Classic Ross Amico

Category: The Lost Chord

So Much for Escapism: Power Corrupts on “The Lost Chord”

This week on “The Lost Chord,” I indulge my inner English major with a program inspired by two plays that explore the relationship of power and corruption – Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” and Eugene O’Neill’s “The Emperor Jones.”

The impulse grew out of my recollection of the rarely-heard ballet by Heitor Villa-Lobos, which originally aired on television in 1957. However, since the score was never published, it was believed lost for decades until rediscovered by the conductor Jan Wagner (who is Venezuelan, despite his Teutonic name). Wagner will conduct the Odense Symphony Orchestra, a Nordic band, in a surprisingly idiomatic performance.

Also on the program will be a half-remembered relic of American musical history, an aria from Louis Gruenberg’s opera, “The Emperor Jones,” sung by baritone Lawrence Tibbett, recorded in 1933.

“The Emperor Jones,” written in 1920, could be a potentially sensitive subject in a more politically correct era. No doubt about it, O’Neill’s tragedy is a product of its time, with plenty of minstrel show dialect, and the uncomfortable use of the N-word.

Already in 1924, Sidney Gilpin, the actor who created Brutus Jones, hedged at playing the character in its first revival, unless O’Neill first changed what he perceived as some of the more offensive passages. O’Neill stood his ground, and Gilpin’s replacement, Paul Robeson, went on to international stardom.

It’s easy to write-off “The Emperor Jones” as an embarrassing relic. Yet there have been some high-profile stagings over the past few years which demonstrate that the play still has much to tell us.

Jones is a former railroad porter and convict, who kills a guard in his escape from prison, and through bluff and bravado establishes himself as emperor of a Caribbean island. He maintains his power through cruelty and exploitation. However, he overplays his hand, and the situation quickly erodes. As his subjects rise up against him, Jones retreats into the jungle and descends into primal fear, haunted by images of his victims.

The play not only parallels some of the themes of “Macbeth,” it also demonstrates the fragility of human reason; how easily under the influence of adrenaline, brought on by raw terror, man is undone by the animal impulses of fight or flight; the psychological impact of guilt; and an insight into tyranny which was remarkably prescient given that fascism would soon overtake Europe.

I don’t know why it never occurred to me before to juxtapose the two plays, but a quick Google search reveals that I am not the first, so there goes my dream of an honorary doctorate.

Also on the show will be selections from rarely-heard incidental music written for two productions of “Macbeth,” by William Walton (for John Gielgud) and Sir Arthur Sullivan (for Henry Irving), respectively.

Power corrupts, on “Power Plays,” on “The Lost Chord,” now in syndication on KWAX Classical Oregon!

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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

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PHOTOS: Gielgud as Macbeth (top) and Tibbett as Brutus Jones

April 25, 2026
Leopold Stokowski on “Sweetness and Light” and “The Lost Chord”

With wild hair, dove-like hands, and a faux middle-European accent (as the son of a Polish-born cabinet-maker who emigrated to and worked in London), Leopold Stokowski certainly knew how to work a crowd. But he also knew his way around a score.

He could be flamboyant in manner, controversial in his interpretations, and an easy target for parody. But he was also magnetic and, at his best, a true magician of the podium.

I hope you’ll join me today for both of my Saturday radio shows as I honor Stokowski on the anniversary of his birth. (He was born on this date in 1882). You’ll find more information at the bottom of this post.

Stokowski was a natural for the movies. He appeared in more than a dozen motion pictures and documentaries and was frequently parodied in cartoons during Hollywood’s golden age. His most enduring film has been Walt Disney’s “Fantasia,” in which he conjures flights of animated fantasy from his art deco perch, and even shakes hands with Mickey Mouse. The recordings made for the actual film pioneered multi-channel stereo.

Stokowski always did have a reputation for embracing experimental technologies to capture or even enhance the fidelity of sound. On stage and in the recording studio, he was meticulous in arranging his musicians to achieve the sonic results he desired. It was really he who established the so-called “Philadelphia sound,” with its celebrated string sonorities, which he managed to replicate to a greater or lesser extent with many of the orchestras he worked with.

The quintessential Stokowski performance often stood apart for its dramatic flair and opulence. He was often at his best in the colorful French and Russian classics, where he really knew how to make the instrumental colors pop. But he also had an insatiable curiosity and a drive to introduce new music and unusual, off-the-beaten-path works.

On the other hand, there were occasions when he could truly astonish by driving a Mozart symphony like a team of wild horses. You truly never knew what this sorcerer was going to pull out of his hat.

One should never come to a Leopold Stokowski performance with an air of complacency, even if one thinks one knows the music inside out. Equally, one should never learn a score from a Stokowski recording. The extent of his recreative powers can only be fully appreciated when listening to him once you’ve heard everyone else. (There was often a lot of creativity in his “recreativity.”)

Some of his inspirations were genius – I love when he holds the chorus at the end of his London Phase 4 recording of Ravel’s “Daphnis and Chloe” Suite No. 2 – and in case it isn’t provocative enough, he actually has the engineers thrillingly boost the sound – but even for me, his swooning additions to his 1970s recording of “Siegfried’s Funeral March” are a bridge too far. Not everything he did will delight everyone, but the guy was not afraid to take chances.

Stokowski, who trained as an organist, possessed intimate knowledge of the keyboard music of Johann Sebastian Bach. At a time when such repertoire would have been comparatively unknown to orchestra subscribers, Stoky brought Bach to the concert hall by way of his own imaginative transcriptions. Hard to believe these were considered controversial at the time.

Clearly, Stokowski was a remarkable figure for so many reasons. Among them was his astonishing longevity. At the time of his death in 1977, at the age of 95, he had signed a contract that would have kept him busy in the recording studio until he was 100. It’s astonishing that so many of his late recordings were as good as anything he had ever done.

In common with Oscar Wilde, Stoky knew there is only one thing worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. His ever-evolving origin story. His wealthy marriages. His celebrity love affairs. His elegant bearing and riveting showmanship. It’s not just because of Bugs Bunny that music-lovers still revere him or toss up their hands in incredulity and gasp “LEOPOLD!”

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Join me on KWAX Classical Oregon for “Sweetness and Light,” Stokowski conducts music by Ottokar Novacek, Paul Dukas, Fikret Amirov, Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Claude Debussy, this Saturday morning at 11:00 EDT/8:00 PDT.

Then on “The Lost Chord,” Stokowski conducts Wagner in vintage recordings featuring the Philadelphia Orchestra, this Saturday evening/afternoon at 7:00 EDT/4:00 EDT.

Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

April 18, 2026
Japanese Composers in Bloom on “The Lost Chord”

This week on “The Lost Chord,” nothing attracts samurai and radiation-induced thunder-lizards like cherry blossoms.

We’ll enjoy concert music by two Japanese composers – both close friends – best recognized for their work in film. Akira Ifukube studied with Alexander Tcherepnin. Though his “Japanese Rhapsody” of 1935 won first prize in an international contest judged by Albert Roussel, Jacques Ibert, and Arthur Honegger, among others, financial considerations led him to write 250 film scores. Undoubtedly, he is best known for his music for Godzilla.

Humiwo Hayasaka was Akira Kurosawa’s composer of choice, writing music for classic films such as “Rashomon” and “Seven Samurai.” He wrote over 100 film scores in all, before his early death from tuberculosis at the age of 41. Prominent Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu (who later scored Kurosawa’s “Dodes’kaden”) claimed Hayasaka as a formative influence. We’ll hear Hayasaka’s Piano Concerto, composed in 1948. The first movement is a massive elegy for the composer’s brother and all the dead of the Second World War; and the second, a contrasting movement of conspicuous playfulness.

Incidentally, Ifukube was also responsible for creating Godzilla’s trademark roar, which was produced by running a resin-covered leather glove along the loosened strings of a double bass. Experience this distinctive call as a sort of intermezzo, between works by the composer of “Godzilla” and that of “Seven Samurai” on “The Lost Chord,” now in syndication on KWAX Classical Oregon!

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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

April 11, 2026
“Rood Awakening” on “The Lost Chord”

This week on “The Lost Chord,” it’s a Howard Ferguson Easter.

Born in Belfast in 1908, Ferguson had ambitions to become a composer. To this end, he traveled to London, where he studied at the Royal College of Music with, among others, Ralph Vaughan Williams. He also met and befriended fellow student Gerald Finzi. He achieved early success with works like the Octet of 1933, and no less a personage than Jascha Heifetz recorded his Violin Sonata No. 1.

Even so, over the decades his music has slipped from consciousness, no doubt helped by the fact that, by mid-life, he felt he had already said everything he had to say as a composer. He devoted his last four decades to musicological pursuits, editing and promoting works of Purcell, Schubert, and Finzi. In the 1990s, he also wrote a cookbook, “Cooking Solo.” Ferguson died in 1999, not long after his 91st birthday.

Thankfully, he lived long enough to hear some fine recordings as part of a modest revival of his music in the 1980s and ‘90s. A number of his chamber works were released on the Hyperion label by fine musicians like Thea King and members of the Nash Ensemble; his Piano Concerto was recorded for EMI by Howard Shelley; and Richard Hickox conducted a disc of his orchestral works for Chandos.

Also on the latter album is what turned out to be Ferguson’s last completed work, “The Dream of the Rood,” for chorus and orchestra, composed in 1958. After that, the composer embarked on a string quartet, but became frustrated by the lack of a fresh perspective and tore the thing up.

“The Dream of the Rood” is based on an 8th century Anglo-Saxon poem that marries the Passion story with characteristics of the secular heroic tradition. The poem is framed by a narrator’s vision of a magnificent bejeweled tree. Upon closer inspection, however, he finds its jewels bespattered with blood. It becomes apparent that this tree is the very same upon which Christ was crucified.

The middle portion of the poem is told from the tree’s perspective, with the tree being cut down and carried away for the purpose of the Crucifixion. The nails pierce the tree, yet man and tree endure, refusing to fall, bearing unimaginable pain for the sake of mankind. Just as Christ is resurrected, so is the Cross resurrected, now adorned with gold and silver. It is honored above all trees, just as Christ is honored above all men. The narrator gives praise to God, filled with hope at the prospect of eternal life and a desire to be nearer the glorious Cross.

I hope you’ll join me for music by Howard Ferguson (you’ll get to hear the Octet too), on “Rood Awakening,” on “The Lost Chord,” now in syndication on KWAX Classical Oregon!

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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

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PHOTOS: Portions of the poem are engraved on the 8th century Ruthwell Cross (top, as it appeared between 1823 and 1887; and bottom, at its current location at Ruthwell Church, Dumfriesshire, Scotland)

April 4, 2026
Anti-Fascist Composers Who Remained in Nazi Germany on “The Lost Chord”

Is it really “emigration” when you don’t go anywhere?

This week on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll have music by flagrantly anti-fascist composers who remained in Germany during the Nazi regime. This type of opposition was described by Thomas Mann as “inner emigration.”

There were plenty of opportunists who joined the Nazi Party as a means to curry favor, in the hopes of securing prominent posts. Then there were those who, while critical of the Nazis, nevertheless joined the Party to protect their families and to continue working.

A group which seems to have faded from memory is that made up of composers who remained, opposed the regime, and yet somehow survived. These artists were condemned by the Nazis, their music labeled degenerate and banned from performance. They were either prevented from escape or remained of their own accord. Some justified the decision to stay as an act of social consciousness. Some were active in resistance circles. Others simply withdrew into ostentatious silence.

Reinhard Schwarz-Schilling is not a terribly well-known composer, largely for the reasons I just mentioned. Schwarz-Schilling had been a professor of music at the Berlin Academy of Music. During Hitler’s reign, his family was subjected to frequent interrogations by the Gestapo. Luckily, it was never found out that Schwarz-Schilling’s wife, the concert pianist Dusza von Hakrid, was of Jewish descent. It was only through the beneficence and courage of a sympathetic official who falsified documents that the Schwarz-Schillings escaped arrest.

Schwarz-Schilling may have survived the Nazis, but following the war, he had to deal with the musical establishment, which had grown hostile to such flagrantly tonal music. Something like his Violin Concerto of 1953 couldn’t be taken seriously. It starts out sounding a bit like Hindemith, but embraces Korngoldian sentiment at its candy core. If you can’t stick around for the whole show, I hope at least you’ll stay tuned for the gorgeous slow movement of this concerto.

We’ll also hear music by Karl Amadeus Hartmann, regarded in some circles as the most important German symphonist of the mid-20th century, yet is now largely overlooked. In his 30s, Hartmann was viewed as politically undesirable in his homeland. He completely withdrew from musical life during the Nazi era. On the rare occasion any of his works would have been permitted performance, Hartmann would not allow it. Alas, most of his greatest champions were also his contemporaries. Therefore, performances of his music nearly died with them.

After the war, Hartmann was one of the few prominent surviving anti-fascists in Bavaria whom the Allied Forces could promote to a position of responsibility. Hartmann used that trust to reintroduce the world to music which had been banned since 1933 under National Socialist aesthetic policy. He remained in Munich for the rest of his life, where his administrative duties cut heavily into what would have been his compositional time and energy. He died in 1963. We’ll hear Hartmann’s Symphony No. 6, composed between 1951 and 1953.

I hope you’ll join me for “Staying Power” – music by anti-fascist composers who remained in Nazi Germany – on “The Lost Chord,” now in syndication on KWAX Classical Oregon!

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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

March 28, 2026

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