This week on “Sweetness and Light,” I invite you to a holiday tea party. That’s right, the music will all in some way be related to tea.
We’ll get the kettle roiling with Dmitri Shostakovich’s charming arrangement of “Tea for Two,” recollect the elegant Palm Court of the Plaza Hotel in days of yore with Samuel Barber’s “Souvenirs,” and experience sugar-induced hallucinations of dancing tea leaves in Richard Strauss’ high-calorie ballet “Schlagobers,” or “Whipped Cream.”
Lewis Carroll’s Hatter may have been mad, but even he would think twice before imperiling an “unbirthday” with a fidgety monkey. The maddening patter of the 1953 novelty song “The Little Red Monkey” relates a simmering simian’s reactions to violin, euphonium, and tea.
Your eyes will be pinwheeling and your brain will be humming from an overindulgence of caffeine and cake when you join me for “Sweetness and Light,” this Saturday morning at 11:00 EST/8:00 PST, exclusively on KWAX Classical Oregon!
Stream it wherever you are at the link:
https://kwax.uoregon.edu/
Tag: Sweetness and Light
-
Halloween Music on KWAX
This week on “Sweetness and Light,” we’ll be cutting holes in Mom’s best sheets for a light music trick-or-treat. Join me for 13 ghostly premonitions of a holiday I am happy to say I never outgrew.
We’ll enjoy Halloween songs, selections from Halloween film scores, Halloween piano miniatures, and Halloween light music classics about a haunted ballroom, an ostracized imp, and a devil’s ride, all lovingly curated by you-know-who. Nothing too terribly terrible. It’s all in good fun. There will be no cowering before this disarming parade of spirits, reanimated corpses, witches, bogeymen, demons, and necromancers!
I’ve carefully examined all the candy for pins and razor blades, so you mustn’t hesitate to indulge. It will be Smarties® and peanut butter cups for breakfast, 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:
Aaah-OOOOOO!
-
Celebrating Vaughan Williams on KWAX
Ralph Vaughan Williams was born on October 12, 1872. Since he happens to be one of my favorite composers, we’ll get a jump on the celebrations this week on “Sweetness and Light,” with 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 “Royal Throne of Kings,” released on Albion Records, 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:
PHOTO: Vaughan Williams takes a slug from the mug
-
Back to School with Classical Music on KWAX
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. Pedants 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:
-
Labor Day Music Marathon 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 Ross 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:
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:
Tag Cloud
Aaron Copland (92) Beethoven (94) Composer (114) Conductor (84) Film Music (105) Film Score (143) Film Scores (255) Halloween (94) John Williams (178) KWAX (227) Leonard Bernstein (98) Marlboro Music Festival (125) Movie Music (120) Opera (194) Picture Perfect (174) Princeton Symphony Orchestra (102) Radio (86) Ralph Vaughan Williams (83) Ross Amico (244) Roy's Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner (290) The Classical Network (101) The Lost Chord (268) Vaughan Williams (97) WPRB (396) WWFM (881)