If you look at the time stamp on this post (14:30 or 2:30 PM), you will know I am a little late in getting it up. I started this process about 5:30 this morning, yet here I am and its lateish and I still have not got this done. I have been dealing with various challenges on multiple fronts including Internet, cell phone apps and the phone itself. so I decided to say fuck it and just sit down to write and deal with all the shit later! Now on to your Concert:
Our featured composer this morning is he under appreciated Franz Liszt. Liszt was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, virtuoso pianist, conductor, teacher and Franciscan tertiary.
Liszt gained renown in Europe during the early nineteenth century for
his virtuoso skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to
have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age, and in the
1840s he was considered to be the greatest pianist of all time. Liszt
was also a well-known and influential composer, piano teacher and
conductor. He was a benefactor to other composers, including Richard Wagner, Hector Berlioz, Camille Saint-Saëns, Edvard Grieg and Alexander Borodin.[4]
As a composer, Liszt was one of the most prominent representatives of the "Neudeutsche Schule"
("New German School"). He left behind an extensive and diverse body of
work in which he influenced his forward-looking contemporaries and
anticipated some 20th-century ideas and trends. Some of his most notable
contributions were the invention of the symphonic poem, developing the concept of thematic transformation as part of his experiments in musical form and making radical departures in harmony. He also played an important role in popularizing a wide array of music by transcribing it for piano.
Our concert footage is a marvelous one from 1986 from American Pianist Earl Wild in an intimate chamber setting in the country home of Lord Londonderry:
Royland Earl Wild was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1915. Wild
was a musically precocious child and studied under Selmar Janson at
Carnegie-Tech University there, and later with Marguerite Long, Egon
Petri, and Helene Barere (the wife of Simon Barere), among others. As a
teenager, he started making transcriptions of romantic music and
composition.
In 1931 he was invited to play at the White House by President Herbert Hoover. The next five presidents (Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson), also invited him to play for them, and Wild remains the only pianist to have played for six consecutive presidents.
In 1937, Earl Wild was hired as a staff pianist for the NBC Symphony Orchestra. In 1939, he became the first pianist to perform a recital on U.S. television. Wild later recalled that the small studio became so hot under the bright lights that the ivory piano keys started to warp.
In 1942, Arturo Toscanini invited him for a performance of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, which was, for Wild, a resounding success, although Toscanini himself has been criticized for not understanding the jazz idiom in which Gershwin wrote. During World War II, Wild served in the United States Navy as a musician. He often travelled with Eleanor Roosevelt while she toured the United States supporting the war effort. Wild's duty was to perform the national anthem on the piano before she spoke. A few years after the war he moved to the newly formed American Broadcasting Company (ABC) as a staff pianist, conductor and composer until 1968. He performed many times for the Peabody Mason Concert series in Boston, in 1952, 1968, and 1971 and three concerts of Liszt in 1986. Wild was renowned for his virtuoso recitals and master classes held around the world, from Seoul, Beijing, and Tokyo to Argentina, England and throughout the United States.
Earl Wild created numerous virtuoso solo piano transcriptions: 14 songs by Rachmaninoff, and works on themes by Gershwin. His Grand Fantasy on Airs from Porgy and Bess, the first extended piano paraphrase on an American opera, was recorded in 1976 and had its concert premiere in Pasadena on December 17, 1977. He also wrote Seven Virtuoso Études on Popular Songs, based on Gershwin songs such as "The Man I Love", "Fascinating Rhythm" and "I Got Rhythm",[8] and Theme and Variations on George Gershwin's "Someone to Watch Over Me"
He also wrote a number of original works. These included a large-scale Easter oratorio, Revelations (1962), the choral work The Turquoise Horse (1976), and the Doo-Dah Variations, on a theme by Stephen Foster (1992), for piano and orchestra. His Sonata 2000 had its first performance by Bradley Bolen in 2003 and was recorded by Wild for Ivory Classics.
Wild recorded for several labels, including RCA Records, where he recorded an album of Liszt and a collection of music by George Gershwin, including Rhapsody in Blue, Cuban Overture, Concerto in F, and "I Got Rhythm" Variations, all with the Boston Pops Orchestra and Arthur Fiedler. Later in his career, Wild recorded for Ivory Classics.
Under his teacher Selmar Janson, Wild had learned Xaver Scharwenka's Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor, which Janson had studied directly with the composer, his own teacher. When, over 40 years later, Erich Leinsdorf asked Wild to record the concerto, he was able to say "I've been waiting by the phone for forty years for someone to ask me to play this".
In 1997 he was the first pianist to stream a performance over the Internet.
Wild,, lived in Columbus, Ohio and Palm Springs, California[ with his domestic partner of 38 years, Michael Rolland Davis. He died aged 94 of congestive heart disease at home in Palm Springs.
Wild's memoirs A Walk on the Wild Side were published posthumously by Ivory Classics. (Wikipedia)
The Companion Concert over on my tumblr has Daniil Trifonov performing Liszt's Trancendental Etudes Live in Lyon, France.
Then adding Braun as well as Beauty to the already Beautiful Music is this week's sublime edition of Naked of Nearly So! taken from my archives for your viewing pleasure. Your will find them adorning the page below this post. over on my tumblr you will find Brad Patton is Your Hottie of the Day! Thanks for the visit, now maybe I can enjoy the Cowboy Game. See you again soon. Until next time as always, Enjoy!
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