Just listening to Mozart's Piano Concerto no. 26 (and old favourite I used to play over and over) after a rough day. Could do with a glass of wine.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKUqUYDg-jo
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Just listening to Mozart's Piano Concerto no. 26 (and old favourite I used to play over and over) after a rough day. Could do with a glass of wine.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKUqUYDg-jo
Never mind Mozart, Neely, this would have blown his wig through the ceiling. It's all played with the left hand and is one of the greatest concerto's ever written. It's been haunting me for a couple of weeks and, unlike anything by Mozart, has even kept me awake at night. I've only managed to get it out of my head by repeatedly playing some things by Mendelssohn, Bach and Saint-Saens on the piano.Quote:
Originally Posted by Neely
http://youtu.be/2ENNXLb3pXI
Ravel is quite marvelous... one of the greatest orchestrators ever... and this concerto makes it clear just how far Ravel heads into the realm of Modernism. Having said that... I'd far and away take Mozart over him... to say nothing of Bach. I'm still digging through the Marie-Clare Alain box set of Bach's complete organ music and the Helmuth Rilling box set of the complete cantatas.
Great stuff. I've just clicked on the Ravel link. Hope my internet lasts to hear it (my internet is down, my internet is down.:eek::eek::eek::bawling:)
Your internet is down? Hell my computer has crashed. I've only been able to access the net through my laptop... but it looks like I'm going to need to pick up a new tower. :crash: Luckily I just backed up all my files last weekend on an external hard-drive. My anti-virus program is corrupt and wont function. The printer program is the same... as is Mozilla. The computer goes to blue screen a few minutes after being on. I suspect an over-heated CPU as I've had some problems with one of the fans for a while now. It will likely coast more to have the computer diagnosed and the problems fixed... even if it takes reloading everything through the recovery discs... and then having the fan replaced than it will to buy a new computer. I'd just go with a tablet and the laptop... except I have a huge crapload of images (art) and YouTube videos (classical music, etc...) saved and I also need to tower for connecting the printer, modem, back-up external hard-drive, wi-fi, speaker system, etc...
Jesus that sounds like a nightmare, sorry about that. Good job you backed everything up though. As you say it would work out cheaper to get another tower and it would probably be of a higher spec anyway, with the rate of technology improvements.
It's only my router that is broken as it is 7 year old. I banged it against the floor and unplugged it again and I've just managed to get a spark of life out of it, it's sure to go down again in a minute though I think. When it does I'm back in the cave.
I put up a recording of Poulenc's organ concerto not long ago and here's her recording of it with Jean Martinon conducting. I bought this recording on a French label years ago and, although it's not the best currently available, it's good to see it on YouTube. Truly terrifying at the beginning, there are some nods to Brahms and Tchaikovsky along the way to the fairground and its reflectively abrupt ending. You might be interested in the accompanying Bernard Buffet pictures.Quote:
Originally Posted by stlukesguild
http://youtu.be/GYomeaSZ4VA
I've been listening to Dialouge des Carmelites recently - that's really the only exposure I've had to Poulenc:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEGlkTxOuZ8
Poulenc was a major figure among the 1920s Parisian set of composers, who underwent a Damascene conversion following the death of one of his many male companions, leading to much of his work taking on a religious aspect. Les Biches, the piano and organ concertos are among the more secular oriented works, but I think it's true to say that many of his compositions appear to have been relegated to the unplayed.Quote:
Originally Posted by Charles Darnay
After the "Austro-Germanic Hegemony" and the Italians, the French are next in line among my favorite musical traditions. I'm especially fond of late 19th/early 20th century French music. Poulenc most certainly is not been overly ignored from what I have seen. Among my own recordings, I could count:
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http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/...RL._SY300_.jpg
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There are perhaps a few more if I were to check the shelves.
Well yes he has been well recorded but, apart from the occasional performance of the Les Biches ballet, his other works do not seem to feature as regular fare except perhaps among a narrow band of enthusiasts. His name is rarely mentioned on the BBC music channel whereas his contemporaries, Satie and Ravel are more prominently featured. Its interesting that of the group known as Les Six, it's Georges Auric who had the widest public exposure through his numerous film scores for French, British and American films, notwithstanding his more serious work which has been overshadowed by music such a this from the film Moulin Rouge:
http://youtu.be/WEVNbeNJ0rM
Satie is almost overrated. He seems to be a favorite of new-to-classical-music fanboys who want to appear hip. There is a marvelous recording of the ballets,
L'Éventail de Jeanne and Les Mariés de la Tour Eiffel which were composed collectively by Les Six and others. The work can be fun... witty... and oh so French.
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/...WL._SY300_.jpg
Poulenc is certainly the best of Les Six... although honestly I need to listen more to Honeger. The others... even Milhaud... are minor at best. Some other composers of the era that I quite enjoy include Gabriel Pierne and Jacques Ibert. Ibert's music can be so audaciously irreverent... and so atmospheric and sensuous that I quite wish he had composed more. For some reason... a rejection of Wagnerian/Straussian/Germanic bombast and epic scale?... so many of the French composers of this era worked as miniaturists. In some ways this is even true of Stravinsky whose essential oeuvre seems rather puny in contrast to Richard Strauss, Shostakovitch, Prokofiev, etc... I guess this is preferable to Philip Glass who could surely use the aid of a good editor or two.
This weekend, the HBO featured movie was "Moonrise Kingdom," quite an endearing film, but one of the most striking thngs about it was the soundtrack-- almost exclusively culled from the works of Benjamin Britten (and Hank Williams, Sr.) Not to diminish the excellence of Mr. Williams, the British composer's music was absolutely gorgeous, as well as accessible to a Yahoo such as yours fooly.
Hank Williams and Benjamin Britten? That sounds like a playlist I would chose for a day painting. Followed by Thelonius Monk, Donizetti, Muddy Waters, and J.S. Bach (Always J.S. Bach!)
When we draw up lists of favorite (or most important) composers, the nationality of each choice almost always comes from a country on the European continent: Germany, Russia,Austria, Italy, France, with a few from Hungary and Scandinavia. We don't think of British composers, at least not immediately. BUT--Quote:
Originally Posted by stlukesguild
along with Mr. Britten:
Henry Purcell (1659-95)--Dido and Aeneas
George Frederic Handel (1685-1759) Originally from Germany before making Britain his home
Edward Elgar (1857-1934) Maybe "Pomp and Circumstance" --played ubiquitously this season of the year--ultimately did him a disservice in that his significant compositions aren't appreciated enough. His Cello Concerto is one of the most beautiful pieces in "modern" music, and Enigma Variations was far ahead of its time.
Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)
Gustav Holst (1874-1934)-- "The Planets"
Sir Michael Tippett (1905-1998) Variation on a Theme by Thomas Tallis
(I just discovered that Samuel Barber was an American, but I was under the impression that Samuel Barber was British, perhaps because "Adagio for Strings" was played at Princess Di's funeral. The piece has been called "the saddest music of all time," but its poignance is undeniably beautiful.)
I thought that Frank Bridge was an American until I discovered that he was Britten's teacher. The 'saddest music of all time' is obviously a subjective choice but as far as the English are concerned, this is the piece that breaks their hearts.Quote:
Originally Posted by AuntShecky
http://youtu.be/X8fn2R6Hx30
Mozart's No. 20 piano concerto.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h71c4u_95P8
I'm in the mood for Mozart this week, which usually means the piano concertos. I think I'll listen to them all and drink lots of champagne and wine (and ale of course) sounds a good week to me don't you think?
I've been exploring of rediscovering a lot of Mozart's works that I have yet to explore in great depth. Today it was the Haffner Serenade and the Serenata Notturno. But right now... its something with a bit more muscle: Beethoven's 3rd and 8th by George Szell.:smash:
Champagne is also a wine but I have been reliably informed that it is best served to young blonde females, unlike ale of course that's still the preserve of the male, but if champagne and Mozart are your thing then go with it man.Quote:
Originally Posted by Neely
Unfortunately I am currently engaged in a war of attrition with my waistline, which means a sharply restricted alcohol intake, and as it takes more than Mozart to cheer me up under such circumstances, I shall be listening to other great classics throughout the weekend such as:
http://youtu.be/I4My1jlhTVE
That's certainly different to Mozart!Quote:
Originally Posted by Emil Miller
Well I'm 95% an ale man as you know, but occasionally I like a bit of red wine or bottle of fizz...unfortunately there were no young blonds present. I have been pushing it a little of late with the food and drink but I seem to have got away with it around the waist for now.
My background accompaniment for today is Respighi: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMeXzqTfNcY
I think Pines of Rome has a such a simple pleasure to them.
The Pines of Rome is such a fantastic title, so good that the music just can't live up to it.
Listening to Mozart piano concerto no.22 tonight.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6ot4c8HVSA
It was Mozart for me this evening as well... the Requiem to be exact. Perhaps it was appropriate... our old dog that has slept in the bed with us since she was a pup started having seizures this week. We were sure we'd be forced to have her put to sleep today... but the vet assured us that she was quite healthy for her age and that such seizures were not uncommon... and controllable with a regimen or anti-seizure medication. Thus the inevitable is delayed... and we spent the evening with steaks cooked over the grill and accompanied by Young's Double Chocolate... and the dog begging for table scraps. Much better than spending the day digging a grave in the back-yard and dealing with the fact that the wife would have been an absolute mess.
Perhaps the Requiem was the wrong choice after all. But what music would be appropriate for having cheated death? Gounod's Faust?
Or Rake's Progress...Quote:
Originally Posted by stlukesguild
I actually spent yesterday evening listening to Gounod's Faust... a highly enjoyable opera... regardless of how profound (or not). The opera is quite different from most that I know (outside of the Russians) in that the male voice and choruses dominate... and most of the male voices are baritone or bass-baritone.
Glad your dog is well, I didn't know you had a pet. Funny the books I am very slowly reading, All Creatures Great and Small and follow ups, contained a similar story about a dog they thought would have to be put down because of seizures but it turned out was fine after a simple course of treatment.
It's enjoyable--I especially love the version with Sutherland playing Marguerite; God what a voice she had in her prime!--but I've never really thought that it was nearly as great as its reputation suggests.Quote:
Originally Posted by stlukesguild
I listened to the version with Cluytens conducting and Victoria de los Angeles as Marguerita. I've never been overly fond of Sutherland. I'm far more enamored of Callas (and it seems one loves one or the other).
Right now I'm listening to a singer I would place well above Sutherland:
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/...500_AA280_.jpg
Sutherland, of course, had a far greater range... her instrument was unrivaled... but I'm not overly impressed with what she does with it. Wunderlich was perhaps the most natural and lyrical tenor. One never senses that he is straining at all. It is a real tragedy that he died so young... and under such freak circumstances.
Returning to Sutherland... not long ago a discussion of Netrebko and Alagna in Manon came up on an opera site I frequent. It was pointed out that today there is a greater expectation that the singers be physically suited to their roles. After watching this...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fyytF2xsio
the question was raised... "Could we actually accept Sutherland and Pavarotti rolling about the bed together in this scene? Sutherland as a woman able to seduce a man on first sight?"
I'm just picking on random numbers of Mozart piano concertos! Tonight's lot 15 and 16.
I love the piano concerto, it is probably my favourite type of classic piece, probably my favourite form of music. With this is in mind it is somewhat puzzling that I have never sat down and listened to the whole lot of them (Mozart's) something that must be corrected. Instead I have stuck to a few and played them repeatedly. I'm going to do a little reading on the concertos, though as I remember it is the later ones that are considered the best is it not? These are the ones I've usually stuck with, but I want to play and listen to them all quite a lot.
OK, I've gone through the 15/16 and into the later works, 24, 25 and 26, though I must go to bed soon!
The school year is rapidly running down. I have 5 more days with children... and they are all absolutely insane. Thus when I come home I need something to put me in a better frame of mind. Neely's been going with Mozart... a descent choice... but I prefer this:
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/...gL._SX300_.jpg
The concept of putting children in a big oven holds a strange attraction at the moment. :devil:
Ha, ha. Yes I'm currently on my week's break from the madness. Getting up when you want. Eating breakfast. Reading. Listening to music. Biking. Tennis. Lazing around. Drinking beer etc, etc, it's what it's all about.
One can only cheat death for so long. Our little dog of 16 years passed away suddenly this morning.
http://i1245.photobucket.com/albums/...ps42a8fd11.jpg
Appropriate listening includes:
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http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/...500_AA280_.jpg
My condolences. If you happen to own this book (http://www.worldcat.org/title/norton...s/oclc/3498426), Vicki Hearne's essay "Oyez a Beaumont" is one of the best essays about the death of dogs. It's from her excellent book "Animal Happiness". Here's an excerpt:
Quote:
in T.H. White's "the Sword in the Stone, the great hound named Beaumont is on the ground, his back broken by the boar, and the expert, the master of the hounds, William Twyti, has been hurt also. Twyit limps over to Beaumont and utters the eternal litany: "Hark to Beaumont. softly, Beaumont, mon amy. Oyez a Beaumont the valiant, sleep now, old friend Beaumont, good old dog," while the huntsman kills the dog for him: "Then Robin's falchion let Beaumont out of this world, to run free with Orion and to roll among the stars.".... Master Twyti seems to have had courage, for he rsoe from besides Beaumont's wounds and "whipped the hounds off the corpse of the boar as he was accustomed to do. He put his horn to his lips and blew four notes of the Mort without a quaver.... But Master William Twyti startled The Wart, for he seemed to be crying," and this book, "The Sword in the Stone" is about the education of great hounds and of a great king, King Arthur in fact. Immortal Beamont, Douce, swef, swef. And immortal Arthur -- douce, douce, hearken to Arthur, they would say in time about rex quondom rexque futurus, the once and future king. Which is to say, this is all of it about the education of a hound and a boy.
Yes that is sad and sorry about that for your and your missus' sake. Must be a big loss. It is scarily true though that we all can only ever cheat death for so long, which is only a very short time.
Yep, some more of the same, right now the no. 20. Plucked at random, but I intend to go through them all this week.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiHKJeoXdNM
This one is a good one, I've listened to this one many times before. Very good.
Interesting, reading a little yesterday about them and it appears that Mozart's attitude to some of the early concertos was less than complimentary...as I remembered vaguely.
I have always like the concertos, especially Mozart's, though Bach's are on top too of course, for the simple reason and feel of the delicious little piano trills set against the background of the orchestra. I believe that the symphonies are rated higher, generally, but for me the simple, or not so simple - I don't know I'm not musical, pleasures of the piano and orchestra duel is just very satisfying. I love the concerto form and for me the piano is the best, and the violin just behind. This is just a personal flavour anyway.
When this one has finished I'm going to go right back and play it again. And in the meantime I intend to fill up my glass a few more times!
Well... after a day of Requiems and other such music in memoriam I am now recognizing the 100th anniversary of one of the most earth-shattering musical debuts:
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWotpIy0uTg
Even at 100 yewars old, this ought to knock ol' Emil/Brian out of his easy chair.
“It’s terrifying!” whispered Claude Debussy, apparently with a “sad, anxious” expression on his face. “I don’t understand it!”
Debussy was not alone in his utter lack of comprehension that unseasonably balmy Paris night of 29 May, 1913. Over in another box, in the ravishing art-nouveau auditorium at the city’s glitzy new Théâtre-des-Champs-Élysées, the composer Camille Saint-Saëns heard merely a few bars of the strange opening woodwind solo before hissing to his neighbour: “If that’s a bassoon – I’m a baboon!”
Others would not be so polite: the frenzied riots that kicked off at the premiere of The Rite of Spring have become legend. The capacity audience that evening ran the gamut from bejewelled, high-society Parisian ladies and their white-tie-wearing gentlemen to a gaggle of more bohemian critics and poets, whom Sergei Diaghilev had allowed in for free. Jean Cocteau described the crowd as exhibiting “the thousand varieties of snobbism, super-snobbism, anti-snobbism.”
Perhaps they came spoiling for a fight. The succès de scandale was, after all, a well-established element of cultural life at the turn of the last century, especially in Paris. Pieces by Wagner, Schoenberg and others customarily provoked riots, as did Wilde’s play Salomé and its 1906 operatic treatment by Richard Strauss. The Impressionist painters so relished their rejection by the establishment they triumphantly created the Salons des Refusés.
And just think of the scandalised reaction to Picasso’s radical 1906-7 work Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, which smashed pretty much every received idea about the representation of three dimensions onto a flat canvas, paving the way not only for Cubism but to the possibility of total abstraction in art.
This was an era in which to be a truly avant garde artist was to push audiences to the very limits of what they could understand or accept – and far beyond. An era in which certain works of art, music and literature shattered everything that had gone before; after which it was genuinely possible to say ‘nothing would ever be the same again’.
Assault on the senses
Nevertheless, the riots at the premiere of The Rite of Spring were of a different order. For the past four years Paris had been captivated by Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, and had perhaps come to expect dance of astonishing, radical sensuality. But not this assault! The new ballet, intended to depict the pre-historic spring rites of ancient Russia and the great sacrifice of a Slavonic tribe, had been created by a trio of visionaries. They were Igor Stravinsky, whose previous ballets The Firebird and Petrushka had already seen him acclaimed as the greatest young composer of the twentieth-century; Nicholas Roerich, an eminent student of pre-historical pagan Russia, whom Stravinsky praised in an interview as “the creator of the decorative atmosphere for this work of faith”; and – of course – Vaslav Nijinsky, the breathtaking 24-year-old dancer and choreographer.
According to the historian Lucy Moore, whose superb biography of Nijinsky has just been published, even Nijinsky was nervous before the curtain rose, knowing that his dancers were baffled and frustrated by the “shuffling steps, flat-footed jumps, clenched hands, hunched shoulders, unsynchronized and deliberately primitive choreography” he had dreamed up for them. Additionally, thanks to Roerich’s designs, they had to dance in unwieldy costumes, false beards and pointed, fur-trimmed caps for the men and headbands and long, fake plaits for the women.
Moore describes how Nijinsky, sweating in the wings before that alarmingly exposed bassoon solo began, knew that his long-robed dancers were probably wondering: “what is ballet for, if beauty and grace are removed?”
Meanwhile, “so interconnected were the choreography and the composition,” Moore reminds us, “that Stravinsky noted the rhythm of their steps on his piano score.” And what is music like this, crunchy with dissonance and twisted, sadistic harmonies for?
The chosen one
One early listener described it as: “As irritating to the nervous system as the continuous thudding of a savage’s tom-tom!” Stravinsky later claimed that, rather like the ‘chosen one’ who dances herself to death in the ballet’s climactic Sacrificial Dance, he’d had to enter into a sort of creative trance to write The Rite of Spring. "Very little immediate tradition lies behind [it] – and no theory,” he remarked. “I had only my ear to help me; I heard and I wrote what I heard. I am the vessel through which The Rite passed."
A vessel he may well have been; but others heard, and, in their own way, wrote what they heard: like Picasso’s painting, the Rite of Spring irrevocably altered the course of 20th century music. From Carter to Boulez, Adams to Adès, nothing was ever the same again; listening today, the score is as revolutionary and thrilling as ever.
One hundred years after the notorious premiere of The Rite of Spring, the suspicion remains that the hysterical reaction from the crowd may have been one big publicity stunt orchestrated by the ever-canny Diaghilev. Why, after all, did Gabriel Astruc, the theatrical impresario behind the Théâtre-des-Champs-Élysées, have to lean out of his box, fists clenched, and scream at the rowdy audience: “First listen! Then hiss!”?
We’ll never know the truth. But perhaps it is immaterial. Contemporary observers, Moore argues, felt the music and choreography of The Rite of Spring could be “interpreted as a sign that the end of civilisation was at hand.” A few weeks ago, I found myself in the auditorium at Théâtre-des-Champs-Élysées – which is still, as Astruc intended a century ago, a temple vibrating to the vitality of art and imagination, curiosity and creativity. And it struck me that even now, in Paris, May 2013, no other work over the past 100 years has yet come close to the impact or influence of The Rite of Spring. A whole new generation of composers, designers, dancers and choreographers are still seeking bold and beautiful creative answers to the aesthetic and musical questions it raised. If that’s the end of civilization, then I’m a baboon.
Never known what to think of the Rite of Spring. The first time I heard it I though 'what?'. Now when I hear it, I think, 'what?'.
I have spent the last three days doing nothing but sitting on the (new) sofa doing chess stuff and then at night listening to Mozart, drinking beer and doing some more chess stuff. Tomorrow I'm getting off my arse, going swimming and maybe walking, but I'll come back to my chess stuff etc, etc.
On tonight's playlist is the 21st.
I first came upon The Rite on a cassette recording that included Carmina Burana on the B-side. I was really too ignorant of classical music at that time to recognize just how audacious the work really was. And after all... I was already listening to the Rolling Stones and Miles Davis' Bi tches Brew as well as Thelonius Monk and Charles Mingus at the time. The Rite remains one of the few pieces by Stravinsky that I truly love. Most of his work I admire... but don't really love. Now for someone who left me thinking WTF?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezOI3sPqWPU
I agree with Neely's dislike for The Rite of Spring, which I make passing reference to in A Tangled Web. My initial and remaining attitude to it is that it's all very clever but is it music? It is long ago since I first heard it but it still raises an indulgent smile.
Now, setting Stravinsky aside, when it comes to piano concertos, this is what I was listening to when StLukes was playing the Rolling Stones ( God help us ). Written by another iconoclastic composer it's given a stunning performance here by Martha Argerich and, although it's not played nowadays as often as his second and third concertos, it's still a favourite of mine.
http://youtu.be/JqCwQ9clHec
Time to raise the stakes in this desperate hour.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnRIU4u7B9o
Back to work on Monday. The misery is already upon me, though I am being brave, a bit like Jesus at the last supper...stoically accepting his fate, as he clasps his wine filled goblet with white knuckles...ha, ha.
And here's some classic Woody Allen on the theme for Emil:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQCNZfdTezo
I love the bit a 2.28 where she goes off track - see this the funny Allen stuff Emil refuses to watch, ha, ha.