Tag: Dionysus

Raise your steins and goblets! “Sweetness and Light” can now be heard twice a week! If you miss the Saturday morning broadcast, pop on by on Sunday evening for a recap – or in the case of this week’s program, a nightcap. In this season of the harvest and Oktoberfest, we’ll roll out the barrels for a salute to BARLEY AND THE GRAPE.

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.” We’ll Czech it out around the midpoint of the program.

The hour will also include the “Revelry Overture” by Montague Phillips and Leopold Godowsky’s “Symphonic Metamorphosis on ‘Wine, Women and Song’” after Johann Strauss II. We’ll hoist our kantharoi to celebrate the god of wine and carouse to ballet music from Jules Massenet’s 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 – NOW WITH A REPEAT, Sunday evening at 9:00 EDT/6:00 PDT – exclusively on KWAX Classical Oregon!

Stream it wherever you are at the link:

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/