Classic Ross Amico - Classic music, classic books and classic movies - brought to you by radio host Ross Amico

Classic Ross Amico

Martinu’s World at Bard Music Festival

by

Ross Amico

August 10, 2025

in Daily Dispatch

4 responses

As a longtime attendee of the Bard Music Festival, I recognize that the schedule is not quite as brutal as it once was. There aren’t as many concerts (at one time, there were three in a day) and they now try to rein them in so that they clock at around two-and-a-half hours; but the rigors of travel, living off coffee and wraps and sleeping in a strange place, can still beat the tar out of you. Even so, I’m having a blast. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Bohuslav Martinů is the sleeping giant of Czech music.

Leon Botstein, co-artistic artistic and music director of “Martinů and His World,” asserts that the composer’s star is on the rise. I certainly hope so. But if it is the case, I have yet to see it. I was happy to note the New York Philharmonic programmed the Cello Concerto No. 1 not too long ago, and I heard Steven Isserlis play the Cello Sonata No. 1 in Philadelphia this past season. Also, the Philadelphia Orchestra performed the Rhapsody-Concerto for viola, which I heard the orchestra for the first time some 40 years ago – in the mid-‘80s, the first Martinů piece I ever heard, as a matter of fact. It was love at first encounter.

Come to think of it, I guess that is a lot, compared to past seasons…

But a comment during yesterday morning’s panel Q&A got me thinking how many of Martinů works I have ever actually heard in person. I tallied eight, prior to the festival. So already, I’ve more than doubled my intake. I’ve gotten to know a portion of the composer’s prolific output (more than 400 works) mostly through recordings. And what varied and magnificent stuff it is! But I’ll have to go into all that in another post. The first concert begins this morning at 11:00 – a late morning at Bard, but a man’s got to eat breakfast and pack up.

This morning, I’m looking forward to hearing no less than four Martinů chamber works, along with a string quartet by his illicit sweetheart, Vítĕzslava Kaprálová. Later in the afternoon will be the jaunty suite from Martinů’s jazz ballet “La revue de cuisine,” the Piano Sonata No. 1, the Harpsichord Concerto (with Mahan Esfahani), and “Tre ricarcari,” in addition to Aaron Copland’s Sextet (a reduction of his then-deemed-to-be-unplayable “Short Symphony”) and Arthur Honegger’s neoclassical “Concerto da Camera.”

The 35th Bard Music Festival, “Martinů and His World,” will continue next weekend at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY. According to Bard co-artistic director Christopher H. Gibbs, the festival will cover no less than 33 works by the composer on concerts presented over seven days.

Catch a rising star! For more information, visit

Bard Music Festival

Fisher Center at Bard
Celebrating Albert Ketèlbey Light Music Luminary

by

Ross Amico

August 9, 2025

in Daily Dispatch

4 responses

He helped bring “light” into the world.

This week on “Sweetness and Light,” we mark the sesquicentenary of the birth of Albert Ketèlbey.

Along with Eric Coates, 11 years his junior, Ketèlbey was one of the foremost British light music luminaries. In fact, it’s been said that at his peak, in the 1920s, there was no more successful composer in England. His music was played by palm court orchestras at grand hotels, at luxurious restaurants, in tea shops and cinemas, on municipal orchestra concerts, and on recordings and radio.

Nowadays, his music is much less frequently heard. Coates has his infectious marches and “By the Sleepy Lagoon,” while Ketèlbey often strays to exotic fairy lands, dabbling in a kind of “orientalism” that is now decidedly out-of-fashion – though for some reason, it doesn’t prevent us from enjoying works like Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Scheherazade.”

Even in his day, Ketèlbey withstood the brickbats of jealous rivals and indignant critics. It must have been doubly exasperating when he became England’s first composer to earn a million dollars. Unquestionably, there is a certain “kitsch” factor to his output. His works have been described as both “reprehensibly demeaning” and “delightfully tacky.” But there’s also an element of naiveté, which can still charm those of us lulled by a nostalgia for our grandparents’ enthusiasms.

And face it, he DID always have an ear for a good tune.

It’s unlikely in our more culturally sensitive age that Ketèlbey’s music will ever make a huge comeback, but these twee picture postcards offer fascinating glimpses into simpler times in the world of musical entertainment. I hope you are able to set aside your cynicism and sophistication for an hour, as we salute Albert Ketèlbey on the 150th anniversary of his birth, 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/
Shostakovich Plays Shostakovich 50th Anniversary

by

Ross Amico

August 9, 2025

in Daily Dispatch

3 responses

This week on “The Lost Chord,” on the 50th anniversary of the composer’s death, we’ll revisit two documents from a collection released on the Melodiya label, “Shostakovich Plays Shostakovich.” These are riveting, not only for the musicianship they enshrine, but also on account of their biographical fascination and their sense of history.

Dmitri Shostakovich was a fabulous pianist, who, early on, eked out a living with his improvisations at a local cinema. He began serious studies at the age of 9, and continued, formally, at the Petrograd Conservatory, upon his acceptance there, at the age of 13. Once he began to receive international attention for his original compositions, for works such as his Symphony No. 1, written when he was only 19, his principal focus began to shift. He did, however, continue to perform and record his own music.

Perhaps no Shostakovich recording is imbued with a greater sense of time and place than a 1954 performance of his Symphony No. 10. An arrangement, for piano four-hands, was played by the composer at his apartment with his close friend and neighbor Mieczyslaw Weinberg.

Weinberg found himself in a very precarious situation only the year before. He was arrested on a charge of “Jewish bourgeois nationalism,” in connection with the so-called Doctor’s Plot, at the command of Stalin himself, on the pretense that Jewish doctors were planning to assassinate Soviet officials. Weinberg’s father-in-law had been implicated, and killed. Shostakovich attempted to intercede on his friend’s behalf, but it was only with the sudden and fortuitous death of Stalin in 1953 that Weinberg was officially rehabilitated, and released.
In a piece of living history, these two artists sit down to perform on Shostakovich’s home piano. This is music that was claimed, in Solomon Volkov’s “Testimony,” Shostakovich’s alleged memoir, to be about Stalin and the Stalin years.

The pianos used in some of these recordings may be a little rough around the edges, but they only lend to the neurotic intensity of the music-making. It’s also a kind of window into what it must have been like to have been a musician in Soviet Russia, between 1946 and 1958, commandeering whatever means of expression you could lay your hands on.

I hope you’ll join me for “Black and White and Red All Over,” remembering Dmitri Shostakovich on the 50th anniversary of his death, 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/
Gulliver’s Travels Movie Music & More on KWAX

by

Ross Amico

August 8, 2025

in Daily Dispatch

2 responses

I haven’t had time to post today, because I had some deadlines to meet and then I had to hightail it up to the Bard Music Festival for the opening night of “Martinů and His World” — music of Bohuslav Martinů and friends at Bard College. So I’ll just interject briefly that today is the birthday of film composer Victor Young. Some of my favorite Young scores include those for “Scaramouche,” “The Quiet Man,” and “Around the World in 80 Days.”

This week on “Picture Perfect,” however, we’ll enjoy selections from his score to the Fleischer Brothers’ production of “Gulliver’s Travels” (1939). Based on the novel by Jonathan Swift, the film was given the greenlight thanks to the success of Walt Disney’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” The brothers, responsible for those classic “Popeye,” “Betty Boop,” and “Superman” cartoon shorts, here may have bitten off more than they could chew with this, their only animated feature.

Victor Young’s music will be bookended by that of Bernard Herrmann for “The Three Worlds of Gulliver” (1960), a film also notable for its special effects by legendary stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen, and John Addison’s riotous score for Tony Richardson’s picaresque romp “Tom Jones” (1963), based on the novel by Henry Fielding.

You don’t have to be Lilliputian to find these big shoes to fill. It’s music from movies inspired by two beloved 18th century British literary classics, 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/
Julián Orbón Composer of Four Worlds

by

Ross Amico

August 7, 2025

in Daily Dispatch

5 responses

Julián Orbón was a composer with his feet in four worlds.

In 1925, one hundred years ago today, he was born in Avilés, Spain. As a child, he studied music with his father, composer Benjamin Orbón. At 10, he entered the Oviedo Conservatory to begin his formal training.

When he was 13, the family moved to Cuba. There Orbon studied with José Ardévol, with whom he assembled a group of aspiring young composers, Grupo de Renovación, whose mission it was to promote new Cuban music. He was still in his teens when he stepped up to take over the direction of the then only recently-established Orbón Conservatory, following his father’s death.

Not long after, he won a scholarship to study composition with Aaron Copland at Tanglewood. Afterward, he returned to his position at the conservatory until the Cuban Revolution began in 1953. In 1960, he left Cuba permanently, to teach at Mexico City’s National Conservatory of Music alongside Carlos Chávez.

In 1963, he moved to the United States, where he taught at Lenox College, Washington University in St. Louis, Barnard College, and the Hispanic Institute of Columbia University.

For the rest of his life, he made New York his home. He died in Miami while undergoing cancer treatment in 1991.

Orbón’s experiences in four countries allowed him to assimilate many influences in his music: Spanish, Cuban (and by extension Afro-Cuban), American, Gregorian chant, neoclassicism, and a kind of melancholy romanticism shaped by the collapse of his world during the Cuban Revolution. He was friendly with Copland, Chávez, and Heitor Villa-Lobos, all of whose music he clearly admired.

His own music is attractive, personal, and accessible. It’s a mystery why it isn’t heard more often. Like many composers of his generation, he seems to have fallen through the cracks between the classics and the new. A pity, because one could do worse than to program any of the pieces below.

¡Feliz centésimo, Julian Orbon!

Danzas sinfónicas (1955)

Tres versiones sinfónicas (1953)

Concerto Grosso for String Quartet and Orchestra (1958)

Tag Cloud

RECENT POSTS