra this Sunday, when she appears as the soloist in Niccolò Paganini’s Violin Concerto No. 1. The concert will take place at Princeton University’s Richardson Auditorium in Alexander Hall. Also on the program will be works of Leoš Janáček and Igor Stravinsky. Pine will tell us a little more about the concert, her insights, and her work promoting music by Black composers, both through her foundation and a new recording on the Cedille Records label.

We’ll round out the hour with a recording on Boston Records of Princeton Symphony music director Rossen Milanov conducting a performance of Reinhold Glière’s Harp Concerto, with Gretchen Van Hoesen, principal harpist of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.

At 8:00 tonight, Carl Hemmingsen will host a broadcast concert with Milanov conducting the Princeton Symphony. Guest soloist Simone Dinnerstein will perform the Keyboard Concerto No. 7 by Johann Sebastian Bach and the Piano Concerto No. 3, a PSO co-commission, by Philip Glass. The program will also include works by Mason Bates and Maurice Ravel.

In matters unrelated to the PSO, it’s also the birthdays today of Paul Hindemith, Antipodean colossus Alfred Hill, and neglected Baroque master Guillaume Dumanoir. We’ll celebrate with some of their music, and more, in the 5:00 hour.

At 6:00, we’ll turn our attention to music for the silver screen, as we do every Friday, on “Picture Perfect.” This week, we’ll anticipate Thanksgiving with film scores by Aaron Copland, James Horner, Hugo Friedhofer, and John Williams.

It’s a veritable cornucopia! Give thanks for variety in music. Make us your horn of plenty, at WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

November 16, 2018

Tag Cloud

RECENT POSTS