Classical Listening

[LitNetIsGreat]

I might watch the Royal Opera House production of Le nozze di Figaro tonight. We'll see.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iF655YJolQI

[Lokasenna]

I might watch the Royal Opera House production of Le nozze di Figaro tonight. We'll see.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iF655YJolQI

I have it on DVD - it's a great production. Dorothea Roshmann's Countess is particularly brilliant.

[LitNetIsGreat]

I have it on DVD - it's a great production. Dorothea Roshmann's Countess is particularly brilliant.

Yes it's a good one. I went through a Figaro thing last year where I kept playing this version and another one. I also saw two productions of it, one in Sheffield and the other at the Royal Opera House itself (with some of the same cast as in the DVD). This was one of my rare visits to London.

Edit: Jesus, I've just seen one of the adverts above; Classical Music Dating Site (or something) isn't the internet unreal at times?

[Too late]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94HYE...eature=related

[Emil Miller]

Here are those fiery Venezuelan kids again playing it better than anyone else.


http://youtu.be/RcAGFgPCigw

[Lokasenna]

Here are those fiery Venezuelan kids again playing it better than anyone else.


http://youtu.be/RcAGFgPCigw

That really is stunning - I think that's the best performance of the Bacchanalle that I've heard.

[Vonny]

Here are those fiery Venezuelan kids again playing it better than anyone else.


http://youtu.be/RcAGFgPCigw

This is beautiful. The ending is so powerful.

It sure beats rock, rap, or whatever they call that noise.

[stlukesguild]

I've been listening to Mahler again after a rather lengthy interval (I've been focusing upon broadening my grasp... and my collection... of the Baroque). Today I listened once again to the young Simon Rattle's iconic recording of Symphony no. 2 "The Resurrection" and was blown away once again.



Here is a brief outtake of Valery Giergev's performance with the LSO:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGyvl9McMGs

**************

In other classical news, I just made what must be the greatest bargain purchase yet this year. This 15 disc set:



This set consists of 15 discs by Paul Van Nevel and the Huelgas Ensemble, a brilliant vocal and instrumental group specializing in the performance of "early" music (especially medieval and Renaissance). Each of these discs was already released independently and most are still in print. I already owned two of the discs in this set as well as several other discs by the Huelgas Ensemble, but at a price of just over $30 US for more than a dozen highly regarded discs of medieval and Renaissance music... with a sizable catalog and beautiful packaging... I could not turn this one by.

Now if only they would offer Solti's "Ring" or Keilberth's "Ring" at such a reasonable price, I'd be in heaven.

[Lokasenna]

Well, the weather outside might be gloomy, but after my travels it is nice to be back in England.

So, I'm currently contemplating the pile of books in my 'to read' corner, mulling over a cup of tea, and enjoying some wonderful Vaughan Williams...

[Vonny]

Well, the weather outside might be gloomy, but after my travels it is nice to be back in England.

So, I'm currently contemplating the pile of books in my 'to read' corner, mulling over a cup of tea, and enjoying some wonderful Vaughan Williams...

This is a lovely folk song and video. I've often wondered what it would feel like to be in a 1000 year-old cathedral or castle.

Since finding this website I've become aware of a few things that I was completely oblivious to before. Maybe not oblivious. I knew that something was off. We're sorely lacking that "wealth of tradition." And we've raised the "cheap compromise" to an art form.

When I used that word "lovely" in my first sentence, I actually felt inhibited. (Yes, we have our inhibitions; we lack the English sexual license.) I didn't know there was anyone in the world today who used the word lovely. That word isn't used where I live. Men, and even women, would feel more comfortable taking a gunshot wound to the head than using that word.

There's something in the language. People can't think too well without words, and so when the words are lost, the people revert to Neanderthals. They say it isn't possible to "devolve," but I wonder.

You've got Jane Austen. Sandpoint here is very proud to be the birthplace of Sarah Palin. Apparently, Sarah attended North Idaho College for a couple of semesters. The library of NIC is amazing in that it has practically new 8-year old history, literature and science books on its shelves. I mean, someone dusts them. But you can see that the books are never touched. If a book is 5 years old, it may have been checked out once or twice 5 years ago, and not since. And they get new books that are hardly touched... Our only culture is the NRA.

oh, ignore me! I'm always in my own world and have no idea what the thread is about!

[Emil Miller]

oh, ignore me! I'm always in my own world and have no idea what the thread is about!

I was wondering that as well.

[kasie]

I think Vonny was trying to express the envy she feels for people who are comfortable with 'Culture with a Capital C' and have a heritage of which they are proud and unashamed.

However we have our share of 'Neanderthals' too, Vonny!

[Emil Miller]

I think Vonny was trying to express the envy she feels for people who are comfortable with 'Culture with a Capital C' and have a heritage of which they are proud and unashamed.

However we have our share of 'Neanderthals' too, Vonny!

Agreed, it will take another couple of millenia before the US are able to think in terms of culture in the European way despite examples of early peoples having lived there in the distant past. When it comes to Neanderthals, although there may be significant numbers of them in what are sometimes referred to as the 'flyover states' of America, you would have to go along way to find examples as numerous as in London, where tattoos and piercings abound and a general air of primitivism makes London an ideal place for students of anthropology.

[stlukesguild]

This is a lovely folk song and video. I've often wondered what it would feel like to be in a 1000 year-old cathedral or castle.

Since finding this website I've become aware of a few things that I was completely oblivious to before. Maybe not oblivious. I knew that something was off. We're sorely lacking that "wealth of tradition." And we've raised the "cheap compromise" to an art form.

Obviously Europe and Asia have a far greater history of culture which has led to our building primarily upon those traditions... and to a good extent, to that of Africa as well. The Australian art critic (ironically in connection with his view of the dominance of American culture) speaks of the "cultural cringe"... the feeling that one's native culture is crude and provincial in contrast to the culture of another cultural center.

This comment reminds me of Emerson's question as to whether it would be better to live in a nation lacking a great cultural history... but one that is in the ascendant (I believe he uses the early Roman Republic as an example) or a nation at its peak, which has a great history and culture... but is probably facing slow decline (here the late Roman Empire is the model). Emerson clearly leans toward the former... embracing the nobility and even heroism of defining a new nation. Myself... I would prefer the latter... but ultimately the choice of where and when we are born is not ours.

Having said this much... and noting that I am far from a champion of chauvinistic nationalism... indeed I will freely admit to being far more infatuated with the cultural history of Europe, the Middle-East, India, and Japan than I am with that of the United States... I will nevertheless state that I believe you underestimate America's cultural contributions. For a nation barely 200 years old, the US has produced any number of major literary figures. Walt Whitman, Edgar Allen Poe, and T.S. Eliot are certainly as influential as any foreign counterparts of the same period of time. To these three we might add Melville, Dickinson, Hawthorne, Ambrose Bierce, Ezra Pound, Robert Frost, Hart Crane, Henry James, William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, Nathaniel West, Ernest Hemingway, Cormac McCarthy, Philip Roth, Thomas Pynchon, Donald Barthleme, John Barth, and quite a few more as being among the leading writers of the last 100 years.

American contributions to music is even greater considering the innovations of jazz, blues, and rock-n-roll. Most popular music today... whether American, European, or even Asian... is deeply rooted in these American musical forms. While America has not produced a classical composer to rival Richard Strauss or Stravinsky (let alone Beethoven) they have been among the leaders in post-WWII music where we find composers such as Howard Hanson, Virgil Thompson, Samuel Barber, Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, Alan Hovhaness, Walter Piston, Morton Feldman, Morten Lauridsen, Erik Whitacre, George Rochberg, George Crumb, David Lang, Steve Reich, John Adams, Philip Glass, Peter Lieberson, Joseph Schwantner, John Cage, Harry Partch, and a great many more.

The same may be said of the visual arts. Among the most memorable images of the last century, a great many were created by American photographers. The US is certainly the leading producer of film and television... including more than a few directors that will surely survive among the great artists of the 20th century. In the field of the traditional visual arts, New York has ruled the art market since the 1940s when the Abstract Expressionists became the first America artists who were leading the Europeans. Since then most of the major art movements have begun in the US: Pop Art, Color Field Painting, Conceptualism, Minimalism, Pattern Painting, Neo-Expressionism, Neo-Geo, Photo-Realism, etc... This doesn't even touch upon architecture and the American innovations of Skyscrapers and superhighways.

Again... America has yet to produce a Goethe or Dante or Shakespeare or Picasso or Mozart... but for a nation that has only really come out of the the period of colonization and the construction of modern functioning cities, American culture is not as provincial and crude as you may imagine.

When I used that word "lovely" in my first sentence, I actually felt inhibited. (Yes, we have our inhibitions; we lack the English sexual license.)

Who is "we"? Seriously, in spite of the US history of Puritanism (inherited from Britain one might do well to remember) and certain highly vocal Puritans active in American politics, I've never thought of the British as more licentious than Americans. Now the French on the other hand...

I didn't know there was anyone in the world today who used the word lovely. That word isn't used where I live. Men, and even women, would feel more comfortable taking a gunshot wound to the head than using that word.

There's something in the language. People can't think too well without words, and so when the words are lost, the people revert to Neanderthals. They say it isn't possible to "devolve," but I wonder.

You've got Jane Austen. Sandpoint here is very proud to be the birthplace of Sarah Palin. Apparently, Sarah attended North Idaho College for a couple of semesters. The library of NIC is amazing in that it has practically new 8-year old history, literature and science books on its shelves. I mean, someone dusts them. But you can see that the books are never touched. If a book is 5 years old, it may have been checked out once or twice 5 years ago, and not since. And they get new books that are hardly touched... Our only culture is the NRA.

Where exactly are you living? I mean if you are frequenting biker bars, fly-fishing tournaments, gun shows or certain rural communities in Alabama and Mississippi you might feel that the culture as a whole were populated by Neanderthals out of Deliverance... but I would assume that one might find such communities... cut off from progress and evolution... everywhere in the world. Personally, I use the word "lovely" from time to time (sometimes even ironically!) and I have also been know to employ "marvelous", "sensuous"... and even "lush". But then again... I'm an artist... so I must be gay.

[Emil Miller]

Sorry to see that you missed Scott Fitzgerald from the writers StLukes, I hope he's included in the leading others referred to.
Now I am expecting delivery of a couple of tee shirts from New York: a present from an insistent friend. I asked her to send plain ones only, because I'm thinking of ironing on this transfer of an iconic symbol of American music, although obviously I didn't tell her that.