Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

New Year’s Operetta & Light Music on KWAX

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!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

December 30, 2023
Jules Verne Movie Music on KWAX Picture Perfect

This week on “Picture Perfect,” with the New Year only days away, we’ll greet the future with music from movies inspired by Jules Verne’s novels of science, progress, and adventure.

We’ll hear selections from “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,” composed by Paul J. Smith; “In Search of the Castaways,” by William Alwyn; “Journey to the Center of the Earth,” by Bernard Herrmann; and “Around the World in 80 Days,” by Victor Young.

Of course, science and technology are all well and good for what they are, but there are times when the best solution is an expertly-wielded harpoon!

Your grit and resourcefulness are always welcome on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Remember, KWAX is on the West Coast, so there’s a three-hour difference for those of you listening in the East. Here are the respective air-times for all three of my recorded shows (with East Coast conversions in parentheses):

PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday on KWAX at 5:00 PM PACIFIC TIME (8:00 PM EST)

SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – ALL NEW! – Saturday on KWAX at 8:00 AM PACIFIC TIME (11:00 AM EST)

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday on KWAX at 4:00 PM PACIFIC TIME (7:00 PM EST)

Stream all three, at the times indicated, by following the link!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

December 29, 2023
Star Trek IV Time Travel and Saving the Whales

I’ve been so damn busy this week I need to learn that trick they pull in “Star Trek” where they slingshot around the sun and travel back in time.

You can be guaranteed, then, that I’ll be paying extra-close attention when I rewatch “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home” (1986), in preparation for Roy and my discussion about the film on the next Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner. This is the one where Spock dons a bathrobe and headband in 20th Century San Francisco and mind melds with a humpback whale. With a high concept like that, is it any wonder it turned out to be the most financially successful of any “Star Trek” movie featuring the original cast?

With a new year approaching, my thoughts, in common with many others, I’m sure, are occupied with matters of time. If only we could travel back to 1986, maybe we too could save the world.

Weighty matters will be pondered, even as we embrace our inner geek. It will be all pointy heads and pointy ears as Roy and I discuss “Star Trek IV.” You’ll have a whale of time in the comments section, when we livestream on Facebook, YouTube, etc., this Friday evening at 7:00 EST!

https://www.facebook.com/roystiedyescificorner

December 28, 2023
Holiday Haul Books Music & Introvert’s Delight

Either I was rewarded for all my hard work or Santa got the wrong house, because I made out like a genetically-spliced amalgam of Old Man Potter, Ebenezer Scrooge, and the Grinch yesterday. I’ll have to build a new shelf in my library and carve out hours for listening, for all the books and compact discs I scored. Ironically, I probably wound up knocking years off my life from all the stress and lack of sleep leading up to so-called Silent Night. Lights out this morning at 1:15 a.m.

No snow on St. Stephen’s Day. All the same, I hope to cozy in with my hoard, once I get back from my wildlife food deliveries and perhaps plan what I’m going to play for this week’s radio shows, the last of 2023.

Happy holidays, everyone. Many of us, I’m sure, get better than we deserve. The least we can do is try and pay it forward – even as we introverts pine blearily for January, when we can slither back to our comfort zones for a much-desired long winter’s nap.

December 26, 2023
Herzogenberg Friend of Brahms and Forgotten Composer

The composer Heinrich von Herzogenberg (1843-1900), born in Graz, studied in Vienna, where he became a lifelong friend of Johannes Brahms. Of course, being friends with Brahms was a complicated matter. In particular, the older composer was not very diplomatic in his assessment of Herzogenberg’s music. However, toward the end of his life, he grudgingly offered, “Herzogenberg is able to do more than any of the others.”

This week on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll have music by Brahms’ faintly-praised confidant.

In 1874, Herzogenberg co-founded the Leipzig Bach-Verein, which dedicated itself to the revival of all the Bach cantatas. He served as its music director for ten years. Following the death of his wife in 1892, he turned increasingly to the writing of sacred music. In particular, he composed music for services of a Lutheran church in Strasbourg, though he himself remained a Roman Catholic. His models for these pieces were, naturally, the oratorios and passions of Bach.

Three large-scale works of the period call for members of the congregation to participate in the singing of the chorales.

“Die Geburt Christi,” or “The Birth of Christ,” written in 1894, betrays the influence of composers admired by Herzogenberg. However, the work is not always as “Brahmsian” as one might expect. A prominent role is given to church hymns, with the inclusion of folk material and some familiar Christmas melodies.

We’ll hear selections from Parts One and Two – “The Promise” and “The Fulfillment” – and then, after a break, the whole of Part Three, “The Adoration.”

I hope you’ll join me for “German Shepherds,” Herzogenberg’s musical telling of the Nativity story, on “The Lost Chord,” now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Remember, KWAX is on the West Coast, so there’s a three-hour difference for those of you listening in the East. Here are the respective air-times for all three of my recorded shows (with East Coast conversions in parentheses):

PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday on KWAX at 5:00 PM PACIFIC TIME (8:00 PM EST)

SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – ALL NEW, DEBUTING TODAY!! – Saturday on KWAX at 8:00 AM PACIFIC TIME (11:00 AM EST)

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday on KWAX at 4:00 PM PACIFIC TIME (7:00 PM EST)

Stream all three, at the times indicated, by following the link!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

December 23, 2023

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