Classic Ross Amico

Tag: The Lost Chord

Aurora Borealis Classical Music Sounds North

All signs point north!

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” keep looking up, with musical responses to the uncanny, natural phenomenon known as the Aurora Borealis.

Uuno Klami studied in Helsinki, with Erkki Melartin, then in Paris and Vienna. Following the premiere of his “Northern Lights” in 1948, some critics questioned whether the content of the piece lived up to the expectations engendered by its title. Klami remarked, “The northern lights can be much more than the superficial play of colors in the sky. They can be an expression of the infinite loneliness of the human spirit.” Personally, he thought it his best work.

Geirr Tveitt was born in Bergen, Edvard Grieg’s native city. Though he was very much influenced by folk music of the Norwegian countryside, he too acquired further polish abroad. He studied first in Leipzig and then in Paris, with Arthur Honegger, Heitor Villa-Lobos, and Nadia Boulanger.

In 1970, a very great tragedy occurred, when a fire swept through Tveitt’s home, a farmhouse in Nordheimsund, destroying most of his unpublished manuscripts – 300 pieces, stored in wooden chests – fully 4/5ths of his compositional output. It also crippled his ability to compose. Tveitt succumbed to alcoholism and died a broken man, with little hope of being remembered, in 1981.

Happily, since then, a number of these “lost” works have been reconstructed. In the case of his Piano Concerto No. 4, subtitled “Aurora Borealis,” from 1947, the orchestral parts survived, along with a two-piano reduction and an archived broadcast recording.

The restored concerto falls into three movements: “The Northern Lights awaken above the autumn colors,” “Glittering in the winter heavens,” and “Fading away in the bright night of spring.”

I hope you’ll join me for an hour of radiant music, on “Aural Borealis,” this Sunday night at 10:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

January 10, 2021
Viking Lore Sounds on “The Lost Chord”

Experience the lore of the lur!

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” it’s a stoic start to the new year, with musical settings of the Icelandic Eddas.

Enjoy selections from “The Rheingold Curse,” after the “Volsunga Saga,” the earliest written sources of the ancient Germanic myths (including those of Sigurd, Loki, and Fafnir). We’ll hear them in imaginative, though scholarly-informed, realizations by Benjamin Bagby and the ensemble Sequentia.

Then we’ll turn to “The Creation of the World,” Part One of a bold, massive “Edda” oratorio by Icelandic composer Jón Leifs. Odin and his brothers defeat the giant Ymir, and from him fashion Earth, Sea, and Heavens, and soon after create the first man and woman from two trees. With its horn-helmeted, grunting choruses, laconic pounding, and austere poetry, this one will have you shouting for more mead.

It’s a new year of swan’s bone flutes, tuned rocks, and Nordic lurs (reconstructions of ancient Viking horns), on “Cold Comfort,” this Sunday night at 10:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

January 3, 2021
Hoffnung Music Festival a Hilarious New Year

If a ball drops in Times Square, and no one’s around to see it, is it still a new year? Call it the final conundrum of 2020.

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we laugh away a very rough year with highlights from the notorious and uproarious Hoffnung Music Festival concerts.

Gerard Hoffnung was a boy when his family arrived in London, refugees from Nazi Germany. In his new home, he cultivated the persona of an English gentleman, though one with a decidedly impish bent. He attained celebrity through his work as a cartoonist, a sparkling panelist, and a public speaker. He was lauded as a brilliant improviser with a dry wit and a masterly sense of timing. He also played the tuba well enough that he was able to tackle the Vaughan Williams concerto.

Following a successful April Fool’s concert in 1956, Hoffnung embarked on the enterprise which, alongside his cartooning, ensured a kind of immortality – the first of the Hoffnung Music Festival concerts. The concerts brought together representatives of England’s finest musical talent to lampoon what, especially at the time, might have been perceived as a rather stodgy art form.

There would be three Hoffnung concerts in all. Alas, the third was presented posthumously. Hoffnung collapsed at his home in 1959, and died of a cerebral hemorrhage three days later, at the age of only 34. An untimely finish for a character who seemed his entire life to be a brilliant, fully-developed, middle-aged man, always at the peak of his form.

I hope you’ll join me tonight as we celebrate Hoffnung’s whimsical legacy. We’ll hear Sir Malcolm Arnold’s “A Grand, Grand Overture,” for orchestra, organ, electric floor polisher, and three vacuum cleaners – the work was dedicated to President “Hoover” – and Franz Reizenstein’s “Concerto populare,” billed as “a piano concerto to end all piano concertos,” among others.

It’s a lighthearted playlist calculated to put a smile on your face and lend a boost to your spirits. He who laughs last laughs best. So “Have a Ball,” this Sunday night at 10:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

December 27, 2020
Hanukkah Music Lost Chord Festival of Lights

Hanukkah begins at sunset. Kick off the Festival of Lights with a little musical sustenance, in this archived episode of “The Lost Chord,” originally broadcast last December.

The program begins with David Ludwig’s “Hanukkah Cantata.” Ludwig, who studied with Richard Danielpour, Jennifer Higdon, and Ned Rorem at the Curtis Institute of Music, and John Corigliano at Juilliard, is the nephew of pianist Peter Serkin, the grandson of Rudolf Serkin, and the great-grandson of Adolf Busch. That’s quite a pedigree! The text of his cantata, compiled by Cantor Dan Sklar, is sung in English and Hebrew. The work falls into eight movements, wholly befitting for this eight-day celebration.

That’s followed by Ludwig Altman’s “Theme and Variations on ‘Ma’oz Tzur,’” the Hanukkah melody also known as “Rock of Ages.” Altman was born in what was once Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland). He studied at the University of Breslau, and then at Berlin’s State Academy for Sacred Music. The rise of the National Socialist Party meant that he was restricted to employment in Jewish organizations.

In 1936, he emigrated to the United States, settling in San Francisco, where he became organist and choral director at Congregation Emanu-El. For over three decades, he was also organist of the San Francisco Symphony. Altman’s variations on a Hanukkah theme are performed by another composer of note, Barbara Harbach, at the console.

The hour concludes with “A Klezmer Nutcracker” – with apologies to Peter Ilych Tchaikovsky – in a lively recording made by the Boston-based ensemble Shirim. Kazatsky ‘til you dropsky!

It’s a “sound” foundation for eight days of fried food, sugar, and cheese. Click the link for “Latke Tonic,” music of substance for Hanukkah.

https://www.wwfm.org/post/lost-chord-december-22-latke-tonic

Then tune in to “The Lost Chord” this Sunday night at 10:00 EST for more, including Ofer Ben-Amots’ Klezmer Concerto, on “Pieces of Eight.”

There’s oil to burn, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

December 10, 2020
Homebodies Thanksgiving Music on WWFM

With Thanksgiving right around the corner, it’s hardly surprising our thoughts, memories, and desires would be full of home. It’s a good time then to listen to John Fitz Rogers’ “Magna Mysteria.”

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll hear this 2010 work, which weaves together Latin biblical texts and poetic verse of the 6th century philosopher Boethius, to elevate the idea of home – and the seeking of home – to a metaphorical or spiritual realm. If you have a fondness for the choral music of Morten Lauridsen or Stephen Paulus, I think you’ll really enjoy this, though Rogers is very much his own man. The music is tonal, melodic, and quite lovely.

Also on the program will be Aaron Copland’s “Letter from Home,” from 1943-44. The work was commissioned by Paul Whiteman for his Radio Hall of Fame Orchestra, and suggests the emotions of an American soldier, as he experiences a bittersweet reprieve, if only for a few moments, while savoring a letter from his family.

In a year when reunions may be difficult to achieve, home is in our hearts. I hope you’ll join me for “Homebodies,” this Sunday night at 10:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

November 22, 2020

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