Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

Easter with Peter Rabbit Sweetness and Light on KWAX

This week on “Sweetness and Light,” with Easter hopping up on us, we’ll do our best keep it fluffy, with selections for Peter Rabbit and friends from “Tales of Beatrix Potter.” This 1971 ballet film features dances choreographed by Frederick Ashton and performed by members of the Royal Ballet.

The director, Reginald Mills, worked as an editor on Powell-Pressburger classics such as “The Red Shoes” – for which he was nominated for an Academy Award – and “The Tales of Hoffman,” also incorporating dance. John Lanchbery arranged the music from Victorian era carrot sticks by Michael Balfe and Sir Arthur Sullivan.

Then, in the warm glow of a sugar-high, we’ll luxuriate in the mingled sense of well-being and accomplishment that comes from having polished off all the chocolate, with the “Cottontail Rag” by Joseph Lamb.

No need to adjust your rabbit ears. We’ll be keeping all our jelly beans in one basket on “Sweetness and Light,” an hour of leporine light music for Easter, 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/

April 19, 2025
Stokowski Wagner Parsifal Good Friday Spell

On Leopold Stokowski’s birthday, a transcendent performance of the “Good Friday Spell” from Wagner’s “Parsifal”

April 18, 2025
Biblical Epics on Film Radio Show KWAX

This week on “Picture Perfect” it’s the second installment in a mini-festival of very big films, as we present another hour of Biblical epics, though this time with a twist. Rather than go directly to the Gospels, these are all films adapted from bestselling historical novels.

Lloyd C. Douglas’ “The Robe” was given the Hollywood treatment in 1953. Richard Burton plays Marcellus, the Roman tribune who oversees the crucifixion and wins Christ’s robe in a game of dice. Victor Mature (last week’s Samson) is his well-oiled slave, Demetrius, and Jean Simmons, his childhood sweetheart, now betrothed to Caligula (a scene-stealing Jay Robinson).

“The Robe” holds the distinction of being the first film released in CinemaScope. Allegedly, it is also the only Biblical epic ever to yield a sequel (“Demetrius and the Gladiators”). The score, by Alfred Newman, has always been popular.

Thomas B. Costain’s “The Silver Chalice” was brought to the big screen in 1954. The film introduced Paul Newman in the lead, as a lowborn artisan commissioned to fashion a decorative casing for the cup from which Christ drank at the Last Supper (i.e. the Holy Grail).

The film is interesting in that it features quasi-abstract sets by stage designer Rolfe Gerard and a stunning score by Franz Waxman, which incorporates the “Dresden Amen,” also used in Wagner’s “Parsifal.” However, Newman was mortified by his performance and famously took out an ad in Variety, essentially to apologize.

“Barabbas” is worlds away from the usual Hollywood epic. Based on the Nobel Prize-winning novel of Pär Lagerkvist, the film is a ruminative slog through the guilt-ridden psyche of the title character, played by Anthony Quinn. Barabbas is the thief who is pardoned to make way for the crucifixion of Christ. He spends the rest of his life searching for meaning in a meaningless world.

In a quixotic attempt at verisimilitude, director Richard Fleischer shot the crucifixion scene during an actual solar eclipse. Mario Nascimbene (who composed the music for last week’s “Solomon and Sheba”) wrote the score.

Finally, we’ll wrap things up with music from one of the all-time Oscar champs, “Ben-Hur,” from 1959. Based on the 1880 novel of General Lew Wallace, “Ben-Hur” was honored with 11 Academy Awards, including those for Best Picture, Best Director (William Wyler) and Best Actor (Charlton Heston).

The highlight of the film, of course, is the amazing chariot race, but there is a grandeur to the whole which makes it difficult to look away. Miklós Rózsa wrote the magnificent score, arguably the best of any film of its kind. (Parenthetically, today is the composer’s birthday!)

The “Ben-Hur” Oscar record has been tied twice – in 1998, by “Titanic,” and in 2004, by “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” – but this is before computer generated imagery, folks. They just don’t make ‘em like this anymore.

The New Testament is all-new, by way of adaptations from historical novels, this week 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/

April 18, 2025
Balliett’s “St. Mark Passion” Film Premieres

To coincide with Good Friday, documentarian H. Paul Moon unveils his new film of Douglas Balliett’s “St. Mark Passion.” The film dropped at 8:00 this morning (3 p.m. Jerusalem time) and is now archived for viewing on demand.

If you don’t have time to listen it today, do try to catch it over the weekend. The idiom is attractive, the work is substantial and, although I only learned of it as the premiere showing was already in progress (I joined it about 45 minutes in), it strikes me as music that will bear repeated listening.

The performance was captured at New York’s Holy Trinity Lutheran Church and features the Theotokos Ensemble, with the composer himself directing and playing viol.

If you’re a regular attendee of concerts of the Princeton Symphony Orchestra, Balliett’s name and visage may strike you as familiar – his twin brother, Brad, with whom Doug frequently collaborates (as the Brothers Balliett), is the PSO’s principal bassoonist. Brad is also on the faculty of the Peabody Conservatory and the Juilliard School, so it’s possible you might recognize him from those places too!

Doug teaches at Juilliard as well, as a professor of Baroque bass and violine. He writes cantatas for weekly church services and leads the Theotokos Ensemble every Sunday at St. Mary’s Church on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. As a performer, he has played with many notable ensembles. Prior to its premiere, his “St. Mark Passion” was given a reading by one of them, William Christie’s Les Arts Florissants. Not bad!

He’s also a poet, and for three years, he hosted a radio show dedicated to living composers with his brother on WQXR.

Here’s Paul’s film of the oratorio. Try it; you’ll like it.

https://zenviolence.com/balliett

Learn more about Doug Balliett at his website.

https://www.dougballiett.nyc/

Elaborating on the Brothers Balliett and the ten-point “manifesto” that governs their creative process:

https://www.dougballiett.nyc/brothers-balliett

Doug’s remarks about the Passion:

https://www.dougballiett.nyc/st-mark-passion

April 18, 2025
Maundy Thursday Music: Meaning & Somber Reflections

I’ll bet a lot of people wind up googling “maundy” today. I know I do. Maundy Thursday commemorates Jesus’ washing of the feet of his disciples, the Last Supper, and the betrayal and arrest of Christ in the garden of Gethsemane.

Here’s what I’ve been able to find out: “maundy” is most likely derived from the Latin word “mandatum,” as in “Mandatum novum do vobis ut diligatis invicem sicut dilexi vos” (“A new commandment I give you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you”). Or it could be from the Middle English and Old French words “maund” and “mendier,” respectively, after the Latin “mendicare,” meaning to beg.

Okay, so the origins are vague. Let’s just say it ties in to the concepts of humility and service, as exemplified by Jesus’ ritual foot-washing. In any case, “maundy” has been in use since at least 1530, so we’re just going to roll with it.

Here’s an exceedingly somber work for Maundy Thursday by the Belgian composer Guillaume Lekeu. Lekeu died of typhoid the day after his 24th birthday. In his short life, he managed to produce about 50 works. Admittedly, some are incomplete. If one were to judge solely from his music, he was a melancholy soul indeed.

This is “Molto Adagio,” composed by a 16-year-old Lekeu, inspired by the words of Christ in the garden of Gethsemane, “My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death.”

From 1999 to 2014, the Brentano Quartet served as ensemble-in-residence at Princeton University. Among its other achievements, the ensemble played on the soundtrack of the 2012 film “A Late Quartet,” starring Christopher Walken, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, and Wallace Shawn. The group’s cellist, Nina Lee, also appeared onscreen, as a fictionalized version of herself.

Victor de Sabata is remembered primarily as a conductor, especially of opera, having led the classic recording of “Tosca” with Maria Callas. He got his start playing violin in an orchestra under Toscanini. Toscanini encouraged the young man to become a conductor, which was kind of like letting the genie out of the bottle. Their relationship status passed from mentor-disciple to friendship to bitter rivalry. For decades, De Sabata was principal conductor at La Scala. For a time, he was its artistic director. One observer described his appearance while conducting as a cross between Julius Caesar and Satan.

An interesting tension, then, between the sacred and the diabolical. De Sabata was also the composer of this beautiful and contemplative meditation for orchestra, titled “Gethsemani” [sic]. In this recording, on the Hyperion label, the conductor is De Sabata’s son-in-law, Aldo Ceccato.

Finally, from a gorgeous album of Palestrina’s music for Maundy Thursday on the Chandos label, here’s a playlist of performances by Musica Contexta.

All sensitively done, I think. There’s little maudlin in this Maundy music.

“Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane,” c. 1500, by Pedro Berruguete (1450–1504)

April 17, 2025

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