Classic Ross Amico

Tag: KWAX

Shelley’s Summer Music Lost Chord on KWAX

Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory…

This week on “The Lost Chord,” ‘tis an hour of seasonal works inspired by Percy Bysshe Shelley and friends.

Hearken to Geoffrey Bush’s “A Summer Serenade,” from 1948, settings of poems by Shelley, James I of Scotland, Samuel Daniel, William Blake, Thomas Heywood, and the ever-prolific Anonymous.

Then listen, listen, Mary mine, to Arnold Bax’s “Enchanted Summer,” from 1918, the text drawn from Act II, Scene 2, of Shelley’s “Prometheus Unbound.” Composed in the midst of a run of Bax’s better-known nature poems (on the one hand, “Into the Twilight” and “In the Fairy Hills,” and on the other, “Nympholept” and “The Garden of Fand”), the work opens with the play of light and shadow on a forest floor, traverses mysterious caves and crags, and conjures woodland spirits; dallies with “voluptuous nightingales;” and eavesdrops on the exchange of two fauns, who contemplate the wondrous things they have witnessed.

In conclusion, bring hot blushes to thy cheek, with one of Romantic poetry’s most protracted pick-up lines and Roger Quilter’s “Love’s Philosophy,” from 1905.

’Tis mine hope that thou wilt join me for “Summer Shelley, Some Are Not.” The dulcet music swells, 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/

July 19, 2025
Childhood Summers Music and Nostalgia

At midlife, the seasons fly by so quickly, they scarcely seem to register. This week on “Sweetness and Light,” we defy the gravitational pull of back-to-school advertisements and premature Halloween displays to indulge in some nostalgic recollections of the carefree and seemingly endless summers of youth.

Join me for alternately boisterous and languid works by Eugène Bozza, Sergei Prokofiev, Déodat de Severac, and William Walton.

It’s music reflective of riding bikes, tramping through woods and meadows, building forts, laughing with friends, and getting up to no good. When you’re a kid, there’s always plenty of adventure to be had, with the guaranteed security of a homecooked meal and a roof over your head. At least if you’re as fortunate as I was.

I don’t know, perhaps this kind of off-the-leash freedom and hedonistic enjoyment is a thing of the past, in a society where dreams are strangled by subdivisions and superwarehouses, surveillance cameras and militarized police, helicopter parents and cell phones, psychopaths and existential dread. But even with a hemmed-in, over-scheduled existence crammed with organized activities and soul-crushing electronics, I think the illusion of time stretching on forever must surely still be one of the enchantments of youth?

I don’t want to think about it. In a world wreathed by barbed wire, I will hang onto my illusion that childhood is the last frontier. Listen for me rafting down the Delaware, crowing like Peter Pan, on “Sweetness and Light,” this Saturday morning at 11:00 EDT/8:00 EDT, exclusively on KWAX, the radio station on the University of Oregon!

Stream it wherever you are at the link:

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

July 19, 2025
Childhood Summers with Harpist Alisa Sadikova

I’ve been kicking around themes for this weekend’s “Sweetness and Light,” hoping to write and record the show today, and it occurs to me, it being a light music program with something of an escapist bent, I might indulge my nostalgia for the carefree and seemingly endless summers of my childhood. Last week, I put together a playlist about fountains, which turned out to be a lot more satisfying than I had anticipated. To conflate the two, here’s a YouTube video I discovered while researching and refreshing my memory as to the repertoire. It’s such a remarkable document, I think it’s worth sharing – although the piece played by this astonishingly talented young harpist (at the age of 9!) is misattributed to Marcel Grandjany. It’s actually “La Source” by Albert Zabel. I think you’ll agree it is five minutes well-spent!

Alisa Sadikova is now 22 years-old. Although the actual piece did not make it onto my playlist of fountain music – who knew the competition would be so fierce? – I was very pleased to make its acquaintance, especially in Sadikova’s mesmerizing and enriching performance.

Again, this week the musical selections will be curated with the purpose of recollecting those halcyon summers of youth and adventure. I didn’t play the harp, but I sure did suck the marrow out of life. “Sweetness and Light” airs on KWAX, Saturday mornings at 11:00 EDT/8:00 EDT. Stream it wherever you are at the link. https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

July 16, 2025
Fountain Music Burbling or Gurgling Summer Sounds

In writing this, I am wondering if it’s more accurate to state that fountains burble or gurgle? This is the kind of heavy-lifting I do behind the scenes to make my light music shows seem so buoyant and effortless.

This week on “Sweetness and Light,” as I weigh the finer points, peering through the magnifying glass into my O.E.D., I hope to lessen your own burdens with a refreshing and restorative playlist for the hazy, lazy days of summer. Join me for an hour of “fountain” music by Robert Farnon, Franz Liszt, Maurice Ravel, Charles Tomlinson Griffes, Hans Christian Lumbye, Arthur Meulemans, and Carl Bohm. I’m deliberately omitting Respighi, since it was his birthday on Wednesday, and someone is bound to have programmed “Fountains of Rome” – but fear not, the opulence of Meuleman’s “Pliney’s Fountain” will give old Ottorino a run for his money!

I may be a fount of indecision, but you can be certain of plenty of burbling or gurgling music 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: “Doves of Pliny” from Hadrian’s Villa in Tivoli, after second century BCE mosaic by Sosus of Pergamon (reproduced many times)

FUN FACT! IMPRESS YOUR FRIENDS! Tivoli was also the location of the villa that inspired Liszt’s “Les jeux d’eaux à la Villa d’Este” (“The Fountains of the Villa d’Este”), also to be heard in this hour.

July 12, 2025
Les Six: French Composers on KWAX

With Bastille Day coming up on Monday, the focus this week on “The Lost Chord” will be Les Six, that collective of French composers who rose to prominence in Paris in the 1920s, followers of Jean Cocteau and Erik Satie – in reality, each following their own aims, but loosely organized around a reactionary stance against Wagnerism in music and the so-called Impressionism of Debussy and Ravel.

But never mind all that. What’s important is that they wrote plenty of delightful music, mostly in a neoclassical style.

We’ll have a chance to get up close and personal, as we listen to music by Les Six, performed by members of Les Six, with Georges Auric and Jacques Février playing music of Erik Satie into the bargain.

You can always count on The Six. I hope you’ll join me for “Six by Six” on “The Lost Chord,” now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station on 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/

PHOTO: Standing, left-to-right, Darius Milhaud, Georges Auric, Arthur Honegger, Germaine Tailleferre, Francis Poulenc, and Louis Durey, with Jean Cocteau at the piano

July 12, 2025

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