CGF Newsletter 6: Little Hocket Man
A Juchean maestro, worthy woodwinds, and a classical-adjacent book recommendation
Name That Tune
This week’s Name That Tune was submitted by Listener Eric. Here’s your hint: This piano-composer’s piece is one of the largest of its genre. No Googling!
As always, your goal is to provide as much accurate analysis as possible. First try to get the nationality, year, and genre, then make educated guesses about the composer and — if possible— the piece. If know the piece immediately, send us an email at classicalgabfest@gmail.com instead of commenting so the rest of us can have fun guessing.
Last Week’s Results
CGF Newsletter #5
Malcolm Arnold: Concerto for Harmonica and Orchestra
Congratulations to Listener Eric (and Listener Laurie, who bandwagoned with him) for identifying the Malcolm Arnold Harmonica Concerto. I don’t think it’s cheating to have used the clue as an impetus to go through the backlog of CGF episodes — it was simply good game play.
I, of course, thought I knew my own podcast well enough not to have to do that cursory bit of research. But of course, you do a hundred of these things over the course of two years, and a few items are bound to go missing from the old mind palace.
Think you can stump your fellow Listeners? Go ahead and try!
Head to our Google Form to upload a 30-second clip of an unidentified piece of classical music for us to try to identify.
Beware!
Here’s an excerpt of an email that was recently sent to the Mannes Conservatory community in New York:
Dear Mannes Students and Faculty:
It has been brought to my attention that Christopher Lee and the Ureuk Symphony have actively solicited Mannes students for paying gigs. A grave concern has been raised related to this orchestra and Christopher Lee... The concerns raised are essentially that the role of this orchestra is to provide propaganda to be used to promote the North Korean government and that photos and videos of students/players are also used by the government of North Korea on North Korean television and in print media.
It has been reported that: Christopher Lee, originally Ri Jun Mu, is a North Korean prayer leader with ties to a high-ranking North Korean military general. It appears that the purpose of the concert is to photograph American audiences and American and Asian musicians enthusiastically playing and hearing North Korean military music.
The story checks out. According to the Human Rights Foundation, this group has been up to their musico-propaganda shenanigans for several years now. HRF president Thor Halverson was quoted after one of Ureuk’s last NYC concerts in 2019 thus:
“Right under the noses of unsuspecting New Yorkers, the orchestra will be playing the North Korean equivalent of Nazi marching band music. Meanwhile, in Pyongyang, the state media will feature this concert in prime-time reporting as a triumph of North Korea’s dictator, deep in the heart of enemy territory. It’s geopolitical chutzpah of the cultural kind.”
Some of Ureuk’s greatest hits: “Triumphal March,” “I Shall Remain Loyal Single-Heartedly,” and “Nothing to Envy.”
It’s just an oboe, Michael — what could it cost? $40,000?
Book Report
Shy: The Alarmingly Outspoken Memoirs of Mary Rodgers by Mary Rodgers & Jesse Green
I’ll admit upfront that this book, and its subject, are only classical adjacent. But Mary Rodgers is awfully adjacent, if you ask me: she was Richard Rodgers’ daughter (composer of Oklahoma and the Sound of Music, among other pops concert favorites), mother of Adam Guettel (composer of Light in the Piazza and other pretentious non-favorites), and she was a supervising producer of Leonard Bernstein’s “Young Peoples’ Concerts” for 14 years. And she was Stephen Sondheim’s best friend.
Unfortunately, that’s all too often how her life and career are framed, but she was a composer in her own right. Her biggest hit was Once Upon a Mattress, a madcap musical retelling of “The Princess and the Pea” from 1957. But she had a second and third career, first as an author of YA lit (Freaky Friday) and then as a philanthropist and board chair of the Juilliard School from 1994-2001.
Mary died in 2014, but she had been busy at work dictating her memoirs to the writer Jesse Green since 2011, and Green has done an outstanding job of capturing her voice and her irresistible, dishy storytelling persona. Hardly a page goes by that she doesn’t mention Arthur Laurents being an asshole. She had two husbands (one gay, one straight), six kids, several lovers, a bad case of workaholism, and a dalliance with pill-popping. If that doesn’t make for a good memoir, I don’t know what does.
To me, this is an easy recommendation, but I’ll make another upfront admission: when I was just a few chapters in, I started texting all my friends that they had to read this book. Joey’s response was:
And you know what? He’s not wrong.
—Will
Classical Mixtape
Ken Burton, A Prayer
This piece came to my attention via the instagram story of former Gabfest guest Dr. Marques L.A. Garrett. It’s an exquisitely crafted work for a cappella choir, deceptively simple, but entirely beautiful. I find it a delightful blend of African-American spiritual material and the contemporary a cappella style of someone like Eric Whitacre or Stephen Paulus.
—Will
Orchestration: Orchestra, Choir (but only men, at least in the excerpt) and piano. But is it a solo or just prominent participation? A Concerto or maybe a Cantata?
Language: Diction is too muddled to discern. My 1st impression was German perhaps, or maybe English.
Era: Maybe early/mid 1900's?
Based specifically on the given clue - but only on a bit of the audio - the 1st piece that came to mind was Beethoven's Choral Fantasy. He fits the profile. And it's a large ensemble for piano solo, choir, vocal soloists, orchestra. But Beethoven also weaves piano into the fabric of the orchestra at times. It's been quite a while since I've played that, but this excerpt doesn't sound like it. For one thing, no hint of Ode to Joy, at least in this section. And although there are some Beethoven-esque moments, the harmonies sound too expansive, chromatic, too modern. So I'll rule him out.
And amongst the rep, I'd guess this piece is likely also post Schumann, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, probably Grieg (and definitely isn't one of their piano concertos that I've played in the orchestra).
Rachmaninoff is certainly both pianist and composer and wrote expansive piano concertos (I've played those - no choirs) and large symphonies. And I think he wrote a large choir/orchestra piece of some kind, although I am not at all familiar with it. But I associate men's choirs often with Russia. And if I were him, of course I would put in a prominent piano part! So I'll throw him in the mix.
The excerpt harmonies made me think specifically of Romantic Fantasy for Violin and Viola by Aurthur Benjamin (Australian). No choir in that, but he opens with an expansive broken piano chord and a luscious horn solo. But gosh that horn moment was difficult to nail with its wide awkward intervals and chromatic progressions - which definitely felt like it had to have been penned by a pianist. With that clue and his harmonies in mind, I thought of his Storm Clouds Canatata for orchestra and choir. Perhaps better known as the symphony of choice for political assassins due to its flashy cymbal crash, as featured in the scores of both versions of Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much. I don’t specifically remember piano in that, so it might not be the actual NTT. But perhaps he wrote another choral/orchestral piece featuring piano.
Arthur Benjamin made me think of another Benjamin who employed large forces: Britten (British). His War Requiem is a massive piece for Soloists, Choir, Boys Choir, Orchestra, Chamber Orchestra, Piano - Organ, too, I think (and 6 Horns - yay), etc. I don't remember playing anything exactly like this passage, but it was about an hour and a half long - and that was some years ago.
Another massive Cantata with large forces and of a similar era is Prokofiev's Alexander Nevsky. But did we have a piano included? I can't remember, at least not a prominent one, like in some of his other work. And I think the NTT excerpt doesn't have enough flavor of Slavic folk tunes - or acerbic wit - for this (or him) to be the right answer. So I'll rule him out.
Other composers using large forces from a similar era that come to mind are Carl Orff (German) and Ottorino Respighi (Italian).
Orff's Carmina Burana is fresh in my mind from Pacific NW Ballet's recent performance. And he might have been a pianist who could possibly have written something in this NTT genre.
Same perhaps for Respighi, whose most familiar large works are the Roman trilogy. No choir in those, but perhaps he wrote in that genre with a piano.
So, in the basket I'll leave Rachmaninoff, Benjamin, Britten, Orff, Respighi.
Language not detected. Male chorus plus solo piano (it seems) and orchestra. Not much help in my limited knowledge of choral works. But here is my detailed analysis from what I hear. Very beginning into the first harmony: harmonically sooo Brahms (Violin Concerto, Alto Rhapsody)! But second harmony, not very Brahmsian, more modern (Rachmaninov??). Shift from this harmony to next one, and the two following harmonic passages: Beethoven, and the piano writing confirms that. BUT, the big resolution into the major chord moves the piano writing to Tchaikovsky, and then the augmented harmony that follows definitely places this more in the romantic-late romantic period.
Bottom line: I have no idea!