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Filming Leonard Rose A Cello Legend’s Story

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Ross Amico

September 14, 2025

in Daily Dispatch

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Here are a few photos of our most recent day of filming for an ongoing project, a documentary about the great American cellist Leonard Rose.

Rose was the first American-born and trained cellist to achieve a world-class solo career. He played in the NBC Symphony Orchestra under Arturo Toscanini, and as principal cellist in the Cleveland Orchestra and New York Philharmonic under Artur Rodzinski, before making the courageous decision to support himself as a star soloist. Unusually, he also developed into as a marvelous chamber musician, performing and recording with such artists as Isaac Stern, Eugene Istomin, and Glenn Gould. For most of his career he was also a perceptive teacher whose influence is still felt today. (Yo-Yo Ma was a pupil.)

I was in the DC area on Tuesday and Wednesday for our latest interview. This was an important one, as our subject was none other than Arthur Rose, the cellist’s son. Art was full of helpful information about, and insights into, Rose’s personality, his family life, and his personal dealings with his associates.

Art still works in radio after half a century as an engineer. This room is adorned with a Victrola, a vintage radio, and a harpsichord of Art’s own construction. In an adjacent room is a clavichord he also built. The walls are hung with inscribed photos of a number of Rose associates, including Pablo Casals, Jascha Heifetz, and Dimitri Mitropoulos.

Art also allowed us access to unpublished photos, a manuscript of a Rose memoir, with handwritten corrections, that the cellist was at work on at the time of his death, and rare audio recordings such as the world premiere performance of Alan Shulman’s Cello Concerto, which Rose never recorded commercially. All very exciting.

That’s H. Paul Moon behind the camera. Paul and I met when I interviewed him on the radio prior to the PBS broadcast of his award-winning documentary “Samuel Barber: Absolute Beauty.” I conduct all my interviews for the current project off-camera, with the intention of having the subjects tell Rose’s story themselves, through the magic of attentive editing.

We have a few more interviews before we wrap, at least one of them with a classical music legend. Paul has many projects going simultaneously, but we are getting there.
Hungarian Music on Sweetness and Light

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Ross Amico

September 13, 2025

in Daily Dispatch

3 responses

This week on “Sweetness and Light,” we’ll lend plenty of paprika and poppyseed to your breakfast with an hour of Hungarian delights.

Enjoy a selection from a beloved film score by Miklós Rózsa (you can take the composer out of Hungary, but you can’t take Hungary out of the composer!), a “Hungarian Capriccio” by Eugene Zador (who assisted Rózsa as an orchestrator), some old Hungarian dances arranged by Ferenc Farkas, Hungarian fantasies by Franz Lehár and Franz Doppler, Doppler’s orchestration of a work by Franz Liszt, Liszt’s arrangement of a patriotic melody, and a schmaltzy treatment of a work by Jenő Hubay.

That’s an ample helping of goulash and czardas on “Sweetness and Light,” 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/
Music for Casals Composers Inspired by a Cello Legend

by

Ross Amico

September 13, 2025

in Daily Dispatch

2 responses

It’s hardly surprising that anyone would be moved to write music for Pablo Casals.

Regarded by many as the greatest cellist of his time, perhaps ever, Casals was certainly a giant of an artist and of a man. Born in Catalonia, he stood up to the Franco regime, entering into self-imposed exile and refusing to perform in countries that recognized Franco’s authority. He rediscovered the Bach cello suites in a secondhand bookshop and made them famous. Over the course of his career, he played for both Queen Victoria and John F. Kennedy.

As a conductor and an administrator, he founded the Prades Festival and Casals Festival. He established the Puerto Rico Symphony and Conservatory. He gave master classes, conducted and recorded at Marlboro. He was even a talented composer.

This week on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll hear works dedicated to Casals by three of his friends and colleagues.

Ralph Vaughan Williams wrote his seldom-heard “Fantasia on Sussex Folk Tunes” around the time he was at work on his Piano Concerto and “Job: A Masque for Dancing.” Casals performed the piece in 1930. It was not heard again until 1983, the year of its world-premiere recording (featuring Julian Lloyd Webber). The composer later undertook a full-scale concerto for Casals. It was never completed, but the sketches for its slow movement were realized for a 2010 performance at the BBC Proms, under the title “Dark Pastoral.”

Donald Francis Tovey, who would achieve fame as a musicologist and writer on music, wrote quite a lot of music himself, most of it now forgotten. In 1935, he composed a concerto for Casals. At nearly an hour in length, the work may be the longest cello concerto ever written.

In 1912, Tovey was a houseguest of Casals and cellist Guilhermina Suggia, at their summer home at Playa San Salvador on the Mediterranean coast. There, he played tennis, swam and performed chamber music with the likes of Enrique Granados and Mieczyslaw Horszowski. He also made great strides on his opera, “The Bride of Dionysus.” As a show of thanks, he composed for his hosts a Sonata for Two Cellos in G major, which became part of the evenings’ entertainments. The work’s second movement is a set of variations on a Catalan folk song. We’ll hear it performed by Marcy Rosen and Frances Rowell, from a Bridge Records, Inc. release.

Finally, Arnold Schoenberg (whose birthday it is today), himself an amateur cellist, had done editorial work on three pieces by the 18th century composer Georg Matthias Monn for inclusion in the publication “Monuments of Music in Austria.” When Casals invited Schoenberg to conduct his orchestra in Barcelona, the composer set about arranging a “new” concerto, based upon a harpsichord work by Monn, written in 1746. We’ll hear Schoenberg’s transformation of the piece performed by Yo-Yo Ma.

I hope you’ll join me for “Casals’ Pals” – music written for Pablo Casals by notable composers, friends and colleagues – 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/
Sherlock Holmes Movie Music Picture Perfect

by

Ross Amico

September 12, 2025

in Daily Dispatch

One response

The game is afoot! This week on “Picture Perfect,” it’s an hour of music from movies inspired by the world’s greatest detective.

“Sherlock Holmes” (2009) stars Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law, in Michael Ritchie’s post-“Matrix” take on the master detective. While some of the film adaptations over the years may have glossed over the character’s physicality, Ritchie’s revisionist Holmes perhaps errs a mite too far in the other direction. Hans Zimmer (whose birthday it is today) wrote the music, he too going against received wisdom, and in the process coming up with one of his more interesting scores, if only for the quirky instrumentation, which includes a Hungarian cimbalom, accordion, fiddles, and a broken-down pub piano.

Admittedly, it’s unfair to put Zimmer up against an old pro like Miklós Rózsa. Rózsa wrote the music for Billy Wilder’s melancholy portrait of the great detective, “The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes” (1970). Wilder requested that the composer adapt his lovely Violin Concerto for the project, a recording of which the director had listened to repeatedly during the writing of the screenplay. Rózsa and Wilder had previously collaborated on “Double Indemnity” and “The Lost Weekend.”

The Sherlock Holmes comedy “Without a Clue” (1988) represents a missed opportunity of sorts. The hope had been for Sean Connery to play Watson opposite Michael Caine’s Holmes, a much-longed-for reunion between the two, who had worked so well together in “The Man Who Would Be King.” In the end, it was Ben Kingsley who assumed the role.

The fun conceit that sets “Without a Clue” apart is that Holmes is the fictional creation of mastermind Watson, who is in reality the gifted crime-solver. By way of necessity, Watson hires a second-rate actor to play the part of Holmes. Of course, the actor turns out to be a bumbling idiot. Henry Mancini provides the British Light Music style score, with a nod to Edward White’s “Puffin’ Billy” (familiar stateside as the theme to “Captain Kangaroo”).

Finally, the Steven Spielberg-produced “Young Sherlock Holmes” (1985) offers a conjectural origins story, including Holmes and Watson’s first meeting as teenagers (ignoring the particulars laid out by Arthur Conan Doyle in his stories, with Watson already a war veteran who had served in Afghanistan). It’s all for fun, though it’s unfortunate the filmmakers felt the need to interject ‘80s-style special effects, rather than simply trust in the inherent magic of the subject matter. “Young Sherlock Holmes” features the first photorealistic, fully computer-generated character (a stained-glass knight). Also, some Indiana Jones B-movie antics involving an Egyptian cult seem especially out of place.

Interestingly, the film’s screenwriter, Chris Columbus, went on to direct the first two Harry Potter films. By my recollection, “Young Sherlock Holmes,” with its boarding school setting, has some of that same feel.

The music, by Bruce Broughton, is certainly buoyant and beautiful, in the best John Williams tradition. Broughton scored a handful of big screen hits, notably “Silverado” and “Tombstone,” though arguably it is in the medium of television that he’s made his greatest impact. Thus far, his work has been recognized with a record 10 Grammy Awards.

It’s elementary, my dear Watson. I hope you’ll join me for “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/
9/11 Then & Now A Call For Unity

by

Ross Amico

September 11, 2025

in Daily Dispatch

One response

9/11 is about the last thing to make anyone nostalgic. But at least in 2001 we still lived in a society in which national tragedy brought us together rather than divided us. That is, until the scapegoating began. Now it’s gotten to the point where I dread not what the next 24 years will bring, but rather the next 24 hours. No dona nobis pacems, please. The way to “peace” and a better world is in every one of us. Alas, so are the impediments. If we love our country and our families and value anything good we ever experienced here, thanks to our great good fortune in having lived in a comparatively free, safe, and sane United States, it’s time to grow up and take responsibility for fixing what’s broken, in ourselves and in the world. I realize about five people read this page, and everyone is here to talk about music, but I beg your indulgence for just a few sentences. We must rise above our baser instincts. Reject fomenters. Embrace compassion. Be humane. Can I myself live up to these ideals? Probably not. I get angry when somebody sits in their car checking their cell phone while I’m waiting for a parking space. But I can try harder, and you can too. Because if we don’t, there’s a greater chance of us imploding in suspicion, fear, hatred, and violence than there ever was of our crumbling from external forces like those that, ironically, brought unity in suffering on 9/11.

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