I hope you’ll join me on this Saturday morning, the last of 2023, for some uplifting music calculated to charm and to cheer, on an all-new episode of “Sweetness and Light.”
We’ll enjoy selections from operetta, including a concert overture on themes from Franz Lehár’s “The Merry Widow,” a duet from Oscar Straus’ “A Waltz Dream,” and the irresistible “Song of the Laugh,” an insert aria employed in Sidney Jones’ “The Geisha,” in a vintage recording, performed by Ukrainian soprano Claudia Novikova. Trust me, it will put a smile on your face!
In addition, we’ll have some variations on the familiar New Year’s melody “Auld Lang Syne” – one a playful multi-movement set in the styles of different composers by Franz Waxman (who wrote scores for such classic films as “The Bride of Frankenstein,” “Sunset Boulevard,” and “The Nun’s Story”), conceived for an informal New Year’s Eve get-together with his neighbor, Jascha Heifetz, and friends; the other, an orchestral showpiece incorporating parodies of no less than 129 familiar melodies, by British Light Music master Ernest Tomlinson.
Erich Wolfgang Korngold, who enjoyed a successful run of reviving the operettas of Johann Strauss II, brought some of that same breezy Old World elegance to his own Hollywood film scores, proving that you can take the composer out of Vienna, but you can’t take Vienna out of the composer, as demonstrated in his “Flirtation Waltz” from the 1936 Errol Flynn classic “The Prince and the Pauper.”
I’ll be wishing you a sweet New Year this week on “Sweetness and Light.” Sweeten your morning and lighten your spirit by listening to it on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon, this morning at 11:00 Eastern Time (8:00 on the West Coast). Stream it effortlessly at the link!
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