Classic Ross Amico

Tag: KWAX

British Light Music for Late Summer Evenings on KWAX

I think we can all use more light in our lives.

This week on “The Lost Chord,” British Light Music is a genre I think perfectly suited to the month August, when it is still summer, but the light begins to take on a more lambent quality.

Furthermore, the music is all very civilised [sic], conjuring a world of palm courts and spa orchestras, comfortable evenings spent around the radio, and carefree days by the sea.

Take a nostalgic journey with an hour of vintage recordings of works by Albert Ketèlbey, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Sir Edward Elgar, Richard Addinsell, George Scott-Wood, Haydn Wood, Billy Mayerl and Eric Coates.

You provide the tea and cucumber sandwiches; I’ll supply the sweetness and light. I hope you’ll join me for “Distant Light,” on “The Lost Chord,” now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Keep in mind, KWAX is on the West Coast, so there’s a three-hour difference for the Trenton-Princeton area. Here are the respective air-times of my recorded shows (with East Coast conversions in parentheses):

PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday on KWAX at 5:00 PACIFIC TIME (8:00 PM EDT)

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday on KWAX at 4:00 PACIFIC TIME (7:00 PM EDT)

Stream them here!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

August 26, 2023
Picaresque Novels on Film Summer’s Last Adventure

When I think back on the summers of my youth, I remember my elation at three months of illusory freedom – sucking the marrow out of life for the first half of the season or so; then getting drawn into family visits and vacations and losing track of friends; and finally, with the new school year looming, that last desperate frenzy to LIVE SUMMER!

This week on “Picture Perfect,” with the season winding down, it’s one last grasp for adventure. Revel in some freewheeling lack of judgment, with an hour of films based on picaresque novels.

Novels, you say? As in literature?

And picaresque? Ain’t that one of them 20-dollar words???

I suppose, in its way, it is also a foretaste of the classroom. But trust me, there will be enough impulsive behavior by rapscallions and scapegraces to keep things interesting.

In case you weren’t an English major, picaresque novels are frequently characterized by rogues and anti-heroes as protagonists, episodic, wayward structure, and not infrequently lowly humor.

We’ll hear music from “The Reivers,” after William Faulkner’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, a coming-of-age story about a boy swept into automobile theft and illicit horseracing in the American south. Mark Rydell directed the 1969 film, which starred Steve McQueen as the rakish Boon Hogganbeck and featured narration by Burgess Meredith. John Williams wrote the breezy Americana score.

Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” is frequently characterized as an American picaresque. It’s certainly one of the funniest of “serious” books. A middling film adaptation was made in 1960, directed by Michael Curtiz, with Tony Randall given top billing, shifting the focus of the story to the con artistry of the King and the Duke. It features an evocative score by Jerome Moross.

If Hervey Allen’s “Anthony Adverse” had any humor to begin with, it was definitely lost in translation. (Too bad the novel was written in English.) However, the 1936 screen adaptation certainly does sprawl. One could say it’s picaresque in the worst way. It just doesn’t go anywhere. It does, however, feature a top-notch cast (Frederic March, Olivia De Havilland, Claude Rains, etc.) and an Academy Award-winning score by Erich Wolfgang Korngold.

While the modern picaresque novel had its roots in the Renaissance, the genre really seemed to hit its stride in the 18th century, with comic novelists like Henry Fielding. Fielding’s “Tom Jones,” perhaps the quintessential picaresque, was made into a film in 1963. It went on to win Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director (Tony Richardson), Best Adapted Screenplay (John Osborne) and Best Original Score (John Addison). Addison’s music suits Richardson’s quirky virtuosity like an off-kilter powdered wig.

Get ready to wear some holes into your new school clothes. We’re up to no good, with an hour of picaresque adventures, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Keep in mind, KWAX is on the West Coast, so there’s a three-hour difference for the Trenton-Princeton area. Here are the respective air-times of my recorded shows (with East Coast conversions in parentheses):

PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday on KWAX at 5:00 PACIFIC TIME (8:00 PM EDT)

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday on KWAX at 4:00 PACIFIC TIME (7:00 PM EDT)

Stream them here!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

August 25, 2023
Cool Movie Scores to Beat the Summer Heat KWAX

We’ve had it better than most this summer in the Trenton-Princeton area, but it’s been an unrelenting scorcher for many. This week on “Picture Perfect,” we’ll think cool thoughts with some chilly scores from world cinema.

“The Snow Storm” (1964) is an adaptation of Pushkin’s “The Tales of the Late Ivan Petrovich Belkan.” The score’s Waltz and Romance enjoyed particular popularity, earning its composer, Georgy Sviridov, two of his greatest hits.

Then Arthur Honegger will take us to higher altitudes with his music for “The Demon of the Himalayas” (1935), complete with the eerie electronic timbre of the ondes Martenot.

Ralph Vaughan Williams will guide us to the South Pole with selections from his score for “Scott of the Antarctic” (1948). The music perfectly reflects the sublime, austere beauty of an unforgiving landscape. The score became the basis for the composer’s seventh symphony, “Sinfonia Antartica” (which is titled in Italian, hence the single “c”).

Finally, the “Battle on the Ice” sequence from “Alexander Nevsky” (1938) provides a textbook marriage of music and film. Director Sergei Eisenstein granted the composer, Sergei Prokofiev, the unusual luxury of having the images cut to suit his music, as opposed to the usual practice, which is the other way around. The result is not only one of the great films, but also one of the great film scores.

Feeling hot under the collar? Chill out with wintry scenes from world cinema this week, on “Picture Perfect,” music from the movies, now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Keep in mind, KWAX is on the West Coast, so there’s a three-hour difference for the Trenton-Princeton area. Here are the respective air-times of my recorded shows (with East Coast conversions in parentheses):

PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday on KWAX at 5:00 PACIFIC TIME (8:00 PM EDT)

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday on KWAX at 4:00 PACIFIC TIME (7:00 PM EDT)

Stream them here!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

August 18, 2023
Scarlatti’s Musical Duels and Lasting Legacy

It seems as if it was only a matter of time before any Baroque musician of merit would become embroiled in a musical duel.

In the case of Domenico Scarlatti, he was challenged in Rome by none other than George Frideric Handel. The resulting contest led to Handel being judged superior to his rival on the organ; however, on the harpsichord Scarlatti was deemed to be supreme. In fact, Scarlatti’s unusual facility at the keyboard has had artists “keyed up” for centuries.

Born in Naples in 1685 – the same year as Handel and Bach – Scarlatti spent much of his career in the service of the Portuguese and Spanish royal families. He wrote 555 keyboard sonatas, which have been admired by composer-performers from Frederic Chopin to Marc-André Hamelin.

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll enjoy several works written in tribute to this Baroque master.

Charles Avison, whose life overlapped Scarlatti’s own (he was born in 1709, when Scarlatti was 23 years-old), arranged a number of his elder colleague’s keyboard works into a set of 12 concerti grossi. We’ll sample one of those, Avison’s Concerto No. 10 in D.

Then we’ll turn to American composer Norman Dello Joio. Dello Joio was the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1957 for his “Meditations on Ecclesiastes.” From 1979, we’ll hear his four-movement piano work, “Salute to Scarlatti.”

Dmitri Shostakovich arranged two of Scarlatti’s keyboard sonatas for small wind ensemble and percussion. We’ll enjoy performances of these by members of the former USSR Ministry of Culture Symphony Orchestra conducted by Gennady Rozhdestvensky.

Finally, Alfredo Casella’s 1926 suite for piano and orchestra, “Scarlattiana,” draws its inspiration from dozens of Scarlatti sonatas. Though unquestionably high-spirited, it was not originally intended for the dance – but since it unabashedly recalls Stravinsky’s “Pulcinella,” it is hardly surprising that some clown decided to choreograph it.

I hope you’ll join me for a mixed salad of Scarlatti tributes, on “Italian Dressing,” on “The Lost Chord,” now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Keep in mind, KWAX is on the West Coast, so there’s a three-hour difference for the Trenton-Princeton area. Here are the respective air-times of my recorded shows (with East Coast conversions in parentheses):

PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday on KWAX at 5:00 PACIFIC TIME (8:00 PM EDT)

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday on KWAX at 4:00 PACIFIC TIME (7:00 PM EDT)

Stream them here!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

August 12, 2023
Zorro and Swashbuckling Film Scores on KWAX

Latin may be a dead language, but Latin swashbucklers live this week on “Picture Perfect!”

Alfred Newman gets the blood pumping with his virile soundtrack for “Captain from Castile” (1947), in which Tyrone Power flees persecution at the hands of the Inquisition to join Cortés’ expedition to conquer Mexico. Because conquest is so “in” right now. The film was shot on location with one sequence set against the backdrop of an actual erupting volcano!

Power, of course, was one of the screen’s great Zorros. However, with “The Mask of Zorro” (1998), Antonio Banderas becomes the Zorro for our time. He’s aided and abetted by Anthony Hopkins, as the elder Zorro who mentors him. TWO Zorros in one film! It can’t get any better than that. (Save your “Zorro, the Gay Blade” brickbats for the comments section.) Catherine Zeta-Jones is radiant, and the music by James Horner literally hits all the right notes.

This film was already a throwback on release, with plenty of real-life, real-time swordplay and stunts galore, and the barest minimum of computer-generated bells and whistles. I wish to the ghost of Douglas Fairbanks that popcorn entertainment could still be like this. As it was, “The Mask of Zorro” was like a belated last gasp of the 1980s. It was easily the best swashbuckler of the ‘90s – though, really, was there much competition?

Banderas got a chance to send-up his image in the Dreamworks’ computer-animated feature, “Puss in Boots” (2011), a spin-off from the Shrek series, which actually turned out to be a better sequel than “The Legend of Zorro” (2005).

The film sports plenty of Zorro in-jokes, which extend even to Henry Jackman’s entertaining score. How is it that animated movies are just about the only movies these days that seem to keep up the great symphonic tradition of classic film scoring?

Finally, Errol Flynn has one last swash left in his buckle for “The Adventures of Don Juan” (1948), his last wholly satisfying period adventure. Equally, Max Steiner rises to the occasion and provides one of his best scores, just about on the same level as those of the master of the genre, Erich Wolfgang Korngold. Gen-Xers may recognize the theme from its use in “The Goonies” – and, now that I think about it, “Zorro, the Gay Blade!”

I hope you’ll join me for an hour of Latin swords, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Keep in mind, KWAX is on the West Coast, so there’s a three-hour difference for the Trenton-Princeton area. Here are the respective air-times of my recorded shows (with East Coast conversions in parentheses):

PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday on KWAX at 5:00 PACIFIC TIME (8:00 PM EDT)

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday on KWAX at 4:00 PACIFIC TIME (7:00 PM EDT)

Stream them here!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

August 11, 2023

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