You might think, bon vivant that I am, that a light music show would be something I can simply toss off, but “Sweetness and Light” is actually the most difficult of my three shows to produce. Even though the repertoire can often be a little on the frivolous side (by design), with so many recordings played in an hour, there are a lot of moving parts.
First, I have to settle on a theme. That’s by far the easiest. Then I have to figure out what to play. Even within a theme, I want to keep it diverse, and I want the pieces to be of different lengths, so that, musically, it’s pleasing to listen to, and I’m not breaking in with chatter every three minutes. It’s possible to play six or seven pieces an hour on a well-constructed show and to plan everything so as to keep the talk fairly unobtrusive. By extension, the musical selections often have to be shuffled until I feel I’ve achieved the optimal sequence. In the end, I always wind up with a lot of extra material, and plenty to reshelve, hopefully to remember for another time.
One of the great frustrations of brainstorming repertoire can be turning things up through searches on the internet, falling in love with a certain performance or a piece of music, and realizing that not only do I not have it in my collection, but discovering that it doesn’t seem to be available anywhere as a digital download. Perhaps it was only ever issued on vinyl, decades ago, in another country. C’est la vie! In the end, I just have to let it go, with a touch of regret and the understanding that my listeners will never know what they missed. But it is none the easier for that!
On the bright side, I sometimes turn up related gems that I had no idea ever existed. Putting together a show about birds and birdsong took me to some pretty stratospheric places. Listen to this 1959 recording of the “Nightingale Waltz” from Carl Zeller’s operetta “Der Vogelhändler” (“The Bird Seller”), with Belgian soprano Lise Rollan – totally new to me, and totally unavailable as a download – and you’ll understand why I fell instantly in love.
It was hard for me to give up the search, but in the end, I had to “settle” for the considerable charms of Elisabeth Schumann.
If you liked that, perhaps you will enjoy this 1938 film, “Nanon,” with “the German Nightingale,” lyric coloratura soprano Erna Sack. Another happy discovery.
Thankfully, a love for music is a lifelong passion that is never truly spent!
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