Classic Ross Amico

Tag: WPRB

New Classical Music Releases on WPRB

What’s new? Why, new releases!

It’s been too long since I last did one of these shows, which means I’ve got a shelf-full of material from which to choose. Join me tomorrow morning on WPRB to hear Yo-Yo Ma perform the cello concerto, “Azul” (Spanish for “Blue”), by Osvaldo Golijov, with The Knights (orchestra), on Warner Classics & Erato. Watch out for that hyper-accordion!

Caroline Shaw reaches across the centuries to Dietrich Buxtehude in “To the Hands,” performed by Philadelphia-based The Crossing (choral ensemble), as part of a fascinating concept album on the Innova Recordings label, “Seven Responses,” in which contemporary composers reflect on Buxtehude’s cycle of seven cantatas, “Membra Jesu nostri patientis sanctissima” (“Most Holy Limbs of Our Suffering Jesus”).

At 9:00, Clipper Erickson, piano, who is on the faculties of both Westminster Conservatory of Music and Boyer College of Music and Dance – Temple University, will drop by the studio to talk about his new release of piano music by Laurie Altman, on Neos (record label). Erickson will be performing music by R. Nathaniel Dett and Modest Mussorgsky in recital at Witherspoon Street Presbyterian Church in Princeton on Saturday at 5 p.m.

At 10:00 tomorrow, I’ll be joined by composer Zhou Tian, whose “Broken Ink” will be given its US premiere by the Princeton Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Rossen Milanov, at Princeton University’s Richardson Auditorium on Sunday at 4 p.m. Our conversation will be followed by a broadcast of Zhou’s brilliantly orchestrated Concerto for Orchestra, written for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. The recording was issued on the orchestra’s Fanfare Cincinnati label.

We’ll also hear new recordings of music by John Adams performed by Alarm Will Sound (Cantaloupe Music), Richard Strauss by JoAnn Falletta and the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra (Naxos), Schumann by pianist Joyce Yang and the Alexander String Quartet, and John Williams by the FilmHarmonic Brass (Roven Records).

May the Fourth be with you, this Thursday morning from 6 to 11 EDT, on WPRB 103.3 FM and wprb.com. We find release in recent acquisitions, on Classic Ross Amico.

May 3, 2017
Pagan Spring Music for Walpurgis Night on WPRB

Nymphs and satyrs. Bacchus and the Great God Pan. Headman and Hobby Horse. Hecuba and the Goat of Mendes.

Join me this morning on WPRB, as we partake of a pagan spring. In anticipation of Walpurgis Night and a May Day dance around the maypole, we’ll have music by Sir Arnold Bax, Arrigo Boito, Benjamin Britten, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Howard Hanson, Gustav Holst, Nikos Skalkottas, Bedrich Smetana, and more, as witches and warlocks cavort around bonfires, maenads and bassarids run riot, and Druids and wicker men scoff at Christian piety.

We anticipate the “other Hallowe’en,” this morning from 6 to 11 EDT on WPRB 103.3 FM and wprb.com. I’ll be meticulously applying the body paint, on Classic Ross Amico.

IMAGE: “Departure of the Witches,” or “Faust’s Vision” (1878), by Luis Ricardo Falero

April 27, 2017
Walpurgis Night Music on WPRB

Strap on your goat leggings! Sunday is Walpurgis Night, the eve of the feast day of 8th century abbess Saint Walpurga. It’s a great witches’ holiday – the “other” Hallowe’en – and therefore a popular celebration in Europe, where they still know how to make everything festive creepy. And more power to them. This Thursday morning on WPRB, we’ll have music in celebration of Walpurgis Night and May Day.

Music lovers and devotees of German romantic literature, of course, already know a thing or two about Walpurgisnacht. It’s the night Mephistopheles escorts Faust to the Harz Mountains, where they encounter witches and warlocks cavorting on the Brocken. It’s also the night Faust, Mephistopheles and Homunculus travel to ancient Greece to encounter the shade of Helena (a.k.a. Helen of Troy). We’ll hear appropriate selections from Arrigo Boito’s opera, “Mefistofele.”

Mendelssohn wrote a fairly tame cantata, “Die erste Walpurigisnacht” (“The First Walpurgis Night”), on another Goethe poem about prankish Druids freaking out some Christians. (EDIT: Sandy Steiglitz tells me she’ll be playing this piece as part of this week’s Sunday Morning Opera with Sandy. The featured work will be Franz Lehar’s “Paganini.” Tune in to WPRB to hear it this Sunday between 5:30 and 10 a.m.)

Brahms composed a song, “Walpurgisnacht,” about a mother scaring the living daylights out of her daughter, by telling her a thunderstorm is actually the sound of witches celebrating on the Brocken; as if that isn’t enough, she tells her that she herself is a witch. Ha ha! So German.

Among our other works will be Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’ “Beltane Fire,” Gustav Holst’s “The Morning of the Year,” Nikos Skalkottas’ “Mayday Spell,” and Benjamin Britten’s “Spring Symphony,” a piece which climaxes in a setting of the 13th century May Day round, “Sumer is a-cumen in.” It’s all verrrry Wicker Man.

We’ll be leaping naked over bonfires, this Thursday morning from 6 to 11 EDT, on WPRB 103.3 FM and wprb.com. Keep Walpurga in Walpurgis Night, with Classic Ross Amico.

April 26, 2017
Shakespeare Birthday Music on WPRB

First comes Groundhog Day, then comes Easter, then comes Shakespeare’s birthday. All that remains is for us to lock up a sacrifice in the Wicker Man on April 30 and Sulis will have been appeased.

We don’t know when, exactly, the Bard was born, but his baptismal date is April 26, 1564. Since it’s human nature to try to keep things neat, his natal day is generally held to be April 23, the very date of his death in 1616.

I hope you’ll join me this morning, as we celebrate the Bard, with a full morning of music inspired by his plays. We’ll hear selections from composers who were Shakespeare’s contemporaries, right on down to Paul Moravec’s “Tempest Fantasy,” which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2004.

Other treats will include a recording of Ralph Vaughan Williams conducting his own “Serenade to Music,” after a text from “The Merchant of Venice,” a reconstructed duet from a projected opera on the subject of “Romeo and Juliet” by Peter Ilych Tchaikovsky, and incidental music for a production of “Antony and Cleopatra” by French composer Florent Schmitt, in an opulent recording conducted by JoAnn Falletta.

Just some of the ingredients that will go into a secret recipe made public from 6 to 11 a.m. EDT, on WPRB 103.3 FM and wprb.com. We engage in a little Shake and bake, on Classic Ross Amico.

If music be the food of love, bake on.

April 20, 2017
Shakespeare Radio Hour WPRB

Shall I compare thee to a rainy Thursday?

Join me tomorrow morning on WPRB as I remember William Shakespeare (1564-1616), in advance of his birthday anniversary on April 23.

We’ll hear music inspired by a number of his plays, including “Antony and Cleopatra,” “As You Like It,” “Hamlet,” “Measure for Measure,” “The Merchant of Venice,” “Much Ado About Nothing,” “Othello,” “Romeo and Juliet,” “The Taming of the Shrew,” and “The Tempest,” by composers such as Geoffrey Bush, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Gerald Finzi, Joseph Joachim, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Paul Moravec, Florent Schmitt, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Johan Wagenaar, Richard Wagner, and Sir William Walton.

Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts, this Thursday morning from 6 to 11 EDT, on WPRB 103.3 FM and at wprb.com. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have Classic Ross Amico thrust upon them.

April 19, 2017

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