Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Richard Wagner

Columbus Day Classical Music & Montserrat Caballé

Before Columbus Circle, Columbus OH, and the Knights of Columbus came… He Who Must Not Be Named.

He’s a controversial figure today, but he inspired a lot of music, and this afternoon on The Classical Network, we’ll sample some of it, including works by Richard Wagner (for a stage play), Sir William Walton (for a radio play), Victor Herbert (for the concert hall, by way of the Chicago World’s Fair), and Kurt Weill & Ira Gershwin (for film).

In addition, we’ll honor one of Spain’s greatest singers, Montserrat Caballé, who died on Saturday at the age of 85, and remember composers Louis Vierne and Toru Takemitsu, on the anniversaries of their births.

In 1492, he sailed the ocean blue. No one will be harmed in the discovery of stimulating music on Columbus Day, from 4 to 7 p.m. EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

Montserrat Caballé sings Queen Isabella alongside José Carrera’s Columbus, in the world premiere of Leonarda Balada’s “Cristóbal Cólon” (1989)

October 8, 2018
Gluck Opera Reformer You Should Know

Get ready to Gluck out.

Today marks the anniversary of the birth of Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714-1787), a composer concert promoters and marketers seem to have a hard time getting their heads around. Give them Verdi, Wagner or even Britten, and they’ll run with it. But Gluck? Who he?

Oh yeah. Isn’t he the guy who wrote the “Dance of the Blessed Spirits?”

We always hear about Gluck being a reformer, and in truth his influence on the future of opera was incalculable. He shunned floridity for its own sake. He was not a sensualist. He rebelled against the superficial effects of “opera seria,” with its showy arias ornamented beyond recognition by star castrati, to arrive at something closer to naturalism.

With Gluck, words and music bore equal weight. Drama was of the foremost importance. He tossed out the dry recitative to create a more continuous flow in the action. Performers took a back seat to emotional truth. The effect was kind of a chaste grandeur, simplicity at the service of theatrical power. Works like “Orfeo ed Euridice” and “Alceste” were radical for their time.

Gluck’s influence runs through Mozart to Weber, Berlioz and Wagner. Yet today his works are less frequently performed than those of any of his followers.

Find out more about Gluck in “Gluck the Reformer” (featuring John Eliot Gardiner, William Christie and others):

Then join me this afternoon, when among my featured works will be a selection of Gluck arias and ballet music, and even a monumental arrangement of a Gluck overture by Richard Wagner. We’ll also honor Frederick Fennell and Gilbert Kalish on their birthdays.

“Glück” means “happiness” in German, you know. We’ll cram in as much happiness as we can, this Monday afternoon from 4 to 7 p.m. EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

July 2, 2018
Marlboro Music Festival Archive Performances

With this year’s Marlboro Music Festival poised to enter its final weekend, we’ll continue our exploration of the Marlboro Music archive, with performances of Gioachino Rossini’s String Sonata No. 3 (a 1989 recording featuring violinists Lara St. John and Ivan Chan, cellist Paul Tortelier, and double bassist Timothy Cobb), Max Reger’s Introduction, Passacaglia and Fugue (a 1977 recording with pianists Yefim Bronfman and Luis Btlle), and Richard Wagner’s “Siegfried Idyll” (a 1971 performance led by Alexander Schneider).

This year’s Marlboro Music Festival runs through August 13. Learn more about this weekend’s events at marlboromusic.org. Then join me for great chamber music and chamber orchestra performances on “Music from Marlboro,” this Wednesday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

Marlboro School of Music and Festival: Official Page

August 9, 2017
Wagner A Love-Hate Birthday Serenade

“Of all the bête, clumsy, blundering, boggling, baboon-blooded stuff I ever saw on a human stage, … and of all the affected, sapless, soulless, beginningless, endless, topless, bottomless, topsiturviest, tongs and boniest doggerel of sounds I ever endured the deadliness of, that eternity of nothing was the deadliest, so far as the sound went. I never was so relieved, so far as I can remember in my life, by the stopping of any sound – not excepting railway whistles – as I was by the cessation of the cobbler’s bellowing.”

– John Ruskin on “Die Meistersinger”

“For me Wagner is impossible… he talks without ever stopping. One just can’t talk all the time.”

– Robert Schumann

“One can’t judge Wagner’s opera ‘Lohengrin’ after a first hearing, and I certainly don’t intend hearing it a second time.”

– Gioachino Rossini

“I love Wagner. But the music I prefer is that of a cat hung up by its tail outside a window and trying to stick to the panes of glass with its claws.”

– Charles Baudelaire

“I like Wagner’s music better than any other music. It is so loud that one can talk the whole time without people hearing what one says. That is a great advantage.”

– Oscar Wilde

“Is Wagner a human being at all? Is he not rather a disease? He contaminates everything he touches – he has made music sick. I postulate this viewpoint: Wagner’s art is diseased.”

– Friedrich Nietzsche

“Every time I listen to Wagner, I get the urge to invade Poland.”

– Woody Allen

“I have witnessed and greatly enjoyed the first act of everything whichWagner created, but the effect on me has always been so powerful that one act was quite sufficient; whenever I have witnessed two acts I have gone away physically exhausted; and whenever I have ventured an entire opera the result has been the next thing to suicide.”

– Mark Twain

“Wagner’s music is better than it sounds.”

– Edgar Wilson “Bill” Nye

Happy Birthday, Richard Wagner (1813-1883). Tune in today to make what you will of his art, from 4 to 7 p.m. EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

May 22, 2017
Vintage Wagner on The Lost Chord

Time to get out the crazy helmets. Tomorrow, May 22, is the birthday of Richard Wagner (1813-1883). This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll honor his legacy with a handful of historic recordings.

American baritone Lawrence Tibbett never actually sang the role of Wotan on-stage, in the context of a “Ring” cycle. However, he did record “Wotan’s Farewell and Magic Fire Music,” magnificently, in 1934, with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Leopold Stokowski.

Karl Muck was a victim of anti-German sentiment during his time as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which, unfortunately, happened to coincide with the First World War. Be that as it may, he was held in the highest regard by fellow musicians and thought by many to be one of Wagner’s finest interpreters. We’ll hear a fascinating 1927 recording of the Transformation music and the beginning of the Grail Scene from Act III of “Parsifal,” made at the Festspielhaus in Bayreuth. The recording employs the original bells designed by Wagner, which would be melted down by the Nazis for ammunition during the Second World War. So this will be a rare opportunity to experience the “Parsifal” Wagner actually knew. Muck was principal conductor of the Bayreuth Festival since 1903. He conducted “Parsifal” at Bayreuth 14 times between 1901 and 1930.

Finally, we’ll return to “Die Walkure” to wrap things up on a buoyant note with Siegmund and Sieglinde’s love music from Act I, which concludes with the lovers fleeing together into the welcoming spring. Nine months later, Sieglinde gives birth to Siegfried, the saga’s hero-without-fear. Lotte Lehmann strikes sparks with legendary Danish heldentenor Lauritz Melchoir in a 1935 recording with Bruno Walter and the Vienna Philharmonic.

The power of these performances has been undiminished by the passage of time. Join me for “Vintage Wagner,” this Sunday night at 10 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

PHOTOS: Lotte Lehmann as Sieglinde and Lauritz Melchior as Siegmund

May 21, 2017

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