Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

Shameless Self-Promotion

I’m breaking in a new editor at the newspaper: having, as usual, turned in 1700 words against a 1200-word limit, I was wholly expecting this to be his reaction. Instead, he sent me a proof of the layout in the fastest turnaround I’ve ever seen, and a compliment into the bargain. Next time, I must try harder…

Watch for my article on Princeton composer Frank Lewin and the Princeton Pro Musica revival of his 1969 work “Mass for the Dead (Requiem for Robert F. Kennedy)” at Princeton University Chapel on May 9 (on the same concert as Leonard Bernstein’s “Chichester Psalms”).

If I understand correctly, the article will run in the Princeton weekly U.S. 1, online and in local vending machines tomorrow.

April 28, 2026
Sergei Prokofiev Offers Three Times Your Daily Allowance of Vitamin C

On Sergei Prokofiev’s birthday, I’ve got a love for…

I’ve also got a newspaper article due.

Ever wonder about the rest of the opera? I thought the production at the link below was the same as the one I caught in Philadelphia. However, as I remember it, the Philly production was not quite so dark. Turns out, that one was conceived by Alessandro Talevi. The one at the link was designed by the Brothers Quay – who also have a Philadelphia connection, as graduates of the late, lamented University of the Arts. Both productions employ an English translation by David Lloyd-Jones, who conducts the performance here – but if you still can’t understand it, use the closed captioning.

Prokofiev wrote his own libretto, in French, after a play by Carlo Gozzi. The work was given its first performance in Chicago, with the composer conducting, in 1921. None of the critics liked it, except Ben Hecht, a newspaper man who also wrote novels and was soon to became one of Hollywood’s most-valuable screenwriters. When he completed a last-minute, uncredited rewrite of “Gone with the Wind,” he was dubbed the “Shakespeare of Hollywood,” which the cynical Hecht dismissed as proof of just bad Hollywood movies really are.

It didn’t stop him from accepting assignments, though. It’s true that Ben liked “Oranges,” but what he really loved was green.

——-

Played in transcription by Jascha Heifetz

And Emil Gilels

April 27, 2026
The Internet’s Last Obituary of Ruth Slenczynska

I had computer issues on Thursday morning, and by the time they were resolved, news had broken that Michael Tilson Thomas died. Naturally, such a huge loss to the classical music world would become the focus of my attention. But by the time I was finally able to address it, it was already well into the afternoon – and then on Friday and Saturday I have to promote my radio shows – so I’ve been unable to acknowledge the death of pianist Ruth Slenczynska.

Slenczynska, who passed on Wednesday at the age of 101, was believed to have been the last living pupil of Sergei Rachmaninoff.

Sadly, her story is an all-too-familiar one. Driven hard by a domineering father – an ambitious violinist who sustained a serious, career-ending injury on the battlefield during World War I and used his daughter a proxy to fulfill his shattered dreams – Slenczynska was ruthlessly molded into a celebrated child prodigy.

Her harrowing training involved enforced practice of up to 9 hours a day. She was kept from any society, any distraction. She was denied food, berated, and even beaten. (“The moment I missed a note, I got a crack across the cheek,” she writes in her autobiography.) When she was forced to play a recital while suffering from undiagnosed appendicitis and failed to live up to her father’s expectations, he disowned her. She wasn’t even 16 years-old. But she’d already been playing in public for ten years.

Slenczynska made her debut in Berlin at the age of 6. She performed with orchestra for the first time in Paris at the age of 7. Now at 15, she walked away from it all, attending Berkeley (where she was a psychology major) and hoping to live a normal life. She married at 19, but divorced nine years later. Still a young woman, she began to teach piano, which drew her back into the concert world.

She was artist in residence at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, a full-time position, from 1964 to 1987. In 1957, she published her memoir, “Forbidden Childhood,” which surely helped exorcise some demons. In 1968, she wrote “Music at Your Fingertips: Aspects of Pianoforte Technique.”

Her complete recordings for American Decca, set down between 1956 and 1963, were reissued as a box set by Deutsche Grammophon in 2020. Several albums were also released on Ivory Classics. In 2022, she made her final record, “Ruth Slenczynska: My Life in Music,” at the age of 97.

For interviews, she would sometimes recount her first meeting with Rachmaninoff, which took place at his Paris apartment when she was 9. In 2024, she told The Washington Post, “This very tall man opened the door and looked down at me. He pointed at me with his long finger and said, ‘THAT plays the piano?’”

If that’s not Rachmaninoff, I don’t know what is.

Even without the Rachmaninoff connection, her pedigree is breathtaking. Among her other teachers were Artur Schnabel, Egon Petri, Alfred Cortot, and Josef Hoffman.

Here’s a nice write-up by Australian Broadcasting Corporation, in which she talks about, among a great deal else, her meeting with Harry Truman. Truman, who also trained as a pianist, played a Mozart duet with her at the White House. By coincidence, I just wrote about Truman’s record collection the other day, with a link to a catalogue of the recordings he owned. In scrolling through the list, I noted there were several by Slenczynska in his library, including some of her Chopin and Liszt performances.

https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/legends/ruth-slenczynska/106602856

Slenczynska was born in Sacramento, CA, in 1925. In her retirement, she kept an apartment in Manhattan, but spent her last few years in Hershey, PA. After a rocky start, she seemed to pull herself together to live a fairly normal, even rewarding existence. Good for her. May she rest in peace.

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Slenczynska talks and plays Rachmaninoff in 1963

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75XnR9iGoIo

Slenczynska in a Pathé newsreel, at the age of 5

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPZiuPw-LLs

Slenczynska at 99

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lR1McqDIeLM

April 26, 2026
So Much for Escapism: Power Corrupts on “The Lost Chord”

This week on “The Lost Chord,” I indulge my inner English major with a program inspired by two plays that explore the relationship of power and corruption – Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” and Eugene O’Neill’s “The Emperor Jones.”

The impulse grew out of my recollection of the rarely-heard ballet by Heitor Villa-Lobos, which originally aired on television in 1957. However, since the score was never published, it was believed lost for decades until rediscovered by the conductor Jan Wagner (who is Venezuelan, despite his Teutonic name). Wagner will conduct the Odense Symphony Orchestra, a Nordic band, in a surprisingly idiomatic performance.

Also on the program will be a half-remembered relic of American musical history, an aria from Louis Gruenberg’s opera, “The Emperor Jones,” sung by baritone Lawrence Tibbett, recorded in 1933.

“The Emperor Jones,” written in 1920, could be a potentially sensitive subject in a more politically correct era. No doubt about it, O’Neill’s tragedy is a product of its time, with plenty of minstrel show dialect, and the uncomfortable use of the N-word.

Already in 1924, Sidney Gilpin, the actor who created Brutus Jones, hedged at playing the character in its first revival, unless O’Neill first changed what he perceived as some of the more offensive passages. O’Neill stood his ground, and Gilpin’s replacement, Paul Robeson, went on to international stardom.

It’s easy to write-off “The Emperor Jones” as an embarrassing relic. Yet there have been some high-profile stagings over the past few years which demonstrate that the play still has much to tell us.

Jones is a former railroad porter and convict, who kills a guard in his escape from prison, and through bluff and bravado establishes himself as emperor of a Caribbean island. He maintains his power through cruelty and exploitation. However, he overplays his hand, and the situation quickly erodes. As his subjects rise up against him, Jones retreats into the jungle and descends into primal fear, haunted by images of his victims.

The play not only parallels some of the themes of “Macbeth,” it also demonstrates the fragility of human reason; how easily under the influence of adrenaline, brought on by raw terror, man is undone by the animal impulses of fight or flight; the psychological impact of guilt; and an insight into tyranny which was remarkably prescient given that fascism would soon overtake Europe.

I don’t know why it never occurred to me before to juxtapose the two plays, but a quick Google search reveals that I am not the first, so there goes my dream of an honorary doctorate.

Also on the show will be selections from rarely-heard incidental music written for two productions of “Macbeth,” by William Walton (for John Gielgud) and Sir Arthur Sullivan (for Henry Irving), respectively.

Power corrupts, on “Power Plays,” on “The Lost Chord,” now in syndication on KWAX Classical Oregon!

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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

——–

PHOTOS: Gielgud as Macbeth (top) and Tibbett as Brutus Jones

April 25, 2026
All the World’s a Rager, as We Celebrate Shakespeare on “Sweetness and Light”

We don’t know exactly when Shakespeare was born. We do know that he was baptized on April 26, 1564. Since he died on April 23, 1616, the urge to keep it tidy has been too difficult to resist: traditionally the Bard’s birthday has been observed on the same date as that of his death. At any rate, we hardly need an excuse to celebrate his plays, which have inspired lots of colorful music.

I hope you’ll join me this morning on “Sweetness and Light” for our annual Shakespeare celebration. We’ll hear a comedy overture inspired by “Hamlet,” of all things, by Geoffrey Bush; a suite compiled from incidental music for “The Winter’s Tale,” “As You Like It,” and “The Tempest,” by Engelbert Humperdinck (composer of “Hansel and Gretel”); a prelude from one of Sir William Walton’s majestic film scores; further works for the stage by Charles Gounod and Erich Wolfgang Korngold; and one of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ loveliest creations, the “Serenade to Music,” inspired by a passage from “The Merchant of Venice.” This is a piece of such aching beauty, it’s said to have brought the notoriously dour Sergei Rachmaninoff, present at the work’s first performance, to tears.

Laughing at “Hamlet” and crying at beauty? Partying is such sweet sorrow! I hope you’ll join me for an hour of great Shakes on “Sweetness and Light,” this Saturday morning at 11:00 EDT/8:00 PDT, exclusively on KWAX Classical Oregon!
Stream it, wherever you are, at the link!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

April 25, 2026

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