Classic Ross Amico

Tag: The Lost Chord

Christmas Roses A Holiday Bouquet

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” it’s a Christmas bouquet of sorts.

Hugo Distler’s “Die Weihnachtsgeschichte” (“The Christmas Story”), completed in 1933, is an otherworldly, a cappella masterpiece punctuated by seven variations on the carol “Es ist ein Ros entsprungen” (“Lo, how a Rose e’er blooming”). Over the course of some 40 minutes, the work reinvents the Baroque Christmas cantata, after the manner of Heinrich Schütz, and does so quite beautifully, conjuring the quiet and calm of a bygone era. The composer described the piece as “an oratorio with chamber music character.”

Distler’s case was a tragic one. A man of conscience, yet he remained in Nazi Germany. With reluctance he joined the Party, when he realized his employment at the Lübeck Conservatory hinged on his doing so. Nevertheless, it did not smooth his path. The war separated him from his family, robbed him of many of his friends, and battered his pysche with nerve-wracking aerial attacks. Job pressures and fear of being conscripted into the German army further contributed to his stress.

His devotion to sacred music put him at odds with the authorities, very much intent on appropriating the Lutheran Church for its own ends. The Nazis wound up branding Distler’s works “entartete,” or “degenerate.” Unable to reconcile the irreconcilable – serving both God and the Nazis – one day Distler pushed his bed into the kitchen and turned on the gas, committing suicide in 1942. He was 34 years-old.

Though Emil Waldteufel had long been a mainstay of Paris society balls during the Second Empire, he was nearly 40 by the time he achieved international fame. It was the Prince of Wales – the future King Edward VII – who introduced him to London, and his music came to dominate Queen Victoria’s state balls at Buckingham Palace. One of his best-known works, “Les Patineurs” (“The Skaters’ Waltz”) was introduced there in 1882.

For our purposes, we’ll round out the hour with one of Waldteufel’s most successful waltzes from the other end of the decade, “Roses de Noël” (“Christmas Roses”).

The holidays are in bloom this week. I hope you’ll join me for “Christmas Roses,” this Sunday night at 10:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

December 16, 2018
Kalevala Chaos Sampo Lost at Sea

Väinämöinen is mocked by a salmon, the Sampo is lost at sea, and the Kalevala program did not air last night on “The Lost Chord.” Alas, I must not have loaded it into the playlist properly. Instead my Hanukkah program aired twice in eight days.

Hang on to your stoicism. Lemminkäinen will return. With Christmas and New Year’s fast approaching, it may not be until 2019. Or it could be this Sunday. Whet your sword and watch this space for omens, auguries and portents.

December 10, 2018
Hanukkah Music on The Lost Chord

Hanukkah begins at sunset. Get ready for the eight-day Festival of Lights. This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” I hope you’ll join me for music on Jewish themes and by Jewish composers, including “Aspects of a Great Miracle” by Michael Isaacson, “Three Hassidic Dances” by Leon Stein,” and “The Klezmer Concerto” by Ofer Ben-Amots. Enjoy your fill of light and latkes, on “Pieces of Eight,” this Sunday night at 10:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

December 2, 2018
Celebrating Autumn with American Composers

After one last dose of tropical miserableness, coquettish Summer decided to show us what she could do yesterday with a glorious afternoon in the Princeton area that really was more like Autumn. It turns out she was holding back all along, the big tease. Well, good riddance, baby!

We all know that Summer is high maintenance and that Autumn has the better disposition anyway. Why fight all the time with Summer, when it’s so much easier to get along with Autumn? The riot of colors, the crunching leaves underfoot, the comfy sweaters, hot beverages savored, used book fairs, classic horror movies, infinite night skies, and Thanksgiving. Welcome, O Happy Season!

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll celebrate the first full day of autumn with musical evocations by two American composers.

Henry Hadley (1871-1937) studied at home with George Whitefield Chadwick and in Vienna with Eusebius Mandyczewski. In Europe, he befriended Richard Strauss and conducted the Berlin Philharmonic in his own Symphony No. 3. He was assistant conductor at the Mainz Opera, later music director of the Seattle Symphony, and became the first conductor of the San Francisco Symphony. One of his operas, “Cleopatra’s Night,” was performed at New York’s Metropolitan Opera. He served a stint as assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic, he founded the National Association of Composers and Conductors, and he was instrumental in establishing the Berkshire Music Festival at Tanglewood. He guest conducted orchestras from Buenos Aires to Tokyo. Why then do so few remember him?

We’ll dig deep into the leaf pile of music history to revive Hadley’s Symphony No. 2, from 1901, subtitled “The Four Seasons.” The work begins with an evocation of a turbulent winter storm, followed by “Spring,” then “Summer.” The symphony concludes with a melancholy portrait of autumn, enlivened by the appearance of some rollicking hunting horns.

Toward the end of the hour, we’ll have just enough time for music by Leo Sowerby (1895-1968), sometimes called “the Dean of American Church Music.” Sowerby was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1946 for his cantata “Canticle to the Sun.” As antidote to the reflective nature of Hadley’s “Autumn,” we’ll conclude with the exuberant “Comes Autumn Time,” an uplifting work for solo organ.

I hope you’ll join me for “Well-Seasoned” – American composers of experience celebrate autumn – this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

September 23, 2018
Lars-Erik Larsson Radio Suites Premiere

During his time with the Swedish Broadcasting Corporation (1937-1944), Lars-Erik Larsson provided music for everything from cantatas to radio plays to brief vignettes to accompany the recitation of poetry.

Material from these projects would frequently find its way into the composer’s concert works. Most notably, three of the six movements of “Hours the Day,” from 1938, were organized into what went on to become the composer’s most famous piece, the “Pastoral Suite.”

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll hear the world premiere recording, from 1994, of the complete, original, six-movement work, alongside another one of Larsson’s poetic suites for radio, “God in Disguise,” from 1940.

Larsson had been asked as early as 1930 if he would be interested in setting to music Hjalmar Gullberg’s cycle of poems. Gullberg, then the head of Swedish Radio’s drama division, took as his starting point Euripides’ “Alcestis,” in which the god Apollo, temporarily exiled from Olympus, acts as servant and shepherd to King Admetus of Thessaly.

It would be a full decade before the project was realized, in part due to the scale of the undertaking. By then, neighboring Denmark and Norway were under Nazi occupation. Gullberg wrote additional text to mold the work into a protest against violence in the world. In spite – or perhaps because – of the harsh reality of the times, “God in Disguise” retains an optimistic and indeed a determinedly pastoral outlook.

This too will be heard in a world premiere recording, from 1956, featuring speaker Lars Ekborg, soprano Elisabeth Soderstrom, and the orchestra and chorus conducted by Stig Westerberg.

Brush up on your Swedish, as we celebrate all that is worthy and simple. I hope you’ll join me for “Best at Verse” – Lars-Erik Larsson’s poetic suites for radio – this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

September 16, 2018

Tag Cloud

RECENT POSTS