Classic Ross Amico

Tag: WWFM

Concordia Chamber Players: Michelle Djokic in Concert

As a columnist, what do you do when there are three concerts in the area that really deserve coverage, but you can only really treat one of them? Why, begin with a discursive prologue, of course!

Michelle Djokic, artistic director of Concordia Chamber Players, is really the focus this week. The first of this season’s Concordia concerts will take place at Trinity Episcopal Church in Solebury, Pa., this Sunday at 3 p.m. It may sound a bit out of the way, but the venue is lovely, and the music-making is always first-rate. Also, they put out the best spread at intermission. (That last digression is courtesy of a hungry freelancer.)

Djokic was born in Trenton, one of seven (!) musical brothers and sisters. She now makes her home in the San Francisco Bay area, where she relocated to perform with the San Francisco Symphony. She currently plays in the New Century Chamber Orchestra under Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg.

Her family and her concerts with Concordia bring her back to the area a number of times each year. Now her relationship with Foundation Academy in downtown Trenton, where she conducts master classes with the kids, brings her back to her old neighborhood, in the vicinity of Cumberland Avenue.

The concert, her remarkable upbringing, and her relationship with the kids form the focus of this week’s article (once it gets going), so it’s amusing to me that the online version puts the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, mentioned in passing in the opening paragraph, in the headline.

Here’s the piece, in today’s Trenton Times:

http://www.nj.com/times-entertainment/index.ssf/2014/11/classical_music_nj_symphony_or.html

In the print edition, two words are cut (fine with me), but three typos slip by!

On a related note, Glenn Smith will host a broadcast of a concert given by Concordia this past February, which featured the String Quartet No. 1 by Alexander Zemlinsky and the astonishing Suite for 2 Violins, Cello and Piano Left-Hand by Zemlinsky’s pupil, Erich Wolfgang Korngold. You can enjoy the broadcast today at 12 p.m. ET, at http://www.wwfm.org.

PHOTO: Michelle Djokic instructing the students at Trenton’s Foundation Academy Intermediate. Sadly, none of Peggy Krist’s photos made it into the paper (the article was probably too long), or even online.

November 7, 2014
Live on Air Today! Pledge Drive & Lost Chord Favorites

Today’s the day!

As a preamble to tonight’s rebroadcast of “The Lost Chord” (“The Most Dangerous Game,” at 6 p.m. ET), I will be on the air live for two hours, beginning at 4, to present some of my favorites from “Lost Chords” past.

Don’t forget, we are in the middle of a pledge drive, so I’ll be joined, I believe, by Alice Weiss and Michael Kownacky. Things have really been cooking the past couple of days, so there is every possibility we’ll be skiing an avalanche as we near an early end to the campaign. The focus, after all, is on raising money.

For the two hour “pre-Game,” I’ll be playing a mix of contemporary composers, vintage recordings, and light music classics of yore. If we’re lucky, apropos to World Series time, we may even get to hear George Kleinsinger’s “Brooklyn Baseball Cantata,” with Robert Merrill.

In addition, I will be offering as a special thank you gift signed copies of Robert Moran’s new album, “Game of the Antichrist,” released yesterday on the innova Recordings label – just in time for Hallowe’en. Stay tuned, then, for an interview with Moran and to listen to the title piece at 6:00.

If “the Antichrist” isn’t your thing (it’s an adaptation of a medieval mystery play, incorporating bar piano, alphorn and giant puppets), there’s always the station mug, the tote bag and the Cantus CD, “Harvest Home,” that I hope will entice you.

This will be my first live air shift since June. It would be nice if everyone supported the station under any circumstances, but if you do call or pledge online, feel free to put in a good word for me and my shows (though sometimes that information gets lost as the phone volunteers struggle to keep up).

One way or another, I hope you will help keep the station healthy by pledging your support at http://www.wwfm.org, or 1-888-232-1212.

Thank you!

PHOTOS: Join me for the Yankees and other Antichrists this afternoon on The Classical Network

October 29, 2014
Support WWFM’s Fall Campaign & The Lost Chord

WWFM has begun its Fall Membership Campaign, on a harvest theme. I hope you will support the station, and that when you do, you will put in the good word for me and my shows. Also, please make sure that the phone volunteers take the information!

I will be there live on Wednesday, from 4 to 6 p.m. ET, followed by a rebroadcast of last night’s “The Lost Chord,” from 6 to 7. During the two-hour preamble, I will be playing past “Lost Chord” favorites and offering as a special thank you gift autographed copies of Robert Moran’s new album, “Game of the Antichrist.” (Of course, you can always opt for the tote bag or the station mug.)

This will be the first time I have been on the air, in a live capacity, since June. Thankfully, the station is still carrying “The Lost Chord” and “Picture Perfect,” made possible through member contributions from listeners just like you.

You can make a pledge at http://www.wwfm.org, or by calling 1-888-232-1212.

Thank you for your support!

October 27, 2014
Franz Liszt and WWFM’s New Broadcast Times

I wasn’t going to break the news until Sunday, but apparently I’m a week off. Beginning this week, WWFM is rebroadcasting its specialty shows at new, more accessible hours.

Where I’m concerned, that means “The Lost Chord,” first aired Sunday at 10 p.m. ET, will now repeat Wednesday at 6 p.m., and “Picture Perfect,” first aired Friday at 6 p.m., will repeat Saturday at 6 a.m. (!)

It ought to be interesting to hear the reaction when listeners get to enjoy Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’ “St. Thomas Wake” during the dinner hour or Jerry Goldsmith’s “The Mephisto Waltz” on their clock radios.

Speaking of the “Mephisto Waltz,” today is the birthday of Franz Liszt (1811-1886), one of the great pianists, of course, but also one of the most innovative musical thinkers who ever lived.

Among his innumerable achievements, Liszt pioneered a technique known as thematic transformation, in which a basic theme is put through incessant permutations and shifting moods to arrive at a kind of structural unity, as an alternative to traditional classical form. He is also credited with the creation of the symphonic poem.

Without Liszt, there would have been no Wagner as we know him. In fact, Romantic music would have had to find its own way. His later music at times anticipates the experiments of Debussy and Arnold Schoenberg.

It was Liszt’s ambition to “hurl my lance into the boundless realms of future.” In that, he certainly succeeded.

Happy birthday, Franz Liszt!

Georges Cziffra performs “Les jeux d’eaux à la Villa d’Este” (“The Fountains of the Villa d’Este”):

Sviatoslav Richter performs “Nuages gris” (“Grey Clouds”):

And don’t forget to tune in tonight at 6 to hear a rebroadcast of “Mad Max,” a belated 80th birthday tribute to Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, on “The Lost Chord.” You can find out more about it at http://www.wwfm.org.

PHOTO: Liszt was seldom listless

October 22, 2014
Peter Maxwell Davies Mad Bad Genius at 80

Mad, bad and dangerous to know.

Lady Caroline Lamb coined the phrase to describe Lord Byron, but it might have been just as applicable to Peter Maxwell Davies in his younger days, when he delighted in tweaking both the musical establishment and audience expectations.

It would be easy to claim the intervening decades have mellowed him – he served ten years as Master of the Queen’s Music, and he’s written ten symphonies (so far) built on organic structures in the tradition of Sibelius. Also, he scored one of his biggest hits, “An Orkney Wedding with Sunrise (with a bagpiper standing in for the rising sun), writing for the Boston Pops.

But I say it would be a mistake to turn your back on a man who would offer to serve protected swan terrine to the police. No, at 80 years, Max still hasn’t lost his glint.

Join me for “Mad Max: English music’s angry young man turns 80,” a belated birthday tribute to Sir Peter Maxwell Davies,” on “The Lost Chord,” this Sunday night at 10 ET, with a repeat Friday morning at 3; or listen to it later as a webcast, at http://www.wwfm.org.

October 18, 2014

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