Classic Ross Amico

Tag: KWAX

Back to School with Sweetness and Light

This week on “Sweetness and Light,” we’re headed back to school.

We’ll have frothy music on scholastic themes. None frothier than a head of beer, conjured perhaps by Emil Waldteufel’s “Estudiantina,” or “Band of Students.” Listeners of a certain age may associate this music with a popular jingle for Rheingold Beer. Clearly its inclusion suggests a double-significance – not that I condone riotous student behavior (unless, of course, I’m invited)!

I’ll also share one of my favorite lesser-heard works of Ralph Vaughan Williams: the “Charterhouse Suite,” a collection of light dances for strings, named for the public school the composer attended, beginning at the age of 15. Pendants will add that the work was actually arranged from an earlier “Suite of Six Short Pieces” for piano.

Franz Joseph Haydn’s Symphony No. 55 is often referred to as the “Schoolmaster.” Passages are said to be strikingly similar to those in a lost Haydn divertimento, identified as “The Schoolmaster in Love.” In particular, it’s been suggested that the dotted rhythm of the second movement of the symphony calls to mind a schoolmaster’s wagging finger – disrupted at intervals by musical sighs as he swoons with love.

Along the way, we’ll also enjoy music by Richard Addinsell, Gilbert & Sullivan, and Sigmund Romberg.

Put on your school clothes, boys and girls, and learn your lessons well. You’ll get a gold star when you 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/

September 7, 2024
Saygun Turkish Composer Black as Hell Music

There is a Turkish proverb: “Coffee should be black as Hell, strong as death, and sweet as love.”

The music of Ahmed Adnan Saygun is very good coffee indeed. Saygun (pictured, right) rode a wave of Turkish nationalism to become his country’s foremost composer in the Western classical tradition. Perhaps best remembered abroad as an associate of Béla Bartók (pictured, left), Saygun was a prominent ethnomusicologist, but also an important educator and cultural administrator.

On this, the anniversary of his birth (in 1907), savor an hour of Saygun’s sometimes sweet, often astringent, always rewarding music, including a selection of “Etudes on Aksak Rhythms” (1964), his Suite for Violin and Piano (1956), and the Piano Concerto No. 1 (1951-57).

The refreshments are guaranteed to be aromatic, bold, and rich, on “Turkish Toughie” – this Saturday’s edition of “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 – ALL NEW! – 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/

September 7, 2024
Labor Day Road Trip American Music

Labor Day weekend. Road trip!

This week on “The Lost Chord,” I hope you’ll join me for summer’s last hurrah, as we burn rubber with an hour of quintessentially American music about travel by car.

Frederick Shepherd Converse’s “Flivver Ten Million” celebrates the Ford Motor Company’s affordable assembly line automobile, from its creation in a Detroit factory to the manifest destiny of America’s roadways.

John Adams’ “Road Movies” has nothing to do with Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, alas; what it is, however, is a violin sonata written firmly within the American tradition, with a special affinity at its core with Copland’s Violin Sonata.

Virgil Thomson’s “Filling Station,” written for Leon Kirstein’s Ballet Caravan, may have the distinction of being the only ballet set at a gas station. The work’s success gave Copland the confidence to follow through on a Caravan commission which resulted in “Billy the Kid.”

Finally, we’ll hear one of Michael Daughtery’s most performed works, the exuberant “Route 66,” inspired by the storied “Main Street of America.”

Put the pedal to the metal. American composers hit the road for Labor Day, on “The Last Roads of Summer,” 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 – ALL NEW! – 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/

August 31, 2024
Labor Day Music on Sweetness and Light

How laborious it was to put together this morning’s “Sweetness and Light!” Which I suppose is only appropriate, since today’s theme is music for Labor Day.

It’s not uncommon when producing a show that the running time can come up a little long. I try to avoid it, but when it happens, it’s usually remedied with a few snips. But this week I was a full 90 seconds over, which meant trimming my commentary to the bone. It can take a while to whittle it all down.

In the end, I was still 30 seconds over. The rock was high and Classic Amico was so small!

So I had to swap out Aaron Copland’s rarely-heard “John Henry” (at 4 minutes) for something decidedly more “Common” (at about 3:30). If you’re at all familiar with the composer and his output, I think you can deduce what that is.

Another casualty was my fine encapsulation of the essence of John Alden Carpenter’s construction worker ballet “Skyscrapers.” There’s an awful lot of color in that score to convey a few sentences!

“The scenario involves workers in overalls, who struggle to bring order to a confusion of girders and flashing red lights; all around them the hustle and bustle of the city. Eventually the whistle blows. There’s a diverting side-trip to a Coney Island-type amusement park, with its crowds and attractions and popular dance rhythms. Again the whistle blows, and the laborers return to work.”

The music is still there, but I wind up basically saying “here it is.”

Life is full of frustration, folks, but it still beats digging ditches.

I hope you’ll join me for a program that will also include works by George Frideric Handel, Nikolai Medtner, Michael Torke, and Eric Coates, with Princeton’s own Paul Robeson singing Earl Robinson’s labor classic “Joe Hill.” How that’s sweet OR light, I have no idea, but I’m playing it.

As always, I earn my bread by the sweat of my brow. Just in time for breakfast, I’ll be bringing home the bacon, 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/

IMAGE: One of ten dynamic panels from Thomas Hart Benton’s mural, “America Today” (1930-31). You can click through thumbnails of all of them here:

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/499559

August 31, 2024
Sweetness and Light Circus Radio Show

This week on “Sweetness and Light,” with summer winding down, we’re off to the circus.

Are there any circuses anymore? Beyond Cirque du Soleil, I mean? Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus gave their farewell tour back in 2017. We’re too enlightened now to tolerate closely caged or potentially abused exotic animals, and quite rightly so.

Still, for those of us of a certain age, there remains a certain nostalgia for the circus, with its parade, and its Big Top, and the noise and color and smells and scary clowns.

I’ll be presenting for your wonderment and enjoyment an electrifying musical menagerie. There will be circus marches galore, a waltz long associated with the trapeze, a suite of character pieces for piano, a selection from an Academy Award winning film, not one, but TWO ballets (one conceived for baby elephants), and a delightful song by Charles Ives. You’ll practically smell the popcorn and cotton candy and hay and elephant droppings!

I can’t say it will be the greatest show on earth, but it’s bound to stir some memories for a bygone era of American tent circus.

Ladies and gentlemen! Boys and girls! Children of all ages! Join me for me in the center ring for “Sweetness and Light.” I’ll be donning the telltale top hat and tailcoat, 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/

August 24, 2024

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