Classic Ross Amico

Tag: The Dryden Ensemble

Celebrate Bach’s Birthday with Music & More

March 21st is the birthday of Johann Sebastian Bach. I’ve already got my order in for a cake, and it had to be a big one, in order to accommodate 336 candles.

The Princeton Symphony Orchestra has just posted the last of its four-part series on Bach’s “The Musical Offering.” PSO musicians perform Bach’s contrapuntal, often chromatic – and for at least one canon, crabby – masterwork, with Assistant Conductor Nell Flanders offering absorbing insights into its history and structure. The series is free. Watch all four installments at princetonsymphony.org.

On Sunday, The Dryden Ensemble will stream a lecture by Bach scholar Michael Marissen on the musical aims of the “St. John Passion.” Then the following Sunday, March 21st – Bach’s birthday – experience a performance of the oratorio from last year, an especially notable concert, in that it was documented just as the world was shutting down for the pandemic. Both of the Bach events will be made available, on their respective Sundays, at 3 p.m. The lecture is free. More information and tickets for the performance are available at drydenensemble.org.

Finally, WWFM The Classical Network is in the midst of its annual “Bach 500” challenge. 500 listener donations in any amount will be matched by funds from the station’s “Bach Pot” (fortified by some very generous leprechauns). If the goal is reached, fundraising will be cancelled for Bach’s birthday. The reward will be a euphoric playlist of uninterrupted Bach, free from pecuniary concerns – lutes in place of lucre, concertos supplanting chatter, pipe organs in preference to pitching.

Won’t you be one of the Bach 500? Make a contribution now, and watch the mercury rise on the Bach thermometer at wwfm.org. Thank you for your support of classical music on WWFM – The Classical Network. It’s because of listeners just like you that we are able to continue to Bach-around-the-clock!

https://wwwfm.secureallegiance.com/wwfm/WebModule/Donate.aspx?P=DEFAULT&PAGETYPE=PLG&CHECK=vOU2bz5JCWmgCDbf53nm9ezWDeZ%2BeA1M&fbclid=IwAR0gC4oY7VhnwYX0TMEi72BAeDrj68XjjtdSx7OFSJZggVsskJqa4ZI-Vd4

IMAGE: Bach makes a musical offering in the form of a riddle canon, in the famous Elias Gottlob Haussmann portrait. The painting, which was housed in Princeton for over 60 years, in the private collection of William H. Scheide, was bequeathed by Scheide to the Bach Archive in Leipzig – the city in which Bach spent most of his creative life – where it now resides.

March 10, 2021
Baroque Music Today on The Classical Network

This afternoon on The Classical Network, we’ll go for Baroque.

First, on today’s Noontime Concert, The Dryden Ensemble will present “A Baroque Tapestry,” with works by Johann Rosenmüller, Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber, Tomaso Albinoni, Georg Muffat, and of course Johann Sebastian Bach. The program was performed at Princeton Theological Seminary’s Miller Chapel.

This weekend, Dryden will present three performances of Bach’s “St. John Passion,” at All Saints’ Church in Princeton (Friday & Saturday at 7:30 p.m.) and Trinity Episcopal Church in Solebury, PA (Sunday at 3). To find out more, look online at http://www.drydenensemble.org.

We’re also, of course, in the midst of our annual “Bach 500,” at The Classical Network.

In celebration of the anniversary of Bach’s birthday (March 21st, 1685), we’re looking for 500 listeners to step up and make a donation IN ANY AMOUNT. You set the level. When we reach 500 donations, we’ll tally in the funds from our Bach Pot – contributions solicited in advance from some especially ardent supporters – and, best of all, we’ll be able to cancel fundraising on Bach’s birthday and enjoy just his music.

You can do your part to make that happen by calling us during business hours at 1-888-232-1212, or by donating online anytime at wwfm.org. While you’re over there, at the website, you can monitor our progress by consulting our Bach 500 membership thermometer.

To keep us mindful, following today’s concert broadcast, I’ll continue along the lines of last Tuesday, by offering hourly reminders, harnessed to a short work of Bach; then another work in some way related – for example, the “Choral and Choral-Prelude ‘Ach bleib bei uns, Herr Jesu Christ,’” from Bach’s Cantata, BWV 6, reimagined by Ralph Vaughan Williams – followed by something related to the related material, which ideally will have nothing at all to do with Bach – such as an original work by Vaughan Williams or one of his colleagues – thereby keeping it varied, while still getting the message out there.

If it’s not Baroque, we’ll still fix it, from 12 to 4 p.m. EDT. Thank you for your support of WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

PHOTO: William Fawke’s statue commemorating Ralph Vaughan Williams, who annually conducted the combined choirs of the Leith Hill Music Festival in Bach’s “St. Matthew Passion”

March 10, 2020
Bach Barber & Aho on WWFM

We’ll enjoy a nice stack of Barber, Bach, and Kalevi Aho today.

Representatives of The Dryden Ensemble will stop by to talk about the group’s upcoming performances of Bach’s “St. John Passion,” which will take place this weekend, at All Saints’ Church in Princeton (Friday & Saturday at 7:30 p.m.) and Trinity Episcopal Church in Solebury, PA (Sunday at 3).
The interview and musical illustrations will be heard this afternoon at 5:00. I’ll be with you from 4 to 7 p.m EDT.

Good chat. Good music. No corn syrup, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

March 9, 2020
Busoni, Strauss, and Queen Christina on the Radio

When his parents named him Ferruccio Dante Michelangelo Benvenuto Busoni, clearly they had high expectations for their boy. These expectations were more than fulfilled, when he went on to become one of the outstanding pianists of his day, a brilliant intellectual, and an influential teacher. He also composed what may be the most grandiose piano concerto of all time.

Join me this afternoon on The Classical Network to hear Busoni’s magnum opus. The five-movement concerto, written in 1904, when the composer was 38, spans over 70 minutes and concludes with a male chorus. Chamber music it is not!

The apotheosis is a setting of a lofty text lifted from the verse drama “Aladdin,” by the Danish playwright Adam Oehlenschläger. By contrast, there are passages in the fourth movement, of much earthier stuff, that barely skirt self-parody, conjuring the specter of Chico Marx.

There was no way I would have been able to present this piece yesterday, Busoni’s birthday, during afternoon drive time, and reasonably expect to fit much else; but a Tuesday mid-afternoon is ideal for such an epic journey. The pianist will be Garrick Ohlsson, whose birthday it is tomorrow. Expect the concerto to commence around 2 p.m. EDT.

We’ll follow that with one of Richard Strauss’ lesser-heard works, the ambitious symphonic fantasy “Aus Italien” (“From Italy”), from 1886. When Strauss, at 22 years-old, employed what he believed to be a traditional Italian melody in the fantasy’s finale, he suddenly found himself the target of a lawsuit. The Neapolitan song “Funiculì, Funiculà” had been composed in celebration of a funicular cable car that was used to convey passengers up and down Mount Vesuvius – before it was predictably destroyed in an eruption in 1944. The song was composed in 1880 by Luigi Denza (music) and Peppino Turco (lyrics). It became a huge international hit and sold over a million copies. Poor Strauss. He wound up having to pay a royalty fee every time “Aus Italien” was performed.

We’ll begin our sojourn with today’s Noontime Concert, which will feature The Dryden Ensemble in a program titled “Queen Christina Goes to Rome.” The musical selections were chosen to mirror the unorthodox Swedish queen’s journey from Stockholm via Innsbruck to Italy, with excursions to Paris and Hamburg. Composers will include Dietrich Buxtehude, Louis Couperin, Arcangelo Corelli, Alessandro Scarlatti, and Johann Heinrich Schmelzer, among others.

The free-spirited queen scandalized her contemporaries by dressing as a man and refusing to marry. Equally confounding was her abdication at the age of 28, trading her throne for a life of music, art, and religion in Rome. The concert will feature actors Roberta Maxwell as Christina and Paul Hecht as the narrator, in dramatic readings from the letters and diaries of the queen and other historical figures. The program and script were assembled by Dryden artistic director Jane McKinley.

The Dryden Ensemble’s next set of concerts will take place this weekend. “Musica Stravagante” will include works for oboe and strings by German and Italian masters, including Tomaso Albinoni, Johann Sebastian Bach, Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber, and Antonio Vivaldi, again among others. The program will be presented twice, on Saturday at 7:30 p.m., at Trinity Episcopal Church in Solebury (outside New Hope, PA), and on Sunday at 3 p.m., at Princeton Theological Seminary’s Miller Chapel. For more information, visit drydenensemble.org.

I hope you’ll join me today in getting a “kick” out of music from the Apennine Peninsula, from 12 to 4 p.m. EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

Clockwise from left: The Apennine “boot;” Garbo as Queen Christina; a Vesuvian funicular car; Ferruccio Busoni enjoying a cigar

April 2, 2019
Bach & Beyond with The Dryden Ensemble

Ah! Few things are as warming in the middle of a school day as a “Bach’s lunch” – especially when it has been packaged so lovingly.

Join me for today’s Noontime Concert on The Classical Network, when we’ll present “Bach & Beyond,” with The Dryden Ensemble. On the menu will be music by George Philipp Telemann, Johann Gottlieb Janitsch, Johann Christian Bach, and Johann Sebastian Bach himself. The only thing missing will be a note from Mom.

The Dryden Ensemble’s Bach Cantata Fest will be presented on two concerts this weekend: on Saturday, October 20, at 7:30 p.m., at Trinity Episcopal Church, 6587 Upper York Road, in Solebury, PA; and on Sunday, October 21, at 3 p.m., at Miller Chapel, on the campus of Princeton Theological Seminary.

The program will include the Cantatas 87 and 154, with selected Bach arias performed by mezzo-soprano Kristen Dubenion-Smith, tenor Jason McStoots, and baritone William Sharp.

The Dryden Ensemble is made up of artistic director Jane McKinley and Julie Brye, oboes; Vita Wallace and Dongmyung Ahn, violins; Andrea Andros, viola; Rebecca Humphrey, cello; Motomi Igarashi, double bass; Daniel Swenberg, theorbo, and Webb Wiggins, chamber organ, all performing on period instruments.

The ensemble will continue its celebration of Bach on November 10 at 3 p.m. with a Bach organ recital performed by Jacob Street at Miller Chapel on the Princeton Theological Seminary campus. On January 19 & 20 the group will present “Queen Christina Goes to Rome,” a theatrical program featuring two acclaimed actors. The season will conclude on April 6 & 7 with Musica Stravagante and glorious music for oboe and strings by Albinoni, Vivaldi, Biber, Bach, and others. Tickets and information are available at drydensensemble.org.

Following today’s broadcast concert, stick around for the Symphony in B flat by Alexander Zemlinsky, a work written very much under the influence of Brahms and Dvořák. Zemlinsky’s style would evolve. Some of his mature works undoubtedly achieve greater distinction, but there’s something to be said for great tunes and abundant charm. He also happened to be the teacher of Arnold Schoenberg and Vienna’s great musical prodigy of the day, Erich Wolfgang Korngold.

Korngold, of course, went on to become one of the great film composers. He applied the same romantic opulence that made his operas so successful to his work for the silver screen. His Piano Trio in D major, Op. 1, written at the age of 13, reveals him to be already in command of the distinctive musical language that would serve him so well.

Schoenberg too wound up in Hollywood. He may have been the godfather of dodecaphonic music, but his neoclassical Suite for String Orchestra in G, his first piece composed in the New World, could almost be described as a charmer. This work “in the olden style” is wholly tonal and betrays the composer’s love of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.

I hope you’ll join me for Bach and beyond today. The lunch box doubles as a music box, from 12 to 4 p.m. EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

October 16, 2018

Tag Cloud

RECENT POSTS