Classic Ross Amico

  • Beer Barrel Polka a Czech Oktoberfest Classic

    Beer Barrel Polka a Czech Oktoberfest Classic

    by 

    Ross Amico
    in
    3 responses

    When lyrics were added to the best-known polka of Czech composer Jaromir Vejvoda, it also became perhaps the most famous Czech song.

    Originally conceived as the “Modřanská Polka” – or “Polka of Modřany” – with words it took on a new life as “Škoda lásky” (“Unrequited Love”). It was also a hit in Germany as “Rosamunde.” World-wide popularity followed, as soldiers adopted it as a drinking song during World War II and introduced it at home as the “Beer Barrel Polka.”

    This week on “Sweetness and Light,” in this season of the harvest and Oktoberfest, it will be one of our featured works as we roll out the barrels for a salute to BARLEY AND THE GRAPE.

    The hour will include the “Revelry Overture” by Montague Phillips and Leopold Godowsky’s “Symphonic Metamorphosis on ‘Wine, Women and Song’” after Johann Strauss II. We’ll raise our goblets to the god of wine with ballet music from Jules Massenet’s rarely-heard opera “Bacchus” and the “Procession of Bacchus” from Léo Delibes’ ballet “Sylvia.”

    We’ll also quaff to drinking songs by Reginald De Koven (“Brown October Ale” from the comic opera “Robin Hood”) and Henry Purcell (himself a casualty of one too many pub-crawls).

    We’ve a powerful thirst for BARLEY AND THE GRAPE on “Sweetness and Light.” The taps are open, 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/

  • Shana Tova Music for the Jewish High Holy Days

    Shana Tova Music for the Jewish High Holy Days

    by 

    Ross Amico
    in
    3 responses

    Shana tova!

    This week on “The Lost Chord,” we welcome the year 5785 with an hour of music for the Jewish High Holy Days.

    Herman Berlinski (1910-2001) was a prolific composer, who made his mark largely in the field of liturgical music. His “Shofar Service” (1964) is scored for baritone, shofar, two trumpets, organ, and chorus. The shofar, traditionally fashioned out of a ram’s horn, is sounded, as applies here, during the Rosh Hashana or New Year service. The text is compiled from the Union Prayer Book.

    David Stock (1939-2015), a longtime resident of Pittsburgh, served on the faculty of Duquesne University. He was founder of the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, and acted as composer in residence for the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and the Seattle Symphony. “Yizkor” (1999), Stock’s elegy for string orchestra, takes its name from the communal memorial service and prayer that honors the deceased. The custom is notably observed on Yom Kippur, or the Day of Atonement.

    Finally, we’ll turn to “The Chagall Windows” (1974), luminous, strange, and beautiful impressions of stained glass tableaux from the synagogue of the Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem, by the English pianist and composer John McCabe (1938-2015). The windows depict the twelve sons of the patriarch Jacob and the Twelve Tribes of Israel. McCabe addresses the windows in interlinked sections, so as to give the work a more symphonic, perhaps less episodic, feel.

    The world premiere recording was made for EMI in 1974. We’ll hear a live performance from the next year, captured in a more natural acoustic, with the London Philharmonic conducted by Bernard Haitink.

    Best wishes for a sweet, happy, and healthy new year. It’s a fresh start, from tekeeyah to atonement, on “Shofar, So Good” – music for the High Holy Days – on “The Lost Chord,” 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 – ALL NEW! – 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/

  • De Palma’s Picture Perfect Soundtracks

    De Palma’s Picture Perfect Soundtracks

    by 

    Ross Amico
    in
    7 responses

    Brian De Palma is an extraordinarily adept filmmaker, who has been criticized for his adherence to “genre trash.” He has always been attracted to suspense and crime thrillers, usually of an especially violent nature, many of them tinged with horror.

    This week on “Picture Perfect,” with Hallowe’en right around the corner, we’ll hear music from four of De Palma’s films.

    It’s hardly surprising that such an admirer of Alfred Hitchcock would also hire Hitch’s signature composer. Bernard Herrmann scored two films for De Palma – “Sisters,” in 1973, and “Obsession,” in 1976.

    “Obsession” is a spin on Hitchcock’s “Vertigo.” A botched rescue attempt results in the death of a businessman’s kidnapped wife. Years later, he encounters someone who could be her doppelganger. The film stars Genevieve Bujold, John Lithgow, and a very tan Cliff Robertson.

    “The Fury,” from 1978, is a supernatural thriller based on a novel by John Farris. Two teenagers, endowed with powers of telekinesis and extra-sensory perception, are targeted by researchers who plan to harness them for their own nefarious ends. For a time, Kirk Douglas has fun as a former CIA agent, and John Cassavetes is a particularly slimy villain. Cassavetes’ comeuppance makes for one of the most memorable movie endings of its era – and we’ll leave it at that!

    Critic Pauline Kael praised the music, which is by none other than John Williams – hot off his third Academy Award, for “Star Wars” – characterizing it as “as elegant and delicately varied a score as any horror film has ever had.”

    Of course, “The Fury” was not the first De Palma film to deal with telekinesis. His adaptation of Stephen King’s “Carrie,” from 1976, became one the decade’s landmark horror films. It broadened King’s popularity and propelled De Palma into the A-list of Hollywood directors. It also essentially launched the careers of Amy Irving, John Travolta, and Nancy Allen, among others. Sissy Spacek was nominated for an Academy Award for her performance in the title role, as was Piper Laurie as Carrie’s overbearing, fundamentalist mother.

    The music was by Pino Donaggio. The director had wanted to continue his collaboration with Herrmann, but the composer died before the film could be completed. Donaggio, though classically trained, made his fortune writing popular songs. His biggest hit was “You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me,” which was recorded by Dusty Springfield and treated to a well-known cover by Elvis Presley. Donnagio went on to become a regular De Palma collaborator, providing the music for seven of his films.

    Finally, we’ll turn our back on horror, to listen to music from a successful period crime thriller, loosely based on the real-life exploits of Eliot Ness and his fellow prohibition agents – “The Untouchables,” from 1987. Kevin Costner plays the by-the-book federal agent who is given a valuable lesson in street smarts by an Irish beat cop played by an Academy Award winning Sean Connery. (“He pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That’s the Chicago way, and that’s how you get Capone.”) Capone is played, incidentally, by a baseball bat wielding Robert De Niro.

    The score is by Ennio Morricone. Morricone, of course, was propelled to fame through his work on Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns. He applies some of that same mythmaking skill to this big screen adaptation, which had previously been published as a memoir and developed into a popular television series starring Robert Stack. The high point of the film must be the director’s nail-biting homage to Sergei Eisenstein, a slow motion shoot-out around a baby carriage as it teeters down the stairs of Chicago Union Station.

    Start your weekend with a step in the right direction, with music from the films of Brian De Palma, 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 – ALL NEW! – 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/

  • Felix Hell Bright Organ Music

    Felix Hell Bright Organ Music

    by 

    Ross Amico
    in
    3 responses

    ‘Tis the season…

    Hear it performed on the largest pipe organ in the world, played by the aptly named Felix Hell.

    FUN FACTS! AMAZE YOUR FRIENDS! In German, the word for “Hell” is actually “Hölle” – “Hell” means “Bright.”

  • Varney the Vampyre Penny Dreadful Review

    Varney the Vampyre Penny Dreadful Review

    by 

    Ross Amico
    in
    3 responses

    Is this the year I finally tackle “Varney the Vampyre?”

    One of the most notorious of the Victorian penny dreadfuls (inexpensive serialized tales of a decidedly lurid nature, designed to capitalize on the rise of literacy among the working class), “Varney” first appeared in 109 weekly installments issued from 1845 to 1847.

    While penny dreadfuls were not, by any stretch of the imagination, great literature, they could conjure undeniably powerful images and provoke a kind of morbid curiosity that have left their mark on popular fiction down the centuries.

    Take this passage from “Varney:”

    “Her bosom heaves, and her limbs tremble, yet she cannot withdraw her eyes from that marble-looking face. He holds her with his glittering eye…

    “With a sudden rush that could not be foreseen – with a strange howling cry that was enough to awaken terror in every breast, the figure seized the long tresses of her hair, and twining them round his bony hands he held her to the bed. Then she screamed…. Her beautifully rounded limbs quivered with the agony of her soul. The glassy, horrible eyes of the figure ran over that angelic form with a hideous satisfaction – horrible profanation.”

    Say what you will about the prose, I’ve been able to quote that last sentence since the first time I encountered it, some 40 years ago. Also, “THE GIRL HAS SWOONED, AND THE VAMPYRE IS AT HIS HIDEOUS REPAST! (“Horrible” and “hideous” are used a lot in “Varney.”) THAT’S the power of the penny dreadful.

    And it’s just a taste of Chapter One.

    “Varney” was published anonymously (who could blame the author?), and its true provenance remains a matter of debate. Was it James Malcolm Rymer – as seems to be the current consensus – or Thomas Peckett Prest? Either one or both are also believed to have had a hand in the creation of penny dreadful icon Sweeney Todd. Some believe they may have worked in tandem.

    It was common for these writers to get paid by the word, so they very quickly became adept at being able to spin out sensational stories to monumental length. Publishers were elated by proliferating sales spurred by hooked and ever-expanding audiences. It’s the same system that gave rise to more respectable authors such as Dickens, Thackeray, and Trollope; but penny dreadfuls dealt unapologetically with extravagant melodrama, flamboyant highwaymen, grisly murder, occult transgressions, exotic Gypsies, blasphemous monk-and-nunsploitation, and cheap knock-offs of more reputable (and more expensive) bestsellers.

    Whoever was the animating force behind “Varney” wound up pounding out the first complete vampire novel in the English language. (Among those who made earlier attempts was Lord Byron – a fragment later elaborated upon by his physician, John Polidori – the product of the same summer of 1816 contest that produced Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein.”)

    For as hideous as “Varney” is on every level, the folkloric traits that the author (or authors) synthesized and dramatic situations he (or they) concocted have left their stamp on vampire fiction and movies. Without “Varney,” we would not have had Bram Stoker’s “Dracula,” much less Barnabas Collins.

    Along the way, Varney begins to develop a conscience and the story flirts with his psychological struggle. For the first time, the vampire is portrayed as a tragic figure. In the end, after a two-year spree, fatigue gets the best of him – AND the writer(s) and probably the public and by extension the publisher – and the vampire decides to destroy himself. [SPOILER ALERT: He hurls himself into Mount Vesuvius!]

    The story was first published in book form in 1847. In 1972, it was reprinted in an affordable pair of Dover paperbacks. These soon became as difficult to locate as the vampire’s resting place. In the days before the internet, “Varney” attained a kind of legendary status, because it was simply unattainable. I had only excerpts that were included in anthologies of vampire fiction and English popular literature to whet my appetite.

    Now, of course, secondhand copies can be found online. And the work has been reprinted, so you don’t have to break the blood bank to purchase those elusive Dover editions. Dover itself has reprinted them. I just ordered a pair of library discards, which include the original illustrations. I imagine not only is the collected “Varney” more manageable when broken up into two volumes, but the illustrations will be welcome oases for the eyes.

    For now, my copy is a super-affordable Wordsworth Editions paperback, published in the U.K., which I located at the Strand bookstore in New York City, probably over a decade ago, for dirt-cheap. The paperback runs to 1166 closely-printed pages. It might prove to be a little rich even for my blood! Also, my eyes aren’t what they used to be. So I am looking forward to the arrival of the Dover edition. There are no illustrations in the Wordsworth volume.

    At the time I purchased “Varney,” I also picked up the Wordsworth reprint of another collected penny dreadful, George W. M. Reynolds’ “Wagner the Werewolf,” which I read – and posted about – back in 2014. You can read my thoughts about it here:

    https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=280906105410020&set=a.279006378933326

    I’d be very interested to know what books you’ll be sinking your fangs into this month. Happy Halloween!

Tag Cloud

Aaron Copland (93) Beethoven (95) Composer (114) Film Music (144) Film Score (143) Film Scores (255) Halloween (94) John Williams (195) KWAX (229) Leonard Bernstein (104) Marlboro Music Festival (125) Movie Music (159) Mozart (91) Opera (213) Philadelphia Orchestra (89) Picture Perfect (174) Princeton Symphony Orchestra (109) Radio (88) Ross Amico (244) Roy's Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner (290) The Classical Network (101) The Lost Chord (269) Vaughan Williams (105) WPRB (397) WWFM (881)

DON’T MISS A BEAT

Receive a weekly digest every Sunday at noon by signing up here

RECENT POSTS