Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Ralph Vaughan Williams

  • Poetry and Music on WPRB This Week

    Poetry and Music on WPRB This Week

    If music and sweet poetry agree,
    As they must needs, the sister and the brother,
    Then must the love be great ’twixt thee and me,
    Because thou lov’st the one and I the other.
    Dowland to thee is dear, whose heavenly touch
    Upon the lute doth ravish human sense;
    Spenser to me, whose deep conceit is such,
    As passing all conceit, needs no defence.
    Thou lov’st to hear the sweet melodious sound
    That Phœbus’ lute, the queen of music, makes;
    And I in deep delight am chiefly drowned
    Whenas himself to singing he betakes:
    One god is god of both, as poets feign,
    One knight loves both, and both in thee remain.

    – Richard Barnfield, 1574-1621 (attributed to Shakespeare)

    This Thursday morning on WPRB, we invoke the Muses (or a number of them anyway) for five hours of poetry and music.

    We’ll hear our share of singing, of course – choral settings and lieder – but also a satisfying number of orchestral and instrumental works, with music inspired by the poetry or persons of Matthew Arnold, Aloysius Bertrand, William Blake, Robert Burns, Lord Byron, Lewis Carroll, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, E.E. Cummings, A.E. Houseman, Victor Hugo, Ben Johnson, Edward Lear, Federico Garcia Lorca, Edgar Allan Poe, Alexander Pushkin, William Shakespeare, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Wallace Stevens, Dylan Thomas and William Butler Yeats, or as many of those as I can get to.

    We’ll also enjoy a visit from J.D. Burnett, founder and artistic director of the Kinnara Ensemble, which will perform at The Hun School of Princeton this Saturday at 8 p.m., presenting Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “Serenade to Music,” along with works by Johannes Brahms and others. He’ll drop by at around 10:00 to tell us a little bit more about their season.

    I hope you’ll join me for a banquet of poetry and music, tomorrow morning from 6 to 11 ET, at WPRB 103.3 FM or online at wprb.com. We’re not averse to verse on Classic Ross Amico.

  • Sir David Willcocks A Choral Legend Remembered

    Sir David Willcocks A Choral Legend Remembered

    Sir David Willcocks did so much, so well, and for so long, it’s hard to believe he’s gone. Particularly renowned for his work with the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge, which he led from 1957 to 1974, he and the choir received world-wide exposure through their albums and the annual Christmas Eve broadcast of “Nine Lessons and Carols.”

    Willcocks set down notable recordings of Thomas Tallis’ “Spem in Alium,” Gregorio Allegri’s “Miserere,” choral masterworks of Johann Sebastian Bach, and what many regard as the definitive interpretation of the Fauré Requiem.

    His work on “Carols for Choirs,” a series of anthologies he co-edited with Reginald Jacques and John Rutter, yielded the most widely used source of carols in the British Anglican tradition, very popular among choral societies. Many of the pieces had been written, or arranged, for the annual Service of “Nine Lessons and Carols.”

    In addition to his considerable accomplishments in the classical realm, Willcocks directed his London Bach Choir in the Rolling Stones song, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.”

    This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we remember arguably the most esteemed British choral director of his generation, who died on September 17 at the age of 95, with performances of music composed by a couple of his countrymen.

    It may seem like an awfully long stretch, to reach from Mick Jagger to the New Testament, but in the writing of “Sancta Civitas” (“The Holy City”), Ralph Vaughan Williams turned to the Book of Revelation (so perhaps it’s not so far off, after all). The oratorio, which spans just a little over 30 minutes, received its first performance in 1926. Late in life, Vaughan Williams claimed it was his favorite among his choral works. We’ll hear a classic recording with tenor Ian Partridge and baritone John Shirley-Quirk.

    In the 1970s, Willcocks became director of the Royal College of Music. We’ll sample some of his work with the chamber choir there, with performances of two pieces by Gustav Holst: “Hymn to Dionysus,” composed in 1913, with its presentiments of “Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity” from “The Planets,” and a selection from “Choral Hymns from the ‘Rig Veda,’” written between 1908 and 1912, one of numerous works to grow out of the composer’s fascination with Sanskrit literature.

    I hope you’ll join me for “King David,” as we honor the legendary Sir David Willcocks, this Sunday night at 10 ET, with a repeat Wednesday evening at 6; or that you’ll listen to it later as a webcast, at wwfm.org.

  • Beat the Heat with Wintry Film Scores

    Beat the Heat with Wintry Film Scores

    Though the weather is uncharacteristically lovely today in the Trenton-Princeton area, I wholly expect to be sweating it out again in front of the air conditioner sometime soon. (It will be back to 90 by the weekend.) In that glass-half-empty frame of mind, this week on “Picture Perfect,” we’ll have an hour of aural escapes from the grim heat of summer.

    “The Snow Storm” (1964) is an adaptation of Pushkin’s “The Tales of the Late Ivan Petrovich Belkan.” This year marks the centenary of the birth of the composer, Georgy Sviridov. The Waltz and Romance from “The Snow Storm” enjoyed particular popularity, bringing Sviridov two of his greatest hits.

    Then Arthur Honegger will take us to higher altitudes with his music for “The Demon of the Himalayas” (1935), complete with the eerie electronic timbre of the ondes Martenot.

    Ralph Vaughan Williams will guide us to the South Pole with selections from his score for “Scott of the Antarctic” (1948). The music perfectly reflects the sublime, austere beauty of a hostile environment. The score became the basis for Vaughan Williams’ Symphony No. 7, “Sinfonia Antarctica.”

    Finally, the “Battle on the Ice” sequence from “Alexander Nevsky” (1938) provides a textbook marriage of music and film. Director Sergei Eisenstein granted the composer, Sergei Prokofiev, the unusual luxury of cutting the images to suit his music, as opposed to the usual practice, which is the other way around. The result is not only one of the great films, but also one of the great film scores.

    Chill out with wintry scenes from world cinema this week, on “Picture Perfect” – music from the movies – this Friday evening at 6, with a repeat Saturday morning at 6; or listen to it later as a webcast at wwfm.org.

    PHOTO: Very cool

  • Howard Ferguson Composer’s Lost Chord Rediscovered

    Howard Ferguson Composer’s Lost Chord Rediscovered

    Howard Ferguson is an interesting figure. Born in Belfast in 1908, he had ambitions to become a composer. To this end, he traveled to London, where he studied at the Royal College of Music with, among others, Ralph Vaughan Williams. He also met and befriended a fellow student, Gerald Finzi. He achieved early success with works like the Octet of 1933, and no less a personage than Jascha Heifetz recorded his Violin Sonata No. 1.

    Even so, over the decades his music has slipped from consciousness, no doubt helped by the fact that by mid-life, he felt he had said everything he had to say as a composer. He devoted his last four decades to musicological pursuits, editing and promoting works of Purcell, Schubert and Finzi. In the 1990s, he also wrote a cookbook, “Cooking Solo.” Ferguson died in 1999, not long after his 91st birthday.

    Thankfully, he lived long enough to hear some fine recordings as part of a modest revival of his music in the 1980s and ‘90s. A number of his chamber works were released on the Hyperion label by fine musicians like Thea King and members of the Nash Ensemble; his Piano Concerto was recorded for EMI by Howard Shelley; and Richard Hickox conducted a disc of his orchestral works for Chandos.

    Also on the latter album is what turned out to be Ferguson’s last completed work, for chorus and orchestra, “The Dream of the Rood,” composed in 1958. After that, the composer embarked on a string quartet, but became frustrated by the lack of a fresh perspective and tore the thing up.

    “The Dream of the Rood” is based on an 8th century Anglo-Saxon poem which marries the Passion story with characteristics of the secular heroic tradition. The poem is framed by a narrator’s vision of a magnificent bejeweled tree. Upon closer inspection, however, he finds its jewels bespattered with blood. It becomes apparent that this tree was the very same upon which Christ was crucified.

    The middle portion of the poem is told from the tree’s perspective, with the tree being cut down and carried away for the purpose of the crucifixion. The nails pierce the tree, yet man and tree endure, refusing to fall, bearing unimaginable pain for the sake of mankind. Just as Christ is resurrected, so is the Cross resurrected, now adorned with gold and silver. It is honored above all trees, just as Christ is honored above all men. The narrator gives praise to God, filled with hope at the prospect of eternal life and a desire to be nearer the glorious Cross.

    “The Dream of the Rood” will be the featured work on the “The Lost Chord” this Easter Sunday. I hope you’ll join me for “Rood Awakening,” tomorrow night at 10 ET, with a repeat Wednesday evening at 6; or that you’ll listen to it later as a webcast at http://www.wwfm.org.

    PHOTO: Portions of the poem are engraved on the 8th century Ruthwell Cross (left, as it appeared between 1823 and 1887; and right, at its current location at Ruthwell Church, Dumfriesshire, Scotland)

  • Roy Douglas Arranger of Les Sylphides Dies at 107

    Roy Douglas Arranger of Les Sylphides Dies at 107

    I am very sorry to share the news that Roy Douglas has died at the age of 107. Douglas, best known for his arrangement of Chopin keyboard works into the ballet “Les Sylphides,” was the longtime personal assistant of both Ralph Vaughan Williams and Sir William Walton. Until the day of his death, he was listed as vice president of the Ralph Vaughan Williams Society. God speed, Mr. Douglas.

    http://www.kentnews.co.uk/news/tributes_paid_to_one_of_britain_s_most_distinguished_musicians_roy_douglas_after_he_dies_aged_107_1_4007351

    PHOTO: Douglas (with pipe) and RVW in 1953

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