Classic Ross Amico

Tag: WWFM

Viktor Ullmann Music From Terezin
Even under the most unspeakable circumstances, he continued to be Viktor.

Viktor Ullmann was one of the best-known composers to be interned in Terezin, or Theresienstadt, the “model camp” set up by the Nazis to deceive the foreign press and the International Red Cross.

There, concert orchestras, chamber groups and jazz ensembles were formed. Operas were staged, and the Verdi Requiem was mounted no less than fourteen times. At Terezin, composers continued to create, until deportation to Auschwitz.

Ullmann wrote in 1944, “…that musically I have been challenged not hindered by Theriesenstadt, that we did not just sit by Babylon’s rivers bewailing our fate, and that our will to create culture was as strong as our will to live.”

We’ll be listening to a cross-section of Ullmann’s music written in the camp, including a piano sonata (performed by Terezin survivor Edith Kraus, who died in 2013 at the age of 100), a concert overture and a song cycle; also, a piano concerto written shortly before his arrest, a period of hardship for the composer, as he began to be stripped of his rights and his options to make a living. He never heard the concerto performed in his lifetime. Ullmann died at Auschwitz in 1944.

Ironically, most of his unpublished works dating from before his internment are lost. It is his music written at Terezin, for the most part, which survives. The music written during his confinement, then, becomes a metaphor for the indomitable spirit of the artist.

The composer lives on through his works, on “Ullmann Victorious.” You can hear it tonight at 10 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network or at wwfm.org.

To enhance your appreciation of Ullmann’s “Der Mensch und sein Tag” (“Man and His Day”), I am posting English translations of the aphoristic texts below, so that they may be read while listening to the music.

“DER MENSCH UND SEIN TAG” (MAN AND HIS DAY), Op. 47

12 Portraits by Hans-Günter Adler
1. WALK INTO MORNING
  Sight. Hands in front of eyebrows
  and maternal light. Meadowland.
  A blade of grass. A step. Dew on the flowers.
2. SONG
  So much. So much and still more.
  A great ocean, surging and pounding –
  flutes lightly, horns heavily.
3. HOME
  In the ground, the cool ground. So colourful.
  Billowing fields and meadows around.
  In the ground – hidden heart and mouth.
4. TO THE BELOVED
  With you, in smiles and tears.
  Nearness of hand and mouth. Longing
  fades. With you no blind fancy.
5. FLOWERS
  Inward, buried deep and warm.
  Breath – singing to life.
  Bright goblets, lips, tongues.
6. IN THE PARLOUR
  Tightly pressed to one another.
  Planted with care and trouble.
  Animate and inanimate. Mute and loud.
7. THE NEIGHBOUR
  Help is good. Hand in hand.
  Door to door and wall to wall:
  quite united. Bond and band.
8. PRAYERS
  Scattered in the chalice of piety
  ripe corn offered
  to the gladdened protector and creator.
9. IN THE FOREST
  Dappled, close and far and scent.
  The sun dreams, the air slumbers.
  Crepitation. Calcification. Trees. Scent.
10. FADE
  Down, down. The bell tolls.
  Clouds glow. Evening glimmers.
  Down, down. The moon-breath shimmers.
11. NIGHT
  Come, gentle sleep! Come, sweet night!
  The ground relaxes in muted glory.
  Lone thoughts sink to earth.
12. SILENCE
  Stillness. Silence. Looking and watching.
  Tranquil in blessed reflection.
  Sleep before the divine.
October 9, 2016
Dutoit Celebrated with Ma & Dragons

Sacre bleu! Charles Dutoit is 80 years-old!

Join me this afternoon as we celebrate the Swiss-born conductor by sampling some of his very fine recordings, including music by Ravel and Roussel. We’ll also hear a piano concerto by the German romantic Felix Draeseke, on his birthday anniversary. Yo-Yo Ma turns 61 today; can’t forget him. And we’ll acknowledge Willing Billings, who was a tanner by trade, but became a composer of incendiary anthems during the American Revolution.

All that, beginning at 4:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and at wwfm.org.

Then stick around for “Picture Perfect” at 6. This week the focus will be on music from movies about dragons. We’ve a fire in our belly today! Watch out for a more complete write-up later on this afternoon.

PHOTOS (clockwise from left): Dutoit, Billings, Draeseke, and Ma

October 7, 2016
English Classics Rootham Bloch on WWFM

You know I’m crazy for the English stuff.

Today is the birthday of Cyril Rootham (1875-1938), a classmate at London’s Royal College of Music of Ralph Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst. Rootham is known, if at all, for his choral and vocal music, but a sunny autumn afternoon, I think, is the perfect time to enjoy his disarming “Miniature Suite” for piano and orchestra. Think Gerald Finzi’s “Eclogue.” It’s very much of that ilk.

We’ll also hear Ernest Bloch’s romantic and beautiful orchestral suite, “Three Jewish Poems,” as we continue our musical observance of the High Holy Days.

Tune in between 4 and 7:00 p.m. EDT to enjoy these and more, on WWFM – The Classical Network and at wwfm.org.

PHOTOS: Bloch (top) and Rootham share a smoke

October 5, 2016
Skrowaczewski Birthday Broadcast Bruckner & Ravel

With all the salutes to Sir Neville Marriner, who died on Sunday at the age of 92, it’s easy to overlook the fact that yesterday was the 93rd birthday of conductor and composer Stanislaw Skrowaczewski. Interestingly, both Methuselahian maestros served as one-time music directors of the Minnesota Orchestra – as powerful an argument as any for the health benefits of fried food on a stick. Join me this afternoon, as we honor Skrowaczewski with his recordings of Bruckner and Ravel.

First, it will be another Noontime Concert with the Lenape Chamber Ensemble. The program, which was presented on July 23rd at Delaware Valley College in Doylestown, Pa., will feature a string trio by Beethoven, the Violin Sonata by Francis Poulenc, and a rarely-heard piano sextet by a 15 year-old Felix Mendelssohn. The Lenape Chamber Ensemble is made up of crackerjack musicians from Philadelphia and New York. You can find out more about the group and its upcoming concerts, the next of which will take place this weekend, at lenapechamberensemble.org.

Tune in today from noon to 4 p.m. EDT. The musical selections will range from chamber works to Bruckner, on WWFM – The Classical Network and at wwfm.org.

October 4, 2016
Marriner Reich & Rosh Hashanah on WWFM

This afternoon, we’ll remember Sir Neville Marriner, who died yesterday, peacefully, in his sleep, at the age of 92. Impressively, Marriner conducted his final concert in Padua on Thursday. Tomorrow, he was scheduled to begin a tour of Austria, Germany and Belgium with the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, the orchestra he founded in 1958. We’ll honor this indefatigable musician with a number of his cherished recordings, as well as one or two which are perhaps not so well known.

We’ll also look to American composer Steve Reich, who is 80 years-old today. We’ll hear his Pulitzer Prize winning “Double Sextet,” performed by Eighth Blackbird. If you’re a Steve Reich fan, you’ll want to join David Osenberg for another “Celebrating Our Musical Community,” tonight at 8:00 EDT. He’ll introduce a concert of Reich’s works presented by gifted students and artists-in-residence at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, including members of Eighth Blackbird and Nexus Percussion.

Finally, we’ll include some music in observance of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, including a work for string quartet by Darius Milhaud, based on tunes from High Holy Days liturgies indigenous to the composer’s native Provence.

That’s a lot to cover in only three hours. We’ll do our best to make the New Year sweet, from 4 to 7 p.m. EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and at wwfm.org.

October 3, 2016

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