Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

Lost Music Treasures Florence Smithson’s Charm

Yesterday, I was all set to post something fun for a Sunday morning, but now everything feels rather ominous. I’m hoping that’s thunder I’m hearing on this grim, overcast morning. How many times do we have to adjust to just how horrible everything is, only for it to get worse?

But life goes on, at least for the time being. And there’s something to be said for escapism. What is art, after all (or at least the art I choose to embrace), but the pursuit of beauty, order, and affirmation of the better parts of ourselves.

In preparation for yesterday’s broadcast of one of my radio shows, “Sweetness and Light,” I constructed a playlist around the theme of summer reading. One of the candidates, which would have been a shoe-in, was this recording, by Florence Smithson, of Sophie’s Waltz Song (“For Tonight”) from Edward German’s operetta after Henry Fielding’s “Tom Jones.” I fell totally in love with it and was crestfallen not to be able to locate it anywhere as a digital download. The few recordings I could find all left me cold – Joan Sutherland may have been a fabulous singer, but her version lacks the charm, personality, and diction Smithson conveys in her recording, made all the way back in 1912. Since the few modern recordings I could find all paled in comparison, I had to settle for an orchestral arrangement by Ernest Tomlinson.

This is not the first time I’ve fallen in love with a recording, only to discover it never made it to CD. So much is lost every time we change formats. Let this be a lesson to you, folks. Hang on to your physical media!

Florence Smithson, beguiling in 1912

June 22, 2025
Midsummer Music for St John’s Eve Festival

Celebrate Midsummer with music for St. John’s Eve.

The Feast Day of St. John the Baptist (June 24) is like Christmas, in that it coincides with solstice time. But St. John’s Eve is more like Halloween. It’s a time for the lighting of bonfires against evil spirits – when witches are believed to rendezvous with powerful forces, such as the demon Chernobog, who emerges from the Bald Mountain – as the sun again pursues a southerly course.

This week on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll surrender to Midsummer madness, with Modest Mussorgsky’s “St. John’s Night” from his opera “Sorochinsky Fair,” Alfred Schnittke’s puckish “(K)ein Sommernachtsdraum” (“NOT a Midsummer Night’s Dream”), and selections from Gunnar de Frumerie’s ballet “St. John’s Eve.”

Leaping over a bonfire at this time is seen as a surety of prosperity and good luck. Tuning in to “The Lost Chord” doubly so. Keep an ear out for “Midsummer Night’s Fiends,” now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:

PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT

SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – Saturday at 11:00 AM EDT/8:00 AM PDT

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EDT/4:00 PM PDT

Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

PAINTING: “Midsummer Night” (1926), by Nikolai Astrup

June 21, 2025
Summer Reading Music KWAX University of Oregon

Now that it’s summer, it’s time to catch up on our reading! Whether it’s a beach book or a timeless literary classic, reading for pleasure is its own reward. This week on “Sweetness and Light,” imagine yourself in a lawn chair, under a good shade tree, perhaps with a beverage at your side, and enjoy an hour of music, hand-picked to get you in the spirit.

It will be a veritable lending library of compositions for concert hall, opera house, musical theater, salon, and film, with works inspired by J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter, Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, Leo Tolstoy’s “War and Peace,” Voltaire’s “Candide,” Victor Hugo’s “The Hunchback of Notre-Dame,” Jonathan Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travels,” Peter Benchley’s “Jaws,” Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird,” and Henry Fielding’s “Tom Jones.”

Celebrate two of life’s great pleasures – music and books! Set aside your cares. They’ll still be here when you get back. Get yourself in the mindset to unplug and enjoy some quiet time. Prime yourself for a carefree summer of reading, on “Sweetness and Light,” this Saturday morning at 11:00 EDT/8:00 PDT, exclusively on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Stream it wherever you are at the link:

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

Image torn from today’s headlines

June 21, 2025
Fantasy Film Music From Lost Worlds on KWAX

Summer arrives today at 10:42 p.m. EDT. But who’s keeping track? This week on “Picture Perfect,” time means nothing, as we’re bound for an hour of music from fantasy films set in lost worlds.

In “King Kong” (1933), filmmaker and entrepreneur Carl Denham hires a ship to an uncharted island, known only from a secret map in his possession. There the crew discovers the titular gorilla and other outsized, should-be-extinct creatures. Kong is abducted from his natural habitat – and you know the rest. The composer, Max Steiner, pulls out all the stops. “Kong” was one of the first films to demonstrate how truly powerful an orchestral soundtrack could be.

Then we travel to the earth’s core, courtesy of Jules Verne and “Journey to the Center of the Earth” (1959). James Mason plays the professor who leads the expedition. The film sports one of Bernard Herrmann’s most outlandish soundscapes, the orchestra consisting of winds, brass and percussion, but also cathedral organ, four electric organs, and an obsolete Renaissance instrument called the serpent. Watch out for that giant chameleon!

“One Million Years B.C.” (1966) is a guilty pleasure if ever there was one. Produced by Hammer, the studio that gave us all those repugnant yet somehow delicious Peter Cushing-Christopher Lee horror team-ups, the film features special effects by the legendary Ray Harryhausen and an equally legendary fur bikini, sported by Raquel Welch. The music is by Mario Nascimbene, who wrote one of my favorite scores for Kirk Douglas, for “The Vikings.” We’ll be listening to the film’s climactic volcano sequence.

As he did with the Indiana Jones films, director Steven Spielberg turned to B-movie source material as his visual inspiration for “Jurassic Park” (1993), based on the novel by Michael Crichton. The herky-jerky dinosaur effects of yore are replaced by state-of-the-art computer-generated imagery, in this story of a remote island safari park gone wrong.
Sure, we’ve come a long way from Raquel Welch being carried off by a Pteranodon, but admit it, we all still want to see people fight dinosaurs. Instead of fudging history, now we can feel superior by fudging science. “Jurassic Park” plays on modern scientific thinking, with DNA extracted from mosquitoes trapped in amber, cloning, and the theory that dinosaurs were not lizards, after all, but rather birds. The music is by long-time Spielberg collaborator, John Williams.

If you happen to forget a compass, or a watch, don’t panic! In the words of Ian Malcolm, life finds a way. Join me for “Lands That Time Forgot,” on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:

PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT

SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – Saturday at 11:00 AM EDT/8:00 AM PDT

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EDT/4:00 PM PDT

Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

June 20, 2025
Juneteenth Music Honoring Black Composers

I’ve been trying to finish up production on one of my radio shows today, so I haven’t had time to post about Juneteenth. Not that I feel it’s necessarily my place to do so anyway. Looking over what I posted about it last year, I find my thoughts are pretty much the same. I wish everyone who celebrates the very best, but I don’t want to come across as that silly white man who inadvertently crashes a private party. There are already plenty of other ethnic holidays for white people to behave foolishly. I do, however, feel qualified to offer a few links to music by Black composers, which I do with the best intentions. See the bottom of last year’s post. The quality of the music has not changed. It doesn’t matter what color you are in the creation or acknowledgment of beauty. Beautiful music is a gift to everyone, and gratitude is a beautiful thing. Happy Juneteenth to those who celebrate.

June 19, 2025

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