Classic Ross Amico

Tag: The Lost Chord

Christmas Music Elgar Stanford Vaughan Williams

It’s Christmas, so I’ll try to keep this brief. Nobody will be around to read it anyway! After all the gifts have been exchanged and all the guests entertained and all the dishes cleaned and put away, if you’re still able to keep your eyes open, consider unwinding with me tonight on “The Lost Chord,” when I‘ll be presenting a couple of works by English composers inspired by the Nativity.

Alongside Sir Charles Villiers Stanford and Sir Edward Elgar, Sir Hubert Parry was one of the key figures of the so-called English “musical Renaissance.” He influenced a whole generation of much better known composers, including Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gustav Holst, John Ireland and Frank Bridge. His “Ode on the Nativity” was given its first performance on the same concert, at the Hereford Three Choirs Festival in 1912, as Vaughan Williams’ “Fantasia on Christmas Carols.”

Vaughan Williams, the great-nephew of Charles Darwin and an atheist in his youth, later softened into a kind of cheerful agnosticism. He dearly loved the King James Bible, and he especially enjoyed Christmas. Of course, he wrote much music on the subject. In fact, his very last composition was “The First Nowell.” He worked diligently at the piece, inspired by medieval pageants, during his final month, but died suddenly before its completion.

However, even at 85 years-old, RVW retained a remarkable concentration. He managed to pound out the whole thing in short score in only a few weeks. Furthermore, he had actually orchestrated the first two-thirds. The finishing touches were applied by his assistant, Roy Douglas – he of “Les Sylphides” fame.

If you like the “Fantasia on Christmas Carols,” I think you’ll really enjoy this. It’s the star atop the Christmas tree of special holiday programs being shared all day on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org. Merry Christmas to you!

December 26, 2016
Christmas Classical Music on WRTI & WWFM

Can it already be this close to Christmas? I guess it is. Today will mark my final two live air shifts before the Christmas holiday.

I hope you’ll join me on WRTI in Philadelphia at 90.1 FM and wrti.org, as I’ll be seated under the mistletoe from 10 am. to 2 p.m. Among the works I’ll be presenting will be Antonio Vivaldi’s OTHER “Gloria” (RV 588), one of Robert Russell Bennett’s splashy suites from “The Many Moods of Christmas,” and a complete recording of Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker.” I’m not sure if there will be any time left over for me to add anything of my own, but hey, any opportunity to actually sit and listen to a complete “Nutcracker” is fine by me.

Then I ride the Polar Express to the Trenton-Princeton area, where I’ll pick my own music, on WWFM The Classical Network at 89.1 FM and wwfm.org, from 4 to 6 p.m. I’ll keep it fairly light today with Leopold Mozart’s “Musical Sleigh-Ride,” in that wacky recording by the Eduard Melkus Ensemble, with all the rowdy dogs and horses, and John Rutter’s work for children’s chorus and harp, “Dancing Day,” kind of a companion piece to Benjamin Britten’s “A Ceremony of Carols.” It’s probably safe to assume there will be some more English music, as well.

Then at 6:00, on WWFM, I’ll be your host for “Picture Perfect,” when the focus will be on music from Christmas television specials that were originally broadcast from the 1950s through the 1980s. I’ll write a little more about it, here, as the time draws nigh.

And don’t forget “The Lost Chord,” my syndicated program of unusual and neglected repertoire. It airs on WWFM on Christmas night, this week at 11 p.m., in order to make room for a broadcast of Handel’s “Messiah” from Trinity Wall Street at 8. On the program will be Hubert Parry’s “Ode on the Nativity” and Ralph Vaughan Williams’ very last work, “The First Nowell.”

Merry Christmas, everyone, and happy listening!

December 23, 2016
Nordic Soul Autumn Music Langgaard Rautavaara

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” it’s autumn in the North countries, as well as in the Nordic soul. We’ll test your limits on gratuitous vowels, with music by Danish composer Rued Langgaard and Finnish master Einojuhani Rautavaara.

Langgaard lived from 1893 to 1952. Despite a promising start – born to musical parents, a prodigious childhood, meetings with major conductors, and a symphony performed by the Berlin Philharmonic – his personal and creative eccentricities worked against him.

Perpetually out of step with the times, and particularly with the musical tastes of his countrymen, performances of his works were scarce. He found himself ignored by the musical establishment, with the result that his music really only started to be recognized in the 1960s – 16 years after the composer’s death.

Langgaard was 46 by the time he managed to obtain a permanent job, as an organist at the cathedral in Ribe. It was the oldest town in Denmark, and situated far, far from Copenhagen, the center of Danish musical life. He would die in Ribe at the age of 59.

He wrote 16 symphonies. The fourth of those bears the subtitle “Fall of the Leaf.” Beyond a simple evocation of autumnal nature, complete with thunderstorms, wind and rain, the symphony is one of moods related to, or symbolized, by autumn. The composer originally called the work “Nature and Thoughts.”

Rautavaara, Finland’s grand old man of music, died in July at the age of 87. He studied at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, under Aare Merikanto, before receiving a scholarship to attend the Juilliard School. Among his teachers in the United States were Vincent Persichetti, Roger Sessions and Aaron Copland. He himself taught for extended periods at the Sibelius Academy.

As a composer, he wrote eight symphonies, 14 concertos, and nine operas, as well as choral, chamber and instrumental music. His most famous piece is probably his “Cantus Arcticus,” for taped bird song and orchestra.

Early on, Rautavaara experimented with serialism (though he was never a strictly serial composer), but in the 1960s, he left all that behind. His mature style is frequently one of austere beauty, marked by lyricism and even luminosity. His later works often bear something of a mystical stamp.

We’ll be listening to music composed in 1999, titled “Autumn Gardens,” Rautavaara’s meditation on beauty in nature and the transience of life.

I hope you’ll join me for “Fall of the Leif,” autumnal meditations from the North, this Sunday night at 10:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network, and at wwfm.org.

PHOTOS: Babe magnets Rued Langgaard (left) and Einojuhani Rautavaara

November 6, 2016
Autumnal Music Hadley & Sowerby on The Lost Chord

With the autumn equinox only days away, we’ll have musical evocations of the impending season by two American composers on “The Lost Chord.”

Henry Hadley (1871-1937) studied with George Whitefield Chadwick and in Vienna with Eusebius Mandycewski. 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, MA. He guest conducted orchestras from Buenos Aires to Tokyo. Why then do so few remember him?

We’ll reach 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 at wwfm.org.

September 18, 2016
Grieg’s Circle: Friends & Admirers

By all accounts, Edvard Grieg was a gentle-though-principled, generous soul. He was certainly Norway’s most important composer, and his example provided an inspiration not only to Scandinavians, but also to musicians worldwide seeking to find a way around an Austro-German stranglehold on music.

Is it any wonder that he attracted such a devoted following? Tchaikovsky dedicated his “Hamlet Fantasy Overture” to Grieg. Liszt performed his piano concerto. Antonin Dvořák was a friend. Frederick Delius worshipped him.

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll listen to an hour of music dedicated to Grieg by his friends and admirers.

The American composer Edward MacDowell never actually met Grieg, though they shared a certain musical affinity. He contacted the Norwegian to ask permission to dedicate to him his Piano Sonata No. 3, which he subtitled the “Norse.” Grieg was full of compliments about the piece, and he enthusiastically accepted. The two men enjoyed an admiring, though unfortunately short-lived correspondence, since both were already nearing the end of their lives. MacDowell died in 1908, at the age of 47; he was already in the throes of the illness that would claim him at the time Grieg passed in 1907, at the age of 64.

Though Julius Röntgen was born in Leipzig, by his early 20s he had settled in Amsterdam. He went on to become one of the most important figures in Dutch music, establishing the city’s music conservatory and participating in the founding of the Concertgebouw. Röntgen was successful in becoming a good friend not only of Johannes Brahms (no mean feat), but also Grieg, whom he visited in Norway 14 times. The result was a number of works he composed on Norwegian themes. Röntgen dedicated his suite “Aus Jotunheim,” inspired by a hike he had taken with the composer through the Norwegian mountains, to Grieg and his wife, on the occasion of their 25th wedding anniversary.

Finally, Grieg encountered the tireless Australian pianist Percy Grainger only toward the end of his life, but he was convinced he had found his ideal interpreter. He invited Grainger to perform his Piano Concerto in A Minor under his own direction. Sadly, Grieg died before it could come to pass. Nevertheless, Grainger continued to champion Grieg’s music for the rest of his life. Also, he dedicated a number of folk-inspired works to the memory of the Norwegian master. We’ll hear two historical recordings: one of Grainger playing music of Grieg and then another of the pianist playing one of his own such works.

I hope you’ll join me for “Grieg-arious,” music by Grieg’s dedicated friends. You can enjoy it tonight at 10 ET on WWFM – The Classical Network, or listen to it later as a webcast at wwfm.org.

PHOTO: (left to right) Grieg, Grainger, Nina Grieg & Röntgen at Grieg’s home, Troldhaugen, in 1907

July 17, 2016

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