Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Ralph Vaughan Williams

Ralph Vaughan Williams Birthday Celebration

It’s never truly autumn until we can celebrate the birthday of Ralph Vaughan Williams. One of England’s greatest composers, Vaughan Williams looked back to his country’s agrarian roots as a roundabout way of securing the future of its cultural identity. This Thursday morning on WPRB, we will salute the great man in all his rumpled glory by sampling from a broad cross-section of his multifaceted output.

As did so many composers who were caught in the wildfire of nationalism that swept across Europe from the mid-19th century forward, Vaughan Williams rebelled against the prevailing academicism that stretched its tendrils all the way from Germany to choke the musically “provincial” outlands. He emerged from an environment that had produced far too many knock-offs of Mendelssohn and Brahms. Vaughan Williams would revolutionize his compatriots’ perception of art music by embracing the sounds of the English countryside.

However, much like Béla Bartók, he was no simplistic, twee purveyor of folk music. On the contrary, the rhythms and inflections of his native land were already in his DNA. The songs he documented while roaming the fields and fens with his colleague, Gustav Holst, merely brought to the surface what was already innate. What he expressed in his original music was thoroughly digested and deeply personal.

Some of Vaughan Williams’ best loved works are imbued with nostalgia for a faded world, but the composer pushed forward, as well, through two world wars and into the Great Beyond. He was not a conventionally religious man, but mysticism seems to color a fair amount of his music. Other pieces stare desolation unflinchingly in the face. His lessons with Maurice Ravel made him a thoughtful orchestrator, so that throughout his life he deployed his instrumental forces with considerable creativity and expertise. Given the proper attention, there is much to engage on all levels of his music.

I hope you’ll join me as we salute this fascinating composer with five hours of lesser-known works and recordings of historic significance. While you might not want to take his instruction on the best way to tie ties, musically you will be in the hands of a master, this Thursday morning from 6 to 11 EDT on WPRB 103.3 FM and wprb.com. You can put your faith in Ralph (pronounced “Rafe”), on Classic Ross Amico.

Ralph Vaughan Williams Society

October 11, 2017
Viola Love from Marlboro Music Festival

The viola gets some love on this week’s “Music from Marlboro.” We’ll hear two very different quintets, composed over a century apart, that yet reveal their creators’ shared affinity for the instrument’s dark, rich timbre.

Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “Phantasy Quintet,” written in 1912, was one of numerous works commissioned from England’s great composers by one Walter Wilson Cobbett, a businessman and amateur musician whose dual passions were chamber music and music of the Elizabethan era. (“Phantasy” was Cobbett’s preferred spelling.) The work is full of Tudor inflections and stamped by Vaughan Williams’ tell-tale love of folk music. Vaughan Williams doubles his violas, and the instrument is heard to great effect throughout the piece. We’ll hear a performance from the 1975 Marlboro Music Festival, with James Buswell and Sachiko Nakajima, violins; Philipp Naegele and Caroline Levine, viola; and Anne Martindale, cello.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, too, adds a second viola to his String Quintet No. 5 in D Major, K. 593. Composed in 1790, the work was recollected by the composer’s widow, Costanze, to have been written for another musical amateur, speculated to be Johann Trost. Trost must have been quite the gifted dilettante. He also knew Haydn from Esterhaza, and Haydn dedicated some of his quartets to him. When Haydn and Mozart played through the D Major Quintet together before Haydn’s first visit to London, the two men took turns indulging in the first viola part.

The work was known for centuries as the “Zigzag” because of an alteration to the original manuscript that modified what had been a descending chromatic figure in the final movement into something decidedly more humorous. We’ll hear a performance from Marlboro in 2005, with Sarah Kapustin and Diana Cohen, violins; Mark Holloway and Sebastian Krunnies, viola; and David Soyer, cello.

The two quintets will be divided by an evocative “Elegiac Trio” by Sir Arnold Bax, composed in 1916. The work, scored for flute, viola, and harp, appeared the year after Debussy’s trio for the same instrumental combination (which Bax may or may not have known). Its alluring melancholy emerged from a world at war. Bax was especially affected by escalating tensions between England and his beloved Ireland, which had just boiled over into violence with the Easter Rising. We’ll hear a performance of the trio from 1978, with Carol Wincenc, flute; Caroline Levine, viola; and Moya Wright, harp.

Leave your viola jokes in the comments section, if you must; then join me for more exceptional music-making from the archives of the Marlboro Music Festival, this Wednesday evening at 6 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

Marlboro School of Music and Festival: Official Page

October 11, 2017
Musical Memorials for the Fallen Composers

War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothin’.

Still, a great many brave soldiers laid down their lives in combat and numerous unfortunate civilians were collateral casualties. Join me this Thursday morning, in advance of Memorial Day, as we salute the musical dead of all countries.

We’ll hear music by composers who died too young: George Butterworth, André Caplet, Cecil Coles, Enrique Granados, Ivor Gurney, Frederick Septimus Kelly, Alberic Magnard, Rudi Stephan, and Anton Webern. We’ll also hear elegies for the fallen by Romeo Cascarino, Aaron Copland, Bernard Herrmann, Gustav Holst, Charles Ives, Maurice Ravel, and Ralph Vaughan Williams.

The morning’s highlight will be John Fould’s “A World Requiem,” scored for a mass of soloists, choristers, and orchestral musicians to rival those of Mahler’s “Symphony of a Thousand.” Composed between 1919 and 1921, the piece was conceived by Foulds as a memorial to the dead of all nations in the wake of the First World War. It was given its first performance at Royal Albert Hall on Armistice Night, November 11, 1923. It then lay in neglect for 80 years, until it was resurrected by Leon Botstein, who conducted the work’s revival at Royal Albert Hall on November 11, 2007. We’ll hear his recording, which was issued two months later on the Chandos label.

I hope you’ll join me for pieces of war and prayers for peace, Thursday morning from 6 to 11 EDT, on WPRB 103.3 FM and wprb.com. Sleep is short, but memory is long, on Classic Ross Amico.

PHOTO: Ralph Vaughan Williams in uniform. His protégé, George Butterworth, honored with the Military Cross for acts of valor on the Somme, was killed by a German sniper at the age of 31.

May 24, 2017
Shakespeare Birthday Music on WPRB

First comes Groundhog Day, then comes Easter, then comes Shakespeare’s birthday. All that remains is for us to lock up a sacrifice in the Wicker Man on April 30 and Sulis will have been appeased.

We don’t know when, exactly, the Bard was born, but his baptismal date is April 26, 1564. Since it’s human nature to try to keep things neat, his natal day is generally held to be April 23, the very date of his death in 1616.

I hope you’ll join me this morning, as we celebrate the Bard, with a full morning of music inspired by his plays. We’ll hear selections from composers who were Shakespeare’s contemporaries, right on down to Paul Moravec’s “Tempest Fantasy,” which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2004.

Other treats will include a recording of Ralph Vaughan Williams conducting his own “Serenade to Music,” after a text from “The Merchant of Venice,” a reconstructed duet from a projected opera on the subject of “Romeo and Juliet” by Peter Ilych Tchaikovsky, and incidental music for a production of “Antony and Cleopatra” by French composer Florent Schmitt, in an opulent recording conducted by JoAnn Falletta.

Just some of the ingredients that will go into a secret recipe made public from 6 to 11 a.m. EDT, on WPRB 103.3 FM and wprb.com. We engage in a little Shake and bake, on Classic Ross Amico.

If music be the food of love, bake on.

April 20, 2017
Voice Trio Concert at Temple Judea

On today’s Noontime Concert, Emily Burn, Victoria Couper, and Clemmie Franks, the female vocal trio known as Voice, will present a program titled “If Music Be the Food of Love.”

The concert will be made up of songs exploring the beauty, heartache, and humor of love, with repertoire drawn from medieval France and Germany, 18th century catches, and arrangements of Shakespearean and traditional songs from England and Scotland. Also on the program will be works commissioned by the group from contemporary British composers.

The concert took place at Temple Judea of Bucks County in February. Temple Judea is located in Furlong, PA. Voice will be joined by the Temple Judea Choir for several of the selections. To find out more about Temple Judea, which will host the Grammy Award winning Turtle Island String Quartet this Saturday at 7:30 p.m., visit templejudea.org.

Following the noontime concert broadcast, I hope you’ll stick around for Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Symphony No. 9, among our featured works. The concert will begin at 12:00 EST. I’ll be there, spinning the platters until 4, on WWFM – The Classical Network and at wwfm.org.

November 15, 2016

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