Listen carefully to this 1938 piece by American composer Samuel Barber and you’ll hear the stirrings and inspiration for English progressive rock group King Crimson‘s classic “In the Court of the Crimson King”.
My beloved John Wilson will be conducting the Barber piece, along with Korngold’s Violin Concerto in D Major and Elgar’s Sketches for Symphony No 3 at the Royal Festival Hall on Thursday, 27 February.
I thought it was important to put in this posting’s title the date in which the self-taught French composer Chabrier wrote this enduringly scrumptious piece, the orchestration sounding more like something post-WWI. Yet it was composed during the height of La Belle Epoque. This was the last piece (a reduction, of course) I ever played on the violin in my junior high school orchestra, before switching a couple years later, at 16, to Voice at the University of Minnesota.
Lastly, a word about the strings in the fourth movement. Yup, there was that “John Wilson Orchestra shimmer”, that famous wrist vibrato anyone who’s ever picked up a violin recognizes and has to have come to terms with fairly early in training. We used to wonder if it made our playing actually sound better, and it depends. The Russians and Mittel-Europeans used it a lot a hundred years ago. Some call this type of playing now “period playing”. My old boss, Rouben Mamoulian, called this style of playing “Crying Violins”. He claimed it was his idea to use it in the musical Love Me Tonight, in the “Isn’t It Romantic” sequence.
John Wilson, winner of the 2018 Incorporated Society of Musicians Distinguished Musician Award, conducts the Academy Symphony Orchestra in a Russian-themed program: Brett Dean’s 2006 work “Komarov’s Fall”, followed by Academy piano student Bocheng Wang joining the orchestra for Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No 3; Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No 6 “Pateticheskaya” (better known as the “Pathétique”) closes the concert.
Just a couple things concerning John’s ever-evolving technique. Noticed that in the Tchaikovsky, in the Allegro con grazia he put down his baton in order to use both hands in shaping the sound, which worked just fine and made the second movement the most effective movement of the symphony. In the third movement, that young percussionist played the cymbals with more reverberation, making a less snappy sound—on time, but eliciting a very visible reaction from their conductor. In fact, it was enough to prompt my bonny to take the kerchief to wipe his face out of his pocket with a decided snap, as well as to turn the score page with a snap equally as audible—a discernable message—before taking a moment to humbly submit to the music and end the concert with a satisfying fourth.
Back in 2018 John conducted Symphonies 1 and 2; in 2019 he did the 3rd, the 4th, and the tranquil 5th, and this year, 2020, on 15 January, he’ll be conducting Vaughan Williams’s fairly atypical 6th with the BBC Philharmonic (in a program that includes “In the Fen Country”, also by Vaughan Williams) in Nottingham (according to his management website; the BBC says it’s Salford).
From the 1928 operetta The New Moon and used again in the tune-filled MGM biopic of Sigmund Romberg.
Kim Criswell sang a rendition of this hot, sinuously HOT number in John’s 5 January 2020 concert in Stockholm. In fact I can’t believe he stood on the same stage when she sang this song and failed to be incinerated. But that’s just John I guess.
Softly, as in a morning sunrise The light of love comes stealing Into a newborn day O, flaming with all the glow of sunrise A burning kiss is sealing The vow that all betray For the passions that thrill love And lift you high to heaven Are the passions that kill love And let you fall to hell So ends each story Softly, as in an evening sunset The light that gave you glory Will take it all away
Saw Ben-Hur (20th Century Fox, 1959) first run years ago with my very Catholic mom so I remember the music as Holy music. Then after that, as Monty Python music.
As part of the 50th anniversary of their founding (in October 1969) King Crimson will be touring the States with members of Frank Zappa’s band through summer 2020. Above: Leonard Slatkin and the St Louis Symphony perform Barber’s Essay No 1 Op 12.
Filipina nude painted by Fernando Amorsolo y Cueto, 1951.
Above John: 
Above John: 
Saw Ben-Hur (20th Century Fox, 1959) first run years ago with my very Catholic mom so I remember the music as Holy music. Then after that, as Monty Python music.