Classic Ross Amico

Tag: KWAX

Sweetness and Light Autumn Music Mix on KWAX

This week on “Sweetness and Light,” with a nip in the air and color in the trees, it’s a light music autumn!

Pick out a cozy sweater and join me for a fortifying brunch of hot cider and molasses cookies, as we listen to a fall sampler of works by Leo Sowerby, Cécile Chaminade, Archibald Joyce, Billy Mayerl, Virgil Thomson, Vernon Duke, Scott Joplin, Gheorghe Zamfir, and Alexander Glazunov.

It’s the perfect preamble to your epic leaf-fight. The apples are tart, but the music is sweet, 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/

October 19, 2024
Vaughan Williams Birthday Radio Celebration

Ralph Vaughan Williams was born on this date in 1872. Since he happens to be one of my favorite composers, I couldn’t be more delighted that the anniversary happens to coincide with one my radio shows. I hope you’ll join me this morning on “Sweetness and Light” for what I guarantee will be a lovingly-curated Vaughan Williams miscellany.

This will not be the usual collection of greatest hits (although we’ll enjoy one or two of those, as well). Among the rarer works will be the “Bucolic Suite” of 1900, when the composer was still feeling his way toward his mature style; also the “Stratford Suite,” made up of incidental music RVW provided for a number of the Shakespeare plays during the brief period he was music director at Stratford-on-Avon (1912-13). If you’re a Vaughan Williams fanatic, I’m sure you’ll recognize some of the melodies, derived from early music and folk song, many of which the composer employed in other, better-known works. The “Stratford Suite” appears on a new release, “Royal Throne of Kings,” chock-full of Vaughan Williams’ uncollected Shakespeare music, on the Albion Records label, the recording branch of the Ralph Vaughan Williams Society.

Some of the music will be dreamy and luminous and some of it will be boisterous and earthy. You’re always safe with Uncle “Rafe.”

Pour yourself a cuppa and join me for “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/

PHOTO: Vaughan Williams takes a slug from the mug

October 12, 2024
Beer Barrel Polka a Czech Oktoberfest Classic

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/

October 5, 2024
Sonatinas: A Light Music Program with Cascarino & Schmitt

I was really scratching my head on this one. How to construct a unified light music program with such seemingly disparate pieces?

This morning on “Sweetness and Light,” marvel at how gracefully I meet the challenge of marking the birthday anniversaries of composers Romeo Cascarino and Florent Schmitt and also including music from a too-long-deferred pleasure: a recent release of “Latin American Piano Gems” (Centaur 4083) performed by pianist Gila Goldstein.

The unifying theme is sonatinas, or “little” sonatas.

Philadelphia composer Romeo Cascarino’s Bassoon Sonata was written after World War II for his Army buddy Sol Schoenbach, who would go on to become principal bassoonist of the Philadelphia Orchestra. “Sonatina” may not be in the title, but the character is light, and the sonata is only seven minutes long!

Florent Schmitt’s “Sonatine en Trio” is a very happy discovery indeed. There’s a certain neoclassic quality to the music, which we’ll hear in a version for flute, cello and piano, by a French composer whose orchestral works can be quite opulent. The title itself seems to harken back to an earlier time. In fact, the keyboard part was originally conceived for harpsichord. It’s cheering music, and I think you’ll agree, a great start to the day!

“Latin American Piano Gems” is a transporting collection of works by Ernesto Lecuona, Astor Piazzolla, Manuel Ponce, and Heitor Villa-Lobos. We’ll enjoy a piece by Argentine composer Carlos Guastavino, who is largely remembered for his songs. Guastavino wrote his Sonatina while visiting Manuel de Falla, who spent his final years in self-imposed exile in Cordoba, Argentina, following the Spanish Civil War. All in all, a very enjoyable album. We’ll be dipping into it again soon!

This morning’s program will also include delights by Federico Moreno Torroba, Eugène Bozza, Erik Satie, and Ludwig van Beethoven.

I hope you’ll join me for “Small Pleasures” – an hour of sonatinas for varied instruments and instrumental combinations – 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/

Think a sonatina for mandolin and piano is a bit far-fetched? Tune in to hear what Beethoven made of it.

September 28, 2024
Schoenberg’s Lighter Side on Sweetness and Light

This week on “Sweetness and Light,” the focus is on… Arnold Schoenberg?!!! That’s right, the High Priest of Dodecaphonic Music.

Schoenberg was born on September 13, 1874, 150 years ago. But before you scroll to the next post, I hasten to add, there will be no twelve-tone music on the program. Instead, we’ll enjoy the LIGHTER SIDE of this 20th century master.

And contrary to his many somber portraits and photographs, Schoenberg could indeed smile.

We’ll hear arrangements of music by Johann Strauss II and Johann Sebastian Bach, a cello concerto freely adapted from a harpsichord piece by 18th century composer Georg Matthias Monn, and, since Schoenberg regarded himself as the artistic heir of Johannes Brahms, a German folk song setting – directed by Pierre Boulez, no less!

We’re coming up on the 29th anniversary of my professional radio debut on September 28, 1995 (having honed my craft in the bush league of community radio for 9 years before that), so I thought I’d conclude with a Schoenberg cabaret song I programmed on that very first morning. The text is by none other than Emanuel Schikaneder, Mozart’s librettist for “The Magic Flute.”

It’s Schoenberg for people who think they don’t like Schoenberg 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/

Since yesterday’s post for Schoenberg’s actual birthday got no love, here it is again:

https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=1381350726117320&set=a.883855802533484

Then sample some Schoenberg paintings and drawings:

https://www.schoenberg.at/index.php/en/schoenberg-2/bildnerischeswerk

Schoenberg speaks (one of many such files on YouTube):

PHOTOS (counterclockwise from top): Schoenberg on cello, horsing around with musician friends (including violinist Fritz Kreisler); with Charlie Chaplin; smiling with his daughter; and ready for a match (possibly with his frequent tennis partner, George Gershwin)

September 14, 2024

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