Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Robert Farnon

A Canadian Pancake Breakfast on “Sweetness and Light”

This week on “Sweetness and Light,” the focus is on our friends to the north – all music associated, in one way or another, with Canada. We’ll hear works by Canadian composers Healey Willan and Robert Farnon, including Farnon’s “Ottawa” Symphony, with a few of his light music classics tossed into the bargain.

Neither Emil Nikolaus von Reznicek nor Ralph Vaughan Williams were Canadian, but both wrote music associated with the Great White North. Television audiences of the late 1950s would come to associate Reznicek’s best-known music with the North-West Mounted Police, during the time of the Klondike Gold Rush, when his “Donna Diana Overture” was appropriated as the theme for “Sergeant Preston of the Yukon.” And what a performance we’ll hear, with Hermann Scherchen conducting, in a recording that was made contemporaneously with the run of the show!

Vaughan Williams wrote the music for the Powell-Pressburger film “49th Parallel,” in which patriotic Canadian citizens save our bacon from Nazi invasion. Raymond Massey beating the tar out of a Nazi? Now that’s the kind of propaganda I can get behind!

I’ll be ladling out the syrup and the pancakes will be fluffy, as we salute Canada on “Sweetness and Light,” this Saturday morning at 11:00 EDT/8:00 PDT, exclusively on KWAX Classical Oregon!

Stream it, wherever you are, at the link:

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

August 29, 2026
Keep Cool and Carry on with Refreshing Fountain Music on “Sweetness and Light”

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. For anyone flabbergasted by the omission of Respighi’s “Fountains of Rome,” fear not, the opulence of Meuleman’s “Pliny’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 Classical Oregon!

Stream it wherever you are at the link:

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/
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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.

August 1, 2026
Tall Ships Movie Music Picture Perfect on KWAX

Summer vacation may be winding down, but it’s never too late to run away to sea. This week on “Picture Perfect,” we listen to music from movies featuring tall ships.

Though Gregory Peck cuts a dashing figure as “Captain Horatio Hornblower” (1951), the movie itself is a bit episodic, adapted as it was from three of C.S. Forester’s Hornblower novels. Canadian-born master of British light music Robert Farnon wrote the music, lending another dimension to this nautical adventure.

Alan Ladd and James Mason engage in a battle of wills in “Botany Bay” (1953). Ladd plays a doctor wrongly accused of a crime, being transported to a penal colony in New South Wales on a ship under the harsh command of Mason. In perhaps the film’s most memorable sequence, Mason has one of his charges keelhauled. Franz Waxman wrote the score.

If it all sounds a mite familiar, it’s because the story was by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall, authors of “Mutiny on the Bounty.” The classic film version dates from 1935, with Clark Gable butting up against Charles Laughton’s Captain Bligh. The 1962 version bears a certain notoriety, mostly for Marlon Brando’s eccentric performance, which turns Fletcher Christian into a fop, and the fact that he essentially directed all his own scenes himself. The film was colossal failure, earning back only $13 million of its $19 million budget. Nonetheless, it managed to inspire Bronislau Kaper to compose one of his most monumental scores.

Finally, we’ll hear music from a release on Sepia Records of the soundtrack to “Windjammer” (1958), the only film shot using the Cinemiracle process. The film documents the round-trip, transatlantic journey of a Norwegian vessel from from Oslo to the Caribbean to New York to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and then back home again. Morton Gould wrote the evocative score, which alternates dance rhythms and sea shanties with a recurring melody suggestive of the sweeping romance of the high seas.

Join me as we recommission these tall ships on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, 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/

August 15, 2025
Americas Music Journey with Dolce Suono

There’s more to America than just the United States.

Today’s Noontime Concert on The Classical Network will highlight the Philadelphia-based Dolce Suono Ensemble’s “Música en tus Manos: The Americas” project. “Música en tus Manos” (“Music in Your Hands”) is an outreach initiative that explores the artistic contributions of Spain and the Americas as part of the ensemble’s ongoing engagement with Philadelphia’s Latino community.

Among the composers represented on today’s broadcast will be Joaquin Turina (Spain), Ernesto Lecuona (Cuba), and Jennifer Higdon, Ned Rorem, and Jelly Roll Morton (U.S.A.). Dolce Suono’s artistic director, flutist Mimi Stillman, will co-host with WWFM’s David Osenberg.

Then stick around. I’ll be by at 1:35 to bring Canada into the mix with the “Ottawa” Symphony by Robert Farnon, whose birthday it is today. In fact, I think I can pretty much promise you a New World in music until 4 p.m. EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

July 24, 2018

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