Classic Ross Amico

Tag: The Lost Chord

Remembering Conductor Jerzy Semkow and Szymanowski

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we remember conductor Jerzy Semkow, who died on December 23 at the age of 86.

Semkow, Polish by birth, was a longtime resident of Paris. He apprenticed with Erich Kleiber, Bruno Walter and Tullio Serafin. He was assistant conductor of the Leningrad Philharmonic under Yevgeny Mravinsky.

Later, he held posts as principal conductor of the National Opera in Warsaw, principal conductor of the Royal Danish Opera and the Royal Danish Orchestra in Copenhagen, and music director of the Orchestra of Radio-Televisione Italiana in Rome (RIA).

Semkow was the ninth music director of the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra (where he served from 1975 to 1979), as well as music advisor and principal conductor of the Rochester Philharmonic (where he served from 1985 to 1989). He was a regular guest conductor of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra for some 40 years. His last appearance there was in 2009.

Though he made some respectable Beethoven and Wagner recordings for the Vox label, I thought we’d honor him with two works by his compatriot, Karol Szymanowski, both of them issued on EMI. We’ll hear Szymanowski’s “Symphonie concertante,” for piano and orchestra, and his Symphony No. 3, subtitled “Song of the Night,” for tenor, chorus and large orchestra, an opulent setting of poetry by Rumi.

I hope you’ll join me for “A Send-Off for Semkow,” tonight at 10 ET, with a repeat Wednesday evening at 6, or that you’ll listen to it later as a webcast at http://www.wwfm.org.

PHOTOS: Polish up on your Polish with Semkow and Szymanowski

January 4, 2015
Hoffnung Music Festival A Hilarious Concert

THE FOURTH DAY OF CHRISTMAS

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we do our best to maintain a festive spirit with selections from the notorious – and uproarious – Hoffnung Music Festival concerts.

Gerard Hoffnung was born in Berlin in 1925. His family fled the Nazis while he was still a boy and settled in London, where Gerard became more English than the English. Over the next two decades, 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. In addition, he played the tuba well enough that he was able to tackle the Vaughan Williams concerto.

Following his participation in an April Fool’s concert in 1956, Hoffnung embarked on the enterprise which, aside from 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, could be perceived as a rather stodgy art form.

For the inaugural effort, Sir Malcolm Arnold wrote “A Grand, Grand Overture” for an orchestra augmented by a rifle, two electric floor polishers and a vacuum cleaner. (The work was dedicated to President “Hoover.”) Sir William Walton walked on to conduct a one-word excerpt from his cantata “Belshazzar’s Feast,” in which he picked up the baton and the chorus shouted, “Slain!”

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! He was a mere child by today’s standards, yet he seemed his entire life to be a brilliant middle-aged man, always at the peak of his form.

I hope you’ll join me for “Have a Ball: Laughing in the New Year with the Hoffnung Music Festival Concerts,” this Sunday night at 10 ET, with a repeat New Year’s Eve at 6; or that you’ll listen to it later as a webcast at http://www.wwfm.org.

PHOTOS: Gerard Hoffnung and one of his creations

December 28, 2014
English Nativity Settings: Parry & Vaughan Williams

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll celebrate Christmas with an hour of English Nativity settings.

Hubert Parry was part of the English Musical Renaissance – not the actual Renaissance, but rather that flowering of English music which took place at the close of the 19th century, after a nearly 200 year dearth of world class composers following the death of Henry Purcell in 1695.

A professor at the Royal College of Music in London, Parry eventually became the school’s head. He influenced an entire generation of much better known composers, people like Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gustav Holst, John Ireland and Frank Bridge.

We’ll be listening to Parry’s “Ode on the Nativity,” for soprano, chorus and orchestra, on a text by William Dunbar. The work was given its premiere in 1912 at the Hereford Three Choirs Festival, on the same day as Vaughan Williams’ “Fantasia on Christmas Carols.”

Vaughan Williams wrote so much Christmas music. It’s remarkable that such a spiritual composer, who seemed particularly attracted to religious texts and Biblical subjects, was a self-proclaimed agnostic. At least by the end of his life he had softened his stance from atheism! He was particularly passionate about Christmas carols.

We’ll be listening to the very last music he ever composed, “The First Nowell,” a nativity play arranged and adapted from medieval pageants by Simona Pakenham.

Vaughan Williams worked diligently on the piece during his final month, but died before the work’s completion. Nonetheless, he had finished orchestrating two thirds of it and had mapped out the rest rather thoroughly. The finishing touches were applied by his assistant, Roy Douglas – he of “Les Sylphides” fame.

By the way, Douglas just turned 107 on December 12! He is still listed on the board of the Ralph Vaughan Williams Society as its vice-president. Next to Douglas, Vaughan Williams was a mere lad while he was at work on the piece, at the age of 85.

I hope you’ll join me for “A Play in a Manger,” this Sunday night at 10 ET, with a repeat Christmas Eve at 6; or that you’ll listen to it later as a webcast at http://www.wwfm.org.

Merry Christmas!

PHOTOS: Vaughan Williams with fur on his clothes; Parry with fur on his face

December 21, 2014
Irving Fine: Celebrating the Composer’s Centenary

Irving Fine, you’re so fine. You’re so Fine, you blow my mind.

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll mark the centenary of the birth (on December 3, 1914) of this most appropriately named composer, with an hour of his well-crafted music. We’ll hear works for piano, mixed chorus, woodwind quintet, and string orchestra.

For more on Fine, see my post of December 3.

I’ve mentioned several times, between the show and my postings, Fine’s late flirtation with serialism. Since I don’t actually include any of the twelve-tone works on my playlist (too many other short, beautiful pieces to cover), I’ll include a link to his Symphony here.

This is twelve-tone music for people who don’t like twelve-tone music.

Fine conducted the work’s premiere with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1962. Less than two weeks later, he was dead of a massive coronary at the age of 47.

I hope you’ll join me for “Everything’s Fine,” this Sunday night at 10 ET, with a repeat Wednesday evening at 6; or that you’ll listen to it later as a webcast at http://www.wwfm.org.

PHOTO: (Left to right) The inseparable Lukas Foss, Irving Fine and Harold Shapero, composers of the “Boston Six,” doin’ nothin’

December 7, 2014
Lyapunov The Lost Chord Composer Birthday

As a longtime listener to “The Lost Chord,” perhaps you recognize this music:

The composer is Sergei Lyapunov. The first of Lyapunov’s “Transcendental Etudes,” the “Berceuse,” has served as the theme music for “The Lost Chord,” since the program’s debut in January of 2003. The pianist, as in the clip, is Louis Kenter, though I use a later recording, the one that was once available on Turnabout. Kenter recorded the work on at least two previous occasions.

Lyapunov was born on this date in 1859. He enrolled in the Moscow Conservatory at the personal invitation of its director, Nikolai Rubinstein. There he studied with Karl Klindworth (a pupil of Liszt) and Sergei Taneyev (a pupil of Tchaikovsky).

Since Lyapunov gravitated more toward the Russian Nationalist movement than to the more cosmopolitan approach of Tchaikovsky and his followers, he made it his mission to set out in search of Mily Balakirev, who had been the guiding force behind the group known as “The Mighty Handful,” or “The Russian Five” (which, with Balakirev, consisted of Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky, Borodin, and César Cui).

Lyapunov became the most important of Balakirev’s latter-day disciples, with master overseeing pupil as diligently as he had the composers of the 1860s. Together, Lyapunov and Balakirev went on folksong collecting expeditions, amassing some 300 songs.

Lyapunov succeeded Rimsky-Korsakov as the assistant director of the Imperial Chapel. He became head of the Free School and a professor of music at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. After the Revolution, he emigrated to Paris in 1923, where he directed a school for Russian émigrés. He died of a heart attack the following year, in 1924.

Lyapunov enjoyed a successful career as a touring pianist. The “Transcendental Etudes” are central to his output for the keyboard. He modeled the collection of 24 major and minor key movements on a plan devised by Liszt (though Liszt never completed his). He concluded the cycle with an elegy in memory of Liszt, and in fact dedicated the whole to the legendary keyboard master.

Each etude bears a descriptive title:

“Berceuse” (”Lullaby”) in F♯ Major;

“Ronde des Fantômes” (“Ghosts’ dance”) in D♯ Minor;

“Carillon” in B Major; “Térek” (“The River Terek”) in G♯ Minor;

“Nuit d’été” (“Summer Night”) in E Major;

Tempête (“Tempest”) in C♯ Minor;

“Idylle” in A Major;

“Chant épique” (“Epic Song”) in F♯ Minor;

“Harpes éoliennes”(“Aeolian Harps”) in D Major;

“Lesghinka” in B Minor;

“Ronde des sylphs” (“Dance of the Sylphs”) in G Major;

and “Elégie en mémoire de François Liszt” (“Elegy in Memory of Liszt”) in E Minor.

Happy Birthday, Sergei Lyapunov. Thanks for the great theme music!

As a bonus, here’s his beautiful “Rhapsody on Ukrainian Themes:

PHOTOS: Sergei Lyapunov, pioneer of the chia beard

November 30, 2014

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