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The daily newspaper of classical music
Grace Notes
By Joe McLellan, classical music critic
emeritus of The Washington Post
PATRIOTISM THE INTELLIGENT WAY
In recent years, I have lost my taste for symphonic pops programs
on PBS. The reasons, I am sure, will be apparent on July 4 when the annual National Symphony Orchestra concert is televised live from
the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol
What began many years ago as a standard pops program started to deteriorate after it became an annual
tradition on television and PBS began to get more and more control of the programming. Symphonic music became less and less important,
the program was reoriented away from symphonic music toward Top 40 numbers and glitzy guest celebrity appearances. PBS, which normally
shows more respect for its viewers' intelligence than any other network, clearly underestimates its audience's attention span and
its taste for music outside the Top 40 pops.
The dumbing-down on PBS reached such a point that the "1812" Overture (classical Top
40, but that doesn't count) was cut back to just the final climax, leaving out the thematic confrontation between the "Marseillaise"
and an old Russian Hymn. The "1812" Overture might have been wiped out entirely, except that it was a traditional introduction to
the fireworks over the
None of these objections apply to a symphonic pops program scheduled to run on many PBS
stations on June 25: "Cincinnati Pops: Patriotic Broadway." It is conducted by Erich Kunzel, who usually conducts the July 4 concert
in
Kunzel first conducted the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in 1965 and became the conductor of the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra when it
was officially established in 1977. His intelligence, musicianship and sense of fun made him the true successor to Arthur Fiedler
as
The material for Patriotic Broadway, as the title indicates, is drawn from the vast
and varied material that has been written for American musicals, beginning with the intensely patriotic music of George M. Cohan and
including material, familiar and unfamiliar, from such works as West Side Story, 1776, Ragtime, Shenandoah, Mr. President and Strike
Up the Band. The singers include John Schneider, Tom Wopat and Denyce Graves, who has a half-dozen costume changes and looks and sounds
gorgeous in all of them. Other performers include the U.S. Army Field Band Soldiers' Chorus, the U.S. Army Herald Trumpets, the May
Festival Chorus and the Musical Theatre Department of the University of Cincinnati College Conservatory of music. The program includes
a lot of first-class dancing as well as the songs and some purely instrumental music.
"
A comic highlight is Nick Clooney's imitation of Franklin Delano Roosevelt
in "Off the Record" from I'd Rather Be Right, complete with a long cigarette holder which he brandishes very expressively.
This show
is a model of what a televised symphonic pops program should be. Those who want to see a patriotic TV musical program on July 4 might
consider taping it and replaying it on the holiday.