Classic Ross Amico

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Film Composers Beyond the Screen

Played out on the Oscars?

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” enjoy a triple-feature of concert works by composers better recognized for their work in film.

First, Jerome Moross was ensured a kind of immortality in the hearts of moviegoers for his Academy Award nominated score for “The Big Country.” He composed music for 16 films in all – comparatively few, actually, on account of a bicoastal career. (He was based in New York City.)

Off-screen, he wrote music for five ballets, a symphony, a flute concerto, various works for orchestra and chamber ensemble, and a one-act opera, “Sorry, Wrong Number.” His best-known musical theatre piece is “The Golden Apple,” which spawned the ever-green “Lazy Afternoon.”

Tonight, we’ll hear his delightful “Sonatina for Clarinet Choir” of 1966.

Very little need be said of John Williams. The most successful film composer of all time, Williams has been a household name since the 1970s, thanks to the one-two punch of “Jaws” and “Star Wars.” But by then, he was already two decades into a career that’s now spanned 65 years. With 52 Academy Award nominations and five wins, he is the second most nominated figure in the history of the Academy, behind only Walt Disney.

For the concert hall, Williams has written music for just about every instrument, including an impressive body of concertos. Tonight, we’ll hear his “Essay for Strings,” composed in 1965, when he was 33 years-old.

Finally, English composer Laurie Johnson (pictured) – still with us at 94 – is appreciated for his contributions to, among others, Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove,” the Hammer cult favorite “Captain Kronos – Vampire Hunter,” and the classic TV series “The Avengers.”

Gramophone Magazine described his “Symphony: Synthesis,” composed in 1971, as a masterpiece. “The work becomes increasingly fascinating with each listening,” writes the critic. “This is perhaps the first truly successful combination of the Jazz and European music traditions.”

The recording we’ll hear, made under the composer’s direction, features a number of prominent jazz artists, including Tubby Hayes, Don Lusher, Joe Harriott, Kenny Wheeler and Stan Tracey.

It’s not always about images. Film composers cast themselves against type, on “Typecast IV: The Curse of Typecast.” It will be there for you when the Oscars sputter, this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT; or enjoy it later, as a webcast, on WWFM – The Classical Network and at wwfm.org.

April 25, 2021
Oscar Weekend Snubbed Scores Spotlighted

Does anyone even know it’s Academy Awards weekend? Has anyone actually seen any of the movies? Or at least heard of most of them? No doubt about it, this will be Oscar’s strangest year.

Since I’m still cut off from studio broadcast, thanks to COVID-19, we’ll have to forgo my annual three-hour celebration of the movies – a festive playlist made up of music associated with Academy Award winning classics, alongside selections from the current year’s nominees.

Be that as it may, Oscar doesn’t always get it right.

As something of a stopgap, this week on “Picture Perfect,” we’ll revisit some enduring and culturally significant movies, most of which were honored in other categories, but were denied the statuette for Best Original Score.

Tune in for selections from “Citizen Kane” (Bernard Herrmann), “The Magnificent Seven” (Elmer Bernstein), “The Big Country” (Jerome Moross), and “Gone with the Wind” (Max Steiner).

One doesn’t need a statuette to be a winner. I hope you’ll join me for “They Been Robbed,” on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, this Saturday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

If you’re really jonesing for the glories of Oscars past, last year’s Oscar Party is still available as a webcast – though of course, last year’s nominees are no longer current. Make yourself a bowl of popcorn and listen here:

https://www.wwfm.org/post/picture-perfect-february-7-oscar-party-2020

April 24, 2021
Stokowski’s Wagner Early Philadelphia Recordings

With the possible exception of his own transcriptions of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, Leopold Stokowski recorded more Wagner with the Philadelphia Orchestra than any other composer.

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” on Stoky’s birthday, we’ll revisit some of his early recordings, originally issued on 78s, including the controversial “Liebesnacht,” the original version of his symphonic synthesis after “Tristan und Isolde” – an arrangement that infuriated listeners, with its inconclusive ending – and the “Liebestod,” which he subsequently undertook, by popular demand, in order to provide a more satisfactory conclusion.

We’ll also hear a superb performance of “Wotan’s Farewell and Magic Fire Music,” from “Die Walküre,” with baritone Lawrence Tibbett, in a role he never sang on stage. And, as an added bonus, Stokowski himself will supply a spoken summary of the “Ring Cycle,” done for CBS radio in 1932, complete with faux middle-European accent. (Stoky was a second-generation Londoner, his father of Polish extraction and his mother Irish.)

I hope you’ll join me for “Magic Fire” – Leopold Stokowski’s early Wagner recordings with the Philadelphia Orchestra – this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

April 18, 2021
Unexpectedly Beastly Radio WWFM

If you tuned in to “The Lost Chord” tonight expecting the Bulgarian program, unfortunately there’s been a mix-up, so instead we’re hearing “A Feast of Beast,” a fairy tale program I had earmarked for Mother’s Day. Enjoy selections from Georges Auric’s film score for Jean Cocteau’s “La Belle et la Bête” and a suite from Robert Moran’s opera “Desert of Roses,” airing now, from 10 to 11 pm EDT on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

April 12, 2021
Bulgarian Music This Sunday Vladigerov & Bermel

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’re off to Bulgaria.

Pancho Vladigerov – despite his Mexican-sounding first name and Swiss birth – was a seminal figure in Bulgarian music. He was the country’s first major composer to harness Bulgarian folk traditions to classical forms.

Fairly well known in Central Europe during the 1920s, when he was an associate of the theatrical impresario Max Reinhardt, Vladigerov had many of his works published by Universal Edition and recorded by Deutsche Grammophon. He was a composer of opera, ballet, symphonic music, five piano concertos, two violin concertos, chamber music, songs, choral works, and piano pieces.

Tonight, we’ll hear a generous selection from Vladigerov’s “Bulgarian Dances” of 1931.

Also on the program will be American composer Derek Bermel’s affectionate souvenir of his studies in the region, “Thracian Echoes” of 2002. Bermel served as artist-in-residence at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study from 2009 to 2013. His “Thracian Echoes” was performed locally by the Princeton Symphony Orchestra in 2011.

There will be no balking in the Balkans. Skim the cream of Bulgarian music, on “Bulgar Wheat,” this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

April 11, 2021

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