Classic Ross Amico

Tag: The Lost Chord

George Walker Pulitzer Winner Remembrance

George Walker would have been 99 years-old today.

Walker was the first African-American recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Music – as recently as 1996 – for “Lilacs for Voice and Orchestra.” He was the first black pianist to present a solo recital at New York’s Town Hall (in 1945). He was the first black performer to appear as soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra (performing Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3). He was the first black musician to graduate from the Curtis Institute of Music (where he studied with Rudolf Serkin and Rosario Scalero).

Walker died on August 23, 2018, at the age of 96. This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll celebrate this trailblazing artist with a program of four of his original works, including his Piano Sonata No. 2 (with the composer himself at the keyboard), the award-winning “Lilacs” (after poetry of Walt Whitman), “Address for Orchestra” (his first major orchestral work), and “Lyric for Strings” (his most famous music, in its original version for string quartet).

Born in Washington, D.C., Walker was a longtime resident of Montclair, NJ. His father emigrated from Kingston, Jamaica, to study at Temple University School of Medicine; Walker’s mother supervised his first piano lessons. He was admitted to the Oberlin School of Music at the age of 14. He was then admitted to the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, and later attended the Eastman School. For two years, he studied in Paris with famed pedagogue Nadia Boulanger.

Walker’s own academic career included posts with Dillard University in New Orleans, the Dalcroze School of Music, the New School for Social Research, Smith College, the University of Colorado Boulder, Rutgers University (where he served as chairman of the music department), the Peabody Institute of John Hopkins University, and the University of Delaware.

He was the father of two sons, violinist and composer Gregory T.S. Walker and playwright Ian Walker. His sister was the pianist Frances Walker-Slocum.

By his own assessment, Walker was a composer more interested in building “elegant structures” than in “creating beauty.” Depending on one’s sensibility, it could be argued that he achieved both.

I hope you’ll join me in “Perambulating with Walker,” this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

A fascinating interview with Walker by Frank J. Oteri, which, among other things, lends an added dimension to Walker’s most frequently performed music (the “Lyric”) and offers insights into his life and musical philosophy. Also, some great photos!

https://nmbx.newmusicusa.org/george-walker-concise-and-precise/

Do you enjoy exploring unusual and neglected repertoire like that offered on “The Lost Chord?” Whatever it is you appreciate about WWFM The Classical Network, we hope you will help support it with your contribution today. Make a donation through Wednesday, June 30 (the end of our fiscal year), and help balance our budget, at wwfm.org.

We couldn’t do it without enthusiastic and committed listeners like you. Thank you for all that you do to keep classical music on the radio!

https://wwwfm.secureallegiance.com/wwfm/WebModule/Donate.aspx?P=DEFAULT&PAGETYPE=PLG&CHECK=vOU2bz5JCWmgCDbf53nm9ezWDeZ%2beA1M

June 27, 2021
Early Music Month on The Lost Chord

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll celebrate Early Music Month with three works by contemporary American composers who look back to the Renaissance.

William Kraft (b. 1923), long associated with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, composed “Vintage Renaissance” for the Boston Pops. The work incorporates two 15th century melodies: “Danza,” by Francesco de la Torre, and an anonymous “bransle.”

George Frederick McKay (1899-1970), the so-called “Dean of Northwest Composers,” founded the composition department at the University of Washington, where he taught for over 40 years. His “Suite on Sixteenth Century Hymn Tunes” is based on works by Louis Bourgeois (c. 1510-1559), compiler of Calvinist hymn tunes and composer of the Protestant doxology known as the “Old 100th.”

Lukas Foss (1922-2009), the German-born musical prodigy who settled in the United States in 1937, composed his “Renaissance Concerto” in 1986. The work, for flute and orchestra, falls into four movements: “Intrada;” “Baroque Interlude” (on a theme of Rameau); “Recitative” (after Monteverdi); and “Jouissance” (after a 1612 madrigal by a composer of the name David Melville).

I hope you’ll join me, as American composers cast an affectionate look back, on “It’s Never Too Late to Be Early,” this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

March 28, 2021
Kápralová and Smyth: Forgotten Female Composers

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” the focus will be on outstanding works by two extraordinary female composers.

Vitězslava Kápralová (1915-1940) was one of the great hopes of Czech music, a figure who undoubtedly would be much better known had she not died of tuberculosis at the age of 25. As it stands, her reputation is only beginning to emerge from the shadow of her teacher and lover, Bohuslav Martinu.

Kápralová’s String Quartet was written while she was yet a student at the Prague Conservatory, where her teachers included Vitězslav Novák and Václav Talich. (She studied with Martinu later in Paris.) The work was completed in 1936, when Kápralová was about 21 years-old.

More about Kápralová here, in this article written to mark her centenary in 2015:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/classicalmusic/11365848/The-tragedy-of-Europes-great-forgotten-female-composer.html?fbclid=IwAR1EgKzOjglhAKe-58wHwivhYjI1LtTCPzgr0efhV0xuf0898oeeZYbJHU0

Ethel Smyth (later DAME Ethel Smyth, 1858-1944) was one of the most vocal advocates of the women’s suffrage movement in England. She overcame early opposition to a career in music on the part of her father to receive the praise of George Bernard Shaw, who called her Mass “magnificent.”

However, her works were often better-appreciated abroad. Her operas, in particular, were embraced in Germany. One of them, “Der Wald,” was the only opera by a woman composer mounted by New York’s Metropolitan opera for over a century!

Smyth served time in prison for putting out the windows of politicians who opposed a woman’s right to vote. She also wrote for the cause “The March of the Women.” When Sir Thomas Beecham went to visit her in jail, he witnessed her conducting through the bars of her window with a toothbrush as her associates gathered for exercise in the courtyard.

Smyth’s “Serenade in D” – a symphony in all but name – was her first orchestral score, composed in 1890, when she was about 32 years-old. In my opinion, it’s better than just about anything composed by her contemporary, Sir Hubert Parry, and much more compelling than the symphonies of Sir Charles Villiers Stanford.

More about Smyth here, in this piece put together in connection with a revival of her opera, “The Wreckers,” by the great Leon Botstein:

https://www.npr.org/sections/deceptivecadence/2015/07/23/410033088/one-feisty-victorian-womans-opera-revived?fbclid=IwAR2GIlgZ3p6rwkh8dFa-2H7X27tQPRRKFK_TLnuxWI67kayucG8tuXkOj5I

I hope you’ll join me for music by these two extraordinary women – “A Woman’s Place is in the Concert Hall” – this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

Vitězslava Kápralová honored on a postage stamp; Ethel Smyth taken into custody

March 21, 2021
St Patrick’s Day Irish Music WWFM

On behalf of the O’Dalaigh clan, on me mother’s side, sincere wishes for a happy St. Patrick’s Day! If you be lookin’ for music on Irish themes, here be a few shamrocks to keep you shaking – webcasts of select installments of me WWFM shows, “Picture Perfect” and “The Lost Chord.” You need merely follow the the links and click on “listen.”

PICTURE PERFECT, “Presentiments of St. Patrick” (air date: 3/13/20)

Raise a pint (or two or three) to selections from the moving pictures, including “The Luck of the Irish” (Cyril J. Mockridge), “Angela’s Ashes” (John Williams), “Circle of Friends” (Michael Kamen), and “The Quiet Man” (Victor Young).

https://www.wwfm.org/post/picture-perfect-march-13-presentiments-st-patrick

THE LOST CHORD, “Airs of Erin” (air date: 3/14/21)

Laugh and weep along to John Kinsella’s Symphony No. 3, “Joie de vivre,” and Arnold Black’s “Laments and Dances from the Irish,” after melodies of Turlough O’Carolan.

https://www.wwfm.org/post/lost-chord-march-14-airs-erin#stream/0

THE LOST CHORD, “The Sharing of the Green” (air date: 3/15/20)

Enjoy a mulligan stew of works by Irish composers John Larchet, Philip Hammond, Howard Ferguson, and A.J. Potter, and works on Celtic themes by Percy Grainger, Sir Arnold Bax, and John Foulds.

https://www.wwfm.org/post/lost-chord-march-15-sharing-green

THE LOST CHORD, “Irish Ties Are Smiling” (air date: 3/17/19)

Irish-American composer Edward Joseph Collins (1886-1951) reflects on his heritage with “Variations on an Irish Tune,” “Variations on an Irish Folksong,” and the Irish Rhapsody “Hibernia.”

https://www.wwfm.org/post/lost-chord-march-17-irish-ties-are-smiling

And if you be feelin’ generous with that pot o’ gold there, make a donation to WWFM, if you please. If we receive 500 contributions, IN ANY AMOUNT, by March 21, we’ll be celebratin’ that great Irish composer, Johann Sebastian McBach, on his birthday, with just his music. No fundraising.

But first we be needin’ to reach that goal! Go raibh míle maith agat! A thousand times, thank you for your generous support of WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org!

https://wwwfm.secureallegiance.com/wwfm/WebModule/Donate.aspx?P=DEFAULT&PAGETYPE=PLG&CHECK=vOU2bz5JCWmgCDbf53nm9ezWDeZ%2beA1M

March 17, 2021
Irish Music This Sunday on The Lost Chord

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we anticipate St. Patrick’s Day, with two contrasting works with ties to the Emerald Isle.

John Kinsella was born in Dublin in 1932. He combined composition with a career in music administration until 1988, when he left his position as Head of Music at RTE, Ireland’s national broadcasting organization.

As a composer, he was influenced by contemporary trends in the European avant-garde, until 1977. Then, following the completion of his String Quartet No. 3, he wrote nothing for a period of 18 months. He emerged from this self-imposed silence a renewed artist, crafting wholly tonal works of great beauty and integrity. Since then, he has completed eleven symphonies, a second violin concerto, a cello concerto, a fourth string quartet, and various other works.

Kinsella’s Symphony No. 3 was composed in 1989-1990. The work falls into two substantial movements, framed by a brief Prologue and Epilogue, and separated by an Intermezzo, all of which return to material stated in the symphony’s opening bars. The movements are performed without break.

Although it is not a programmatic work, the composer dedicated the symphony, with gratitude, to his parents. He intended the piece as a personal expression of certain aspects of the joy of life. Hence, the subtitle, “Joie de vivre.”

More overtly folk-inflected is “Laments and Dances from the Irish,” after melodies by Irish harper Turlough O’Carolan (1670-1738). Philadelphia-born composer Arnold Black was afflicted with cerebral palsy from birth, resulting in limited mobility on his right side. Yet he managed to become a master of the violin. So successful was he on his instrument that following graduation from the Juilliard School, he was hired as assistant concertmaster of the Baltimore Symphony, and ultimately concertmaster of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, DC.

Black’s “Laments and Dances” was commissioned by the Newman and Oltman Guitar Duo. Michael Newman and Laura Oltman reside along the Delaware River in Warren County, NJ. Together or between them, they have taught or been guitarists-in-residence at the Mannes College of Music in New York City, Princeton University, The College of New Jersey, and Lafayette College in Easton, PA. They are also directors of the Raritan River Music Festival, held in historic venues in Central Jersey throughout the month of May. The duo is joined in this recording by the Turtle Island String Quartet.

Pour yourself a pint of stout and find your bliss. We laugh and weep along with the Irish, on “Airs from Erin,” this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

March 14, 2021

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