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The End of The Americans (and Philip and Elizabeth Jennings) 2013-2018; Tchaikovsky’s “None But the Lonely Heart” Performed by Isaac Stern

Welcome Home From 6 Romances by Pyotr Tchaikovsky: No.6 “None But the Lonely Heart”

Nadezhda: Who knows what would have happened here? I probably would’ve worked in a factory…managed a factory. (Mikhail nods) You might’ve…hm. (he glances at her; she glances at him) Maybe we would’ve met… On a bus… (he smiles slightly; she looks out at the night landscape) …They’ll be okay.

Mikhail: They’ll remember us. And…they’re not kids anymore. We raised them.

Nadezhda: (nodding) Yes.

Mikhail: (beat) Feels strange.

Nadezhda: (looking at him) привыкнем.

(He looks at her; together they look out at the lights of nighttime Moscow)

EXTRA! Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, complete with organ and chorus, conducted by Vladimir Ashkenazy

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Bernard Herrmann at the Royal Albert Hall, Doris Day Screams

This is what the greatest film composer of the 20th century looks like conducting the London Symphony Orchestra in the Royal Albert Hall (2:24). From Alfred Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much (Paramount, 1956). This is a chorale entitled “The Storm Clouds Cantata” arranged by Herrmann and composed by Australian Arthur Benjamin specifically for the movie.

bernard-herrmann

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My First Music: Catholics Surrounded by Lutherans and Some Conducting by John Wilson, BBC Proms 2013

On this day, 25 May, 2018—what would have been my dad’s 113th birthday—I’d like to remember one of the few times he and I actually went to the movies together. This time we went to see, first-run, the warrior epic Taras Bulba (United Artists, 1962; screenplay by blacklisted writer Waldo Salt) on the recommendation of my girlfriend Tamara’s mother, who emigrated from Lviv after the war and was a booster for All Things Ukrainian. (A survivor of Axis bombings—she had that in common with my mom.) Our Minneapolis neighborhood was made up mostly of first- and second-generation Ukrainians, Italians, Guatemalans, Poles, Irish, and of course Filipinos, Catholics all. Of course the Lutherans surrounded us but being mostly Swedes, they had their own heritage too. And at Christmas, all that pepparkakor…num.

As for Franz Waxman’s “Ride of the Cossacks”, there’s a rather thrilling ostinato toward the end.

A pretty inspired choice for your Proms, John. It isn’t played too often (there’s more Ben Hur out there than Taras Bulba); my guess is because most conductors just can’t hear the “kinetic” qualities in this piece of music or they interpret it as more “memetic”, and so what comes out when they conduct sounds just awful, artificial… But you, my bonny lad, got it right. I’m starting to recognize your ear more and more, and it’s a wondrous thing.

John Wilson Taras BulbaWishing you two clean and ready handkerchiefs every concert day, John.

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The Hollywood String Quartet and the Hollywood Sound

John’s striving for “The Hollywood Sound” may be a new thing for his popular audience in England, but over here it’s been part of our musical history since before the Second World War. In 1939 violinist Felix Slatkin and his wife, cellist Eleanor Aller Slatkin, founded the Hollywood String Quartet. Their uniquely American style of playing strings quickly won the HSQ recognition and praise from critics around the world when they essayed works from the Classic Repertoire.

Said the Gramophone Classical Music Guide of their 1951 recording of Arnold Schoenberg‘s piece: “This was the first ever recording of ‘Verklärte Nacht‘ in its original sextet form and it remains unsurpassed.”

Hollywood String Quartet

In the liner notes of one of their other recordings, Paul Shure remembered: “Dynamics were a very big part of our work. Our discussions were always about dynamics and a little bit about tempi, and nothing else. We played with vibrato except where there was a particular effect to be had—no dead left hands were allowed.” This sounds so similar to what JWO concertmaster John Mills said in the web series Sarah’s Music: “John asks us, the strings, to play with so much vibrato that people’s family photos should fall off the TV sets. We’re effectively trying to recreate the sound of the studio orchestra.”

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Get-a-Room Sexy with Bernadette Peters and Conductor John Mauceri

The Queen of Broadway Bernadette Peters entices conductor John Mauceri with her many, many assets, courtesy of Leonard Bernstein and the great lyric team of Adolph Green and Betty Comden. “I Can Cook, Too” from On the Town. Fun starts here at 4:45.

I'm a pot of joy for a hungry boy,
Baby, I'm cookin' with gas.
Oh, I'm a gumdrop,
A sweet lollipop,
A brook trout right out of the brook,
And what's more, baby, I can cook!

Peters MausceriAbove Peters and Mauceri: Nancy Walker from the original Broadway cast sings this showstopping number.

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Cantara, 1973

New York. Me at nearly 19, around the time I started booking gigs as a topless dancer to pay for my extra singing lessons. Polaroid shot by boyfriend while he was taking a break putting together my bookcase in my new apartment. That’s a still from Casablanca on the wall. Here’s the famous nude pinup that got me in trouble on FB, the one of Lyle Waggoner, which just came out the previous summer; it’s a little off-screen to the left.)

Cantara Waiting for Bookcase

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Casablanca Suite Composed and Orchestrated by Max Steiner, Played by The John Wilson Orchestra and Conducted by My Beloved John Wilson, 2013

Steiner’s suite (written score here) is clearly patched together from various melodies in the film Casablanca, including the Nazi drinking song “Die Wacht am Rhein” (Schneckenburger/Wilhelm, 1853); “La Marseillaise” (de Lisle, 1792); and, of course, “As Time Goes By” (Herman Hupfeld, 1931). And is that a little of Steiner’s own King Kong? The Warner Bros Pictures music theme at the beginning is entirely Steiner’s composition. (Most of the) orchestration by Steiner’s frequent collaborator, Murray Cutter.

John Wilson 2019-1
I feel a raging, yearning, unchaste tenderness for my beloved John Wilson when he conducts schmaltzy pieces like this, which sort of makes up, as I say, for the times his fatuous pronouncements exasperate me. Above John: Steiner’s Casablanca Suite.

Click here to see John in action with The JWO in 2013.

The entire 2013 BBC Proms concert Hollywood Rhapsody with The John Wilson Orchestra is available here

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The Music I Hear When I Gaze Upon Conductor John Wilson: “Glück das mir verblieb” from Erich Korngold’s Die tote Stadt, Sung by Beverly Sills

4 May, 2018. Everybody, go away. I’ve fallen in love with this man.

Glück, das mir verblieb,
rück zu mir, mein treues Lieb.
Abend sinkt im Hag
bist mir Licht und Tag.
Bange pochet Herz an Herz
Hoffnung schwingt sich himmelwärts.

Wie wahr, ein traurig Lied.
Das Lied vom treuen Lieb,
das sterben muss.

Ich kenne das Lied.
Ich hört es oft in jungen,
in schöneren Tagen.
Es hat noch eine Strophe—
weiß ich sie noch?

Naht auch Sorge trüb,
rück zu mir, mein treues Lieb.
Neig dein blaß Gesicht
Sterben trennt uns nicht.
Mußt du einmal von mir gehn,
glaub, es gibt ein Auferstehn.

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