Classic Ross Amico

Tag: The Lost Chord

French Halloween Music the Lost Chord

On the whole the French don’t really celebrate Halloween (too American), but if you find one who does, don’t say “trick or treat.” Rather, demand “Des bonbons ou un sort!” – candy or a spell.

While France might not be down with the whole Halloween thing, many of the country’s great artists, writers, and composers could totally conjure a Halloween vibe. Think Odilon Redon’s “The Smiling Spider,” Charles Baudelaire’s “Les Fleurs du mal,” or Camille Saint-Saëns’ “Danse macabre.”

This week on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll have three pieces of French music totally suitable for the season.

Maurice Ravel’s “Gaspard de la Nuit” (“Gaspard of the Night”) – musical responses to the weird and sinister poetry of Aloysius Bertrand – is a suite of creepy impressions of (1) a flirtatious water spirit, (2) a hanged man at sunset against the backdrop of a tolling bell, and (3) a vampiric dwarf named Scarbo. Gina Bachauer will be the pianist, and Sir John Gielgud will preface each of the movements with recitations of the Bertrand poems.

Claude Debussy was enthralled by the writings of Edgar Allan Poe, which he knew through Baudelaire’s translations. At the time of his death, he left incomplete sketches for two operas after Poe stories – “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “The Devil in the Belfry.” We’ll hear fragments of the former, conducted by Georges Prêtre.

Finally, we’ll listen to the third of the “Etudes in Minor Keys,” subtitled “Scherzo Diabolico,” by Charles-Valentin Alkan. Alkan, a sometimes neighbor of Chopin and Georges Sand, shared a home with his illegitimate son, two apes, and a hundred cockatoos. Franz Liszt is alleged to have commented, “Alkan had the finest technique I had ever known, but preferred the life of a recluse.”

Best known is the story surrounding the circumstances of his death: while reaching for a copy of the Talmud, situated on a high shelf of a heavy bookcase, the case let go and crushed Alkan beneath it. It’s been suggested that the composer actually collapsed while in the kitchen – but when the legend becomes fact, print the legend. We’ll hear his etude in a recording by the late Michael Ponti.

I hope you’ll join me for “Jacques o’ Lanterns” – lurid music by French composers for Halloween 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/

October 25, 2025
Yo-Yo Ma at 70 A Musical Journey

As you may have read here before, Yo-Yo Ma turned 70 this week. Arguably the most visible and charismatic cellist of his generation, Ma was born on October 7, 1955. We follow up on our salute to this beloved figure and his work in film, heard on Friday’s “Picture Perfect” (on which was featured music from “Seven Years in Tibet,” “Memoirs of a Geisha” and “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”), by programming two of his more unusual recordings on “The Lost Chord.”

Ma has long been acclaimed for his performances of the Bach Cello Suites, chamber music by Beethoven and Brahms, and most of the major concertos for cello and orchestra. However, his first commercial recording, believe it or not, was of music by the English composer Gerald Finzi.

Nor is Finzi’s Cello Concerto likely what we would expect from a composer largely known for his wistful, though innocuous choral works and endlessly melodic string miniatures. In fact, there’s an urgency to the first movement of the piece that seems to predict his diagnosis with leukemia, of which he learned just before his 50th birthday. The slow movement of the work unfolds in the composer’s characteristically straightforward and easily assimilated musical language. The third movement fulfills audience expectations of an optimistic and buoyant finale.

The completed concerto was given its first performance in July of 1955. It would be the last music Finzi ever heard, when, a little over a year later, he listened to a concert broadcast of a performance from his hospital room the night before he died.

Ma recorded the piece while in his early 20s, with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Vernon Handley.

More recently, having conquered the classical concert hall and established his mastery of the standard repertoire, Ma has proved increasingly restless and exploratory, with forays into Baroque music on period instruments, American bluegrass, Argentinean tango, improvisatory duets with Bobby McFerrin, and several musical journeys along the Silk Road.

The excitement and purity of working out musical ideas with artists from diverse cultures color his album titled “Silk Road Journeys.” We’ll hear Ma on an instrument called the morin khuur, performing with Mongolian vocalist Ganbaatar Khongorzul, in “Legend of Herlen,” built on a traditional long-song about the Herlen River, by Byambasuren Sharav. They’ll be joined by trombonists and percussionists of The Silk Road Ensemble, a group assembled by Ma to satisfy his curiosity about musical traditions existing beyond the confines of Western culture.

I hope you’ll join me for “Yo-Yo, around the World.” It’s more than just a party trick. Our heart belongs to Ma, 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/

October 11, 2025
Swiss Missed Forgotten Music from Switzerland

Enough with the jokes about alphorns and cuckoo clocks! This week on “The Lost Chord,” it’s forgotten music from Switzerland.

Ernest Bloch, best known for his music on Jewish themes (such as his Hebraic rhapsody “Schelomo”), actually spent most of his life in the United States. He died in Portland, OR, in 1959, at the age of 78.

50 years earlier, while still in Switzerland, he composed his song cycle “Poèmes d’automne.” At the time, he was at work on his opera, “Macbeth,” but he was sidelined when he made the acquaintance of a young poet by the name of Beatrix Rodès. He fell instantly in love with her, and set four of her poems within two months. Rodès would eventually become his mistress, though in the end Bloch chose to remain with his wife. It’s said that the texts, even in the original French, are of dubious literary quality.

The composer arranged them to form a kind of progression, in which a woman passes from sadness and desolation, to peace and love, to lamentation for the passing of her beauty, to an air of serenity as she becomes a priestess.

Okay, so it’s not his strongest work, but it is seasonal and interesting to listen to.

Hans Huber, who lived from 1852 to 1921, was the composer of nine symphonies (of which he acknowledged eight), five operas, and a number of concertos for various instruments. His four concertos for piano are somewhat unusual in that, like Brahms’ experiments in the form, they are made up of four movements, with the addition of a scherzo, as opposed to the customary three.

The Piano Concerto No. 3 first appeared on a concert in Basel, in February of 1899, which also included Beethoven’s “Leonore Overture No. 3” and Berlioz’s “Harold in Italy.”

The concerto is also unusual, for, among other things, anticipating in the first movement the theme from the work’s finale as the underpinnings of a passacaglia.

I hope you’ll join me for an hour of forgotten music from Switzerland – “Swiss Missed” – 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/

October 4, 2025
Shilkret’s Genesis Suite Schoenberg Stravinsky

The creation of the heavens and the earth may have taken six days, but Nathaniel Shilkret and I only have one hour.

This week on “The Lost Chord,” I hope you’ll join me for a true curiosity, a collaborative effort organized by Shilkret – a child prodigy from Queens who was associated with the New York Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera, the Victor Herbert Orchestra, the Sousa Band, the Victor Talking Machine Company (later RCA Victor), NBC Radio, the RKO and M-G-M movie studios, and concerts and recordings featuring many of the starriest jazz and classical artists of his time – who managed to cajole a number of the day’s greatest composers, then living in California, into contributing to a seven-movement piece for narrator, chorus and orchestra.

Take a gander at the layout for the “Genesis Suite” (1943):

“Prelude (The earth was without form),” composed by Arnold Schoenberg;

“Creation,” by Shilkret;

“Adam and Eve,” by Alexandre Tansman;

“Cain and Abel,” by Darius Milhaud;

“Noah’s Ark,” by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco;

“Babel,” by Igor Stravinsky;

and “The Covenant,” by Ernst Toch.

No one can accuse the project of a lack of ambition!

The “Genesis Suite” is the only time the twin titans of twentieth century music, Schoenberg and Stravinsky, were to collaborate on the same piece – though they never actually worked together. The two men were highly suspicious of one another, to put it mildly, and rehearsals had to be carefully calibrated so as to keep both composers from showing up at the same time. On the one occasion when they did, they remained aloof on opposite ends of the hall.

I give more background on the show – probably more than is necessary – but it’s all very interesting, I hope. That’s “First Among Equals” – Nathaniel Shilkret and the “Genesis Suite” – 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/

IMAGE: Adam and Eve (1526) by Lucas Cranach the Elder

September 27, 2025
Delius Rediscovered Rare Works & Great Champions

There’s a scene in Preston Sturges’ 1948 comedy “Unfaithfully Yours” in which a detective, played by Edgar Kennedy, waxes enthusiastically during a meeting with conductor Sir Alfred de Carter, played by Rex Harrison.

“Nobody handles Handel like you handle Handel!” he exclaims. “And your Delius? Delirious!”

This week on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll echo that appreciation of the great English composer – who lived most of his last four decades in the picturesque village of Grez-sur-Loing, outside Paris – with an hour of recordings of some of his lesser-heard works, made by some of his greatest champions.

More than any other, Sir Thomas Beecham was responsible for establishing Delius’ reputation as one of the UK’s greatest composers. Delius was inspired by a poem of Henrik Ibsen to write a melodrama (a piece in which a speaker recites over an orchestra), called “Paa Vidderne” – Norwegian for “On the Mountain.” This work would remain unperformed during Delius’ lifetime. However, two years later, in 1894, he composed a purely orchestral work on the same theme. If you’re a Delius fanatic, you may recognize a horn motif toward the end of the piece. It was to reappear in Delius’ fantasy overture “Over the Hills and Far Away.” We’ll hear “Paa Vidderne,” the purely orchestral work, in Beecham’s 1946 recording.

Another great champion of Delius’ music is the violinist Tasmin Little – recently retired, at the top of her game, at the age of only 55! Little made two recordings of Delius’ violin concerto. She also recorded a highly-regarded set of the violin sonatas. For a release on the Chandos label that includes Delius’ violin and cello concertos, she was one of the soloists for the rarely-heard Double Concerto – a work for violin, cello and orchestra – dating from 1920. David Watkins is the cellist, and the late Sir Andrew Davis conducted.

Finally, Eric Fenby was very closely associated with Delius during the final years of the composer’s life, when he acted as his amanuensis, taking down music by way of dictation, at a time when Delius was blind and paralyzed (the result of a syphilitic infection he contracted as a young man).

Fenby later made some authoritative recordings of the composer’s work. We’ll hear one of the pieces he helped Delius to complete – “Songs of Farewell,” from 1930, after texts of Walt Whitman, from the poet’s collection “Leaves of Grass” – with Fenby conducting the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Ambrosian Singers.

Bid farewell to astronomical summer with “Delirious for Delius” 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/

PHOTO: Fenby with Frederick Delius (in chair)

September 20, 2025

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