Frank Glazer’s Concert Was Much Appreciated
The Nov. 10 Noonday Concert at the First Parish Church, Portland, featured pianist Frank Glazer in a mostly Lizst program.
Mr. Glazer has had a busy and imposing musical career, playing concerts in major halls of the United States, Europe, the Near East, South America, Japan and in many symphonies. He was Professor of Piano at the Eastman School of Music, Rochester, N.Y., and is now Artist-in-Residence and Lecturer in Music at Bates College, in Lewiston.
His Nov. 10 program included Organ Prelude and Fugue in A minor, BWV 543 by J. S. Bach, transcribed by Franz Lizst, Two Legends: St. Francis of Assisi Preaching to the Birds, and St. Francis of Paola Walking on the Waters, by Lizst. His welcome encore was one of Mendelssohn’s “Songs Without Words.”
His audience was most appreciative. I noticed many smiling, happy faces at the concert’s end.
The article on Lizst in the New Grove Dictionary of Music & Musicians (1980) described the Two Legends thus: “Illustrative pieces that nevertheless have a definite musical shape; the first is the most delicately written, while the second evokes the atmosphere of the story.”
I could hear the birds, as Glazer played lightly in the upper octaves, and in the second song, the occasional deep bass notes I thought sounded like breaking waves.
Franz Lizst war born in Raiding, Hungary, in 1811 and died in Bayrouth in 1886. The Britannica article calls him “Not only the greatest piano virtuoso of his time, but also a composer of enormous originality and a principal figure in the Romantic movement.”
His father, Adam Lizst, a talented amateur musician, played the cello in Prince Easterhazy’s court orchestra. He was an official in the service of the Prince.
At the age of 6, Franz listened attentively to his father’s piano playing, and the father began to teach his son on the piano, at age 7. Franz began to compose in an elementary way when he was 8, and may have played in public at Baden the same year. He played in concerts at Sopron and Poszony in October and November, 1820, when he was 9, after which a group of local Hungarian magnates put up a sum of money to provide for his musical education.
In 1821 his family moved to Vienna where Franz studied the piano. His first public concert in Vienna in 1822 was a great success. He gave a concert in 1823 at which Beethoven is reported to have kissed him on the forehead.
In 1823 his family moved to Paris. Franz gave concerts along the way in both Munich and Stuttgart. In Paris he played at many fashionable concerts. In 1824 he visited England for the first time, and the next spring he toured the French provinces.
When he again visited England, he played in London, in Manchester, and before King George IV at Windsor.
So we’ve learned of another child prodigy. His Hungarian Rhapsodies are familiar, and now Glazer’s program has introduced more of his many other compositions to us.
American Museums Auctioneering Off Art Again?
This headline in the Boston Herald appeared Oct. 31: “Everything Must Go – – Including the Picassos!”
I was very upset to read last year of the “deaccessioning” of unwanted works from collections of museums and libraries. This article says that critics complain that museums are neglecting their roles as cultural custodians in favor of chasing the latest hot property.
Well, aren’t they? I’m among the critics. The Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum, The Art Institute of Chicago, Los Angeles County Museum and the New York Public Library are included.
On the auction stand in New York will be works by Picasso, Renoir, Modigliani and Chagall as well as rare photographs by Alfred Steiglitz and Edward Weston.
Robert Rosenblum, art history professor at New York University and curator at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, said “American Museums treat their collections as if they were the stock market. European museums do not sell things and everything’s fine.”
If some of these acquisitions were donated, what about the donors or their families? I doubt if they would favor auctioning off masterpieces.
Two Bald Eagles Die On Power Line
Family mail brings a clipping from the Leeman Enerprise, a weekly at Lake Leeman, near the Straits of Mackinac in Michigan. Its area includes an Indian reservation. A big picture shows a game warden holding two handsome male bald eagles, one in each hand, but with their talons clasped tightly together. A woman and her 3-year-old granddaughter found them under a power line. Fighting over territory (and a mate?), they fell onto the power line and died. Birds perch on power lines without harm, but this time their long wings met and created a circuit that killed them. Banding records from Michigan’s Cheboygan County, made in 1999 and 2000, show that one was 7 years old at death and the other, 6.
They’re being mounted for an Indian museum. The enterprise says Michigan had 500 pairs of nesting bald eagles this year.
With that big white head and powerful beak, these two are something to see.
RECIPE
Today we have two easy chicken recipes from Carlean Johnson’s “Six Ingredients or Less,” 1988.
QUICK CHICKEN DIVAN
1 (10 oz.) pkg. of frozen broccoli, cooked
4 large slices cooked chicken or turkey (or several smaller slices)
1 can cream of chicken soup
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup grated Cheddar cheese
Place broccoli in greased 10×7-inch baking dish. Top with chicken slices. Combine soup and milk until blended. Pour over chicken. Sprinkle with cheese. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. Makes 4 servings.
RITZ BAKED CHICKEN
2 whole chicken breasts, halved
1/2 cup sour cream
1 Tbls. Worcestershire sauce
1 Tbls. lemon juice
1 cup crushed Ritz crackers
Combine sour cream, Worcestershire sauce and lemon juice. Dip chicken in mixture; roll in cracker crumbs. Place on baking sheet and bake at 325 degrees for 45 to 60 minutes, or until tender. Makes 4 servings.
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