Classic Ross Amico

  • Beer Barrel Polka From Czech Roots to WWII Hit

    Beer Barrel Polka From Czech Roots to WWII Hit

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    Ross Amico
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    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 ensued, 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” (conducted by Richard Bonynge, who turned 95 this week).

    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/

  • Swiss Missed Forgotten Music from Switzerland

    Swiss Missed Forgotten Music from Switzerland

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    Ross Amico
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    Enough with the jokes about alphorns and cuckoo clocks! This week on “The Lost Chord,” it’s forgotten music from Switzerland.

    Ernest Bloch, best known for his music on Jewish themes (such as his Hebraic rhapsody “Schelomo”), actually spent most of his life in the United States. He died in Portland, OR, in 1959, at the age of 78.

    50 years earlier, while still in Switzerland, he composed his song cycle “Poèmes d’automne.” At the time, he was at work on his opera, “Macbeth,” but he was sidelined when he made the acquaintance of a young poet by the name of Beatrix Rodès. He fell instantly in love with her, and set four of her poems within two months. Rodès would eventually become his mistress, though in the end Bloch chose to remain with his wife. It’s said that the texts, even in the original French, are of dubious literary quality.

    The composer arranged them to form a kind of progression, in which a woman passes from sadness and desolation, to peace and love, to lamentation for the passing of her beauty, to an air of serenity as she becomes a priestess.

    Okay, so it’s not his strongest work, but it is seasonal and interesting to listen to.

    Hans Huber, who lived from 1852 to 1921, was the composer of nine symphonies (of which he acknowledged eight), five operas, and a number of concertos for various instruments. His four concertos for piano are somewhat unusual in that, like Brahms’ experiments in the form, they are made up of four movements, with the addition of a scherzo, as opposed to the customary three.

    The Piano Concerto No. 3 first appeared on a concert in Basel, in February of 1899, which also included Beethoven’s “Leonore Overture No. 3” and Berlioz’s “Harold in Italy.”

    The concerto is also unusual, for, among other things, anticipating in the first movement the theme from the work’s finale as the underpinnings of a passacaglia.

    I hope you’ll join me for an hour of forgotten music from Switzerland – “Swiss Missed” – 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 – 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/

  • Hitchcock’s Other Composers Beyond Herrmann

    Hitchcock’s Other Composers Beyond Herrmann

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    Ross Amico
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    Alfred Hitchcock’s most celebrated musical collaborator was Bernard Herrmann. Herrmann scored just about every one of Hitch’s films over the span of a decade, enhancing the impact and memorability of such classics as “Vertigo,” “North by Northwest,” and “Psycho.” But Hitchcock also worked with a number of other notable composers.

    This week on “Picture Perfect,” we’ll cast some light into Herrmann’s shadow with selections from “Rebecca” (Franz Waxman), “Strangers on a Train” (Dimitri Tiomkin), “Spellbound” (Miklós Rózsa), and “Family Plot” (John Williams).

    Herrmann goes on hiatus, and the suspense is killing us, 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/

  • Yom Kippur Reflections Music Prayer and Meaning

    Yom Kippur Reflections Music Prayer and Meaning

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    Ross Amico
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    Yom Kippur began last night at sunset. The holiest day of the Jewish calendar, Yom Kippur concludes a period of ten Days of Awe and Repentance that began on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. It is a day of fasting, prayer, and reflection. Yom Kippur is one of four times in a year that Yizkur, a memorial prayer for the dead, is recited. Here’s a musical reflection by David Stock.

    Yom Kippur is also the inspiration for the central movement of one of my favorite pieces by Ernest Bloch, the “Israel Symphony” of 1916. The first movement is titled “Prayer in the Desert” and the last “Succoth,” named for the Jewish harvest festival, which begins this year on the evening of October 6th.

    May you be inscribed in the Book of Life.

    IMAGE: “The Day of the Great Forgiveness of the Jews or Celebration of Yom Kippur in a Synagogue on Rue Saint Louis en l’Ile, Paris,” artist unknown

  • Princeton Revives Neglected American Symphony

    Princeton Revives Neglected American Symphony

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    Ross Amico
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    Roy Harris was born on Lincoln’s birthday in a log cabin in Lincoln County, Oklahoma. If that doesn’t imbue a composer with a sense of destiny, I don’t know what will.

    Harris went on to became one of our great American symphonists. In particular, his Symphony No. 3 of 1939 has been much beloved and frequently performed. Unfortunately, we don’t hear all that much of his music anymore. And that’s a damned shame.

    So thank you, Princeton University Orchestra, for reviving Harris’ Symphony No. 3 on your opening concerts this weekend at Richardson Auditorium, Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at 3:00, on the same program with Hector Berlioz’s “Symphonie fantastique.”

    Most of the orchestra’s personnel, mind you, are not music majors, but rather committed dilettantes pursuing degrees in other fields, such as astrophysics, bioengineering, computer science, linguistics, sociology, philosophy, and a lot of other things in no way related to music. Also, a substantial number of the players turn over every year as students graduate.

    Yet on those occasions when I have been privileged to hear them perform, the orchestra has never been less than solid – interpretively safe, perhaps, but on occasion they surpass themselves. And I have heard them tackle Mahler’s 3rd, “Ein Heldenleben,” and the complete “Daphnis and Chloé.”

    Most recently, a performance with the Princeton University Glee Club of Elgar’s “The Dream of Gerontius” was revelatory, finally unlocking the magic of the piece for me, which I had previously known only from recordings. Music director Michael Pratt, who has led the orchestra since 1977, is a miracle worker.

    I can’t wait to hear Harris’ symphony. I’d travel a lot further to enjoy music from this now-neglected “greatest generation” of American symphonists. What a delight to have some of it right here, in my own backyard!

    For tickets, follow the link:

    https://tickets.princeton.edu/

    The orchestra’s 2025-26 season:

    Current Season

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