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Post by jk on Sept 18, 2022 14:48:09 GMT -5
"There are no coincidences", to quote my late pen pal. Driving away from the UK churchyard where my parents' ashes are buried, and still with a view of the church from the car window, the radio just happened to play Mozart's Clarinet Concerto in A Major (K. 622). Now this work was one of my mother's favourite pieces (she was a big Mozart fan) and we even saw to it that the "Adagio" was played on the organ at her funeral. The complete version we heard last week in the car was performed by Julian Bliss (clarinet) with the Royal Northern Sinfonia conducted by Mario Venzago. From it, this is that "Adagio": en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarinet_Concerto_(Mozart)
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Post by jk on Sept 24, 2022 16:22:07 GMT -5
I've been intrigued by Celia Garcia-Garcia ever since I first came across her name. Yesterday this Spanish pianist released an entire album, arguably the first ever, played on the celesta (see link below). Its opening track is Debussy's piano piece "Clair de Lune". Generally played to death, the arrangement for celesta gives it a sparkling new lease of life: trptk.com/shop/downloads/celestial-blue/
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Post by jk on Oct 7, 2022 14:14:20 GMT -5
Inspired by the comparison with Dennis and as an antidote to that embarrassingly uninformed remark by Mr Shapiro, let’s have some Wagner. But first, a well-balanced comment on that remark by Tony Rowat: "Very interesting post-Stanley, except Wagner died before Hitler was born, hence Wagner was never a Nazi, the Nazi party having been started in 1920, Wagner having died in 1883. However, Wagner was an anti-Semite who wrote several articles on the subject. The question remains: is there anything anti-Semitic in Wagner’s music? I believe the answer is no: music cannot be anti-Semitic, and Wagner's opera librettos never discuss the topic. Because his music is grand, the Nazis high-jacked it for their own purposes. Nietzsche broke with Wagner on account of the latter's anti-Semitism, but not because of his music: Nietzsche was a huge fan of Wagner's music. A lot of artists have odious beliefs but unless their art represents those beliefs, I think we must separate the artist from their social/political beliefs. I have often thought that Dennis was Wagner to Brian's Bach." This is the great Herbert van Karajan with the Berlin Philharmonic, which under his charge rose to unparalleled heights of musicianship, performing the thrilling overture to Wagner's opera Tannhäuser, which premiered in 1845: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Wagner
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Post by jk on Oct 10, 2022 9:24:04 GMT -5
More Wagner. Back at the grammar school we had this collection of classical LPs, which one could borrow for a week, one at a time. It's how I first became acquainted with Orff's magical Carmina Burana and Mahler's Fourth Symphony. Another record I recall borrowing was of overtures by Wagner conducted by one Hans Knappertsbusch, a name my Beatles-besotted classmates found amusing. Poking around Discogs, I found an LP that looked like it might have been the one. From it, this is the gripping overture from Wagner's opera Der fliegende Holländer: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Knappertsbuschen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_fliegende_Holländer
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Post by jk on Oct 19, 2022 3:37:27 GMT -5
Listening to the radio last Friday, I was mildly astonished and indeed delighted to hear the "Finale" of Tchaikovsky's ballet The Nutcracker conducted by Valery Gergiev -- "in better times", as the show's presenter put it. Gergiev as you may know is close to Putin, and hasn't condemned (or is simply not in a position to condemn) Putin's "special operation" (but see link below). This has meant the end of his career outside Russia, with previous bookings (and complete seasons) cancelled everywhere. Of course, this shouldn't mean that his renditions from before that time should be banned. So the bold presenter in question, about whom I've always harboured doubts as their knowledge of "classical" music, has shot up in my estimation and now can do no wrong in my eyes. This was probably the first time any performance by Gergiev had been heard on Dutch classical radio since the invasion. Here is the piece they played: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valery_Gergiev
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Post by jk on Nov 22, 2022 15:59:48 GMT -5
A good friend of mine, a film buff, has been searching high and low for one particular movie produced in France just after WWII -- so far without success. There's enough information to be found about it but no actual footage. I've been doing some poking around myself and yesterday discovered to my surprise that the composer of the OST was Daniel Lesur, a big name in French modern music from the 1930s to the 1990s. This is his Cantique des Colonnes pour ensemble vocal féminin et deux harpes, a hypnotic work created between 1954 and 1957. The YouTube blurb adds the following slab of information: "Interprètes: Jean Paul Kreder; Orchestre National de l'ORTF; Antonio de Almeida; Maîtrise de l'ORTF; Choeurs de l'ORTF. Date: 20/12/1971." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Lesur
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Post by jk on Nov 23, 2022 16:53:11 GMT -5
Poking around the net in an effort to find out more about the fascinating piece linked in the previous post, I noticed Jean Françaix was another to set Paul Valéry's poem. "Cantique des colonnes" is the second of his Trois poèmes de Paul Valéry (1982). It is performed here by the Netherlands Chamber Choir, conducted by Ed Spanjaard, whom I had the honour of meeting years ago. I've lined up the poem and its translation, throwing all finesses out of the window in the process. The verses in italics are omitted in Françaix's setting (the errant forward slash was a slip of the keyboard): "Paul Valéry (1871–1945) was a friend and in his youth a disciple of Mallarmé, whose exalted view of poetry and the poet he shared. The 'Cantique des colonnes', first published in 1919 and collected in Charmes (1922), uses architecture as a symbol of poetic artifice, while the poem's shape on the page pictures the classical columns." Translated by Claire Nicolas White [ Source]
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Post by jk on Nov 24, 2022 5:31:07 GMT -5
Getting back to the Daniel Lesur piece two posts ago, works for female choir and instruments can have something other-worldly about them (another is Holst's series of choral hymns from the Rig Veda (see here). And then there's Messiaen's Trois petites liturgies de la présence divine (1944). This is music from another planet. The female voices generally sing in unison, which only adds to the rarefied atmosphere; two exceptions in this first movement are at 3:28 and 10:10 respectively (interestingly, Lesur is listed as having attended the tumultuous premiere): en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trois_petites_liturgies_de_la_pr%C3%A9sence_divine
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Post by jk on Jan 9, 2023 7:28:34 GMT -5
It's that day again... January 9th 1905 is the fateful day in Russian history when soldiers of the Imperial Guard fired upon unarmed demonstrators marching on the Winter Palace in St Petersburg, killing several hundred of them. Shostakovich commemorates it in the second movement of his Eleventh Symphony (1957), although it is more likely a depiction of the then recent crushing of the Hungarian Revolution by Soviet troops. This is the complete symphony performed by the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra under Shostakovich's favourite conductor Yevgeny Mravinsky. This must be the recording made in 1959, on 2 November it would seem (not 1967, as stated by the uploader). Important note: Play at a reasonable volume -- much of the first movement is very quiet and, more importantly, you may otherwise miss the deathly hush (here at 30:04) in the second movement. I. The Palace Square II. The 9th of January (starts 15:33) III. Eternal Memory (starts 34:01) IV. Tocsin (Alarm) (starts 45:48) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._11_(Shostakovich)
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Post by jk on Jan 17, 2023 13:09:49 GMT -5
To follow up my "rant" ( here) about dialogue rather than closing the door during the current "conflict" (there were those in NL and no doubt elsewhere who though all Russian music should be replaced in concert programmes), this is from the first album I purchased back in the early '90s of music conducted by maestro Valery Gergiev. I've always loved the orchestral works of Alexander Borodin and Gergiev is a superb interpreter of his music. From Borodin's Symphony No. 1 in E Flat, this is the sublime "Andante": en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Borodin
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Post by jk on May 12, 2023 5:34:45 GMT -5
The name Joey Roukens (born 1982) is one that crops up from time to time in the Dutch media. His Night Flight (2021) is played here by the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Bertie Baigent. Described by Roukens as a "fast, grotesque nightly carnival ride", it is to double as the third movement (scherzo) of a forthcoming symphony in four movements written for the same orchestra. As a stand-alone piece, it was premiered during the International Conducting Competition Rotterdam 2022 as the compulsory work for the conductor finalists. Baigent was one of them and won the competition's first prize: donemus.nl/composer/joey-roukens/
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Post by jk on Jun 14, 2023 2:19:18 GMT -5
Those of you who are familiar with the "Liebestod" from Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde (premiered 1865)… ...will find it hard to suppress a smile on hearing the wonderfully respectful salon version by Clément Doucet, played here by Doucet in a piano duet with Jean Wiéner in 1927: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cl%C3%A9ment_Doucet
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Post by jk on Sept 12, 2023 13:47:23 GMT -5
Just as Gustav Holst for most people means The Planets, so Sam Barber, as JH calls him, is generally known for one work and one work only, the Adagio for Strings. The luminous Knoxville: Summer of 1915 (Op. 24) was composed eleven years later at the behest of the soprano Eleanor Steber. Barber sets approximately a third of the poem of that name by James Agee. The libretto is as follows: "It has become that time of evening when people sit on their porches, rocking gently and talking gently and watching the street and the standing up into their sphere of possession of the trees, of birds’ hung havens, hangars. People go by; things go by. A horse, drawing a buggy, braking his hollow iron music on the asphalt: a loud auto: a quiet auto: people in pairs, not in a hurry, scuffling, switching their weight of aestival body, talking casually, the taste hovering over them of vanilla, strawberry, pasteboard, and starched milk, the image upon them of lovers and horsemen, squared with clowns in hueless amber.
"A streetcar raising its iron moan; stopping; belling and starting, stertorous; rousing and raising again its iron increasing moan and swimming its gold windows and straw seats on past and past and past, the bleak spark crackling and cursing above it like a small malignant spirit set to dog its tracks; the iron whine rises on rising speed; still risen, faints; halts; the faint stinging bell; rises again, still fainter; fainting, lifting, lifts, faints foregone: forgotten. Now is the night one blue dew. Now is the night one blue dew, my father has drained, he has coiled the hose.
"Low on the length of lawns, a frailing of fire who breathes...
"Parents on porches: rock and rock. From damp strings morning glories hang their ancient faces. The dry and exalted noise of the locusts from all the air at once enchants my eardrums.
"On the rough wet grass of the back yard my father and mother have spread quilts. We all lie there, my mother, my father, my uncle, my aunt, and I too am lying there.... They are not talking much, and the talk is quiet, of nothing in particular, of nothing at all particular, of nothing at all. The stars are wide and alive, they seem each like a smile of great sweetness, and they seem very near. All my people are larger bodies than mine... with voices gentle and meaningless like the voices of sleeping birds. One is an artist, he is living at home. One is a musician, she is living at home. One is my mother who is good to me. One is my father who is good to me.
"By some chance, here they are, all on this earth; and who shall ever tell the sorrow of being on this earth, lying, on quilts, on grass, in a summer evening, among the sounds of the night. May God bless my people, my uncle, my aunt, my mother, my good father, oh, remember them kindly in their time of trouble; and in the hour of their taking away.
"After a little I am taken in and put to bed. Sleep, soft smiling, draws me unto her: and those receive me, who quietly treat me, as one familiar and well-beloved in that home: but will not, oh, will not, not now, not ever; but will not ever tell me who I am."en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_BarberAccording to the work's wiki, the poem is "a simple, dreamlike depiction of an evening in the American South, narrated by a child who seems, at times, to transform into an adult. It is difficult to tell at times the identity of the speaker, enhancing the dreamlike quality of the work". This new version by Julia Bullock, accompanied by the Philharmonia Orchestra under Christian Reif, will be awarded an Edison (the Dutch equivalent of a Grammy) in the classical solo vocal section on 9 October. This is for JH:
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Post by jk on Oct 7, 2023 17:34:09 GMT -5
Being a dreadful musical snob, I usually disapprove of arrangements of pieces for instruments (or voices) for which they were not written (inless they were made by the composer). But there are exceptions. This afternoon I heard a stunning version of Debussy's piano piece "Clair de lune" played on the organ. Much later, I discovered the performer was Anna Lapwood. Here she is playing it live, as an ad for her new album Luna. This is fabulous, but the album version, the one that I heard, is sonically even better. I'll link it if it ever turns up on YouTube.
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Post by jk on Nov 18, 2023 6:07:11 GMT -5
If ever proof were needed that there are only so many permutations available for creating diatonic melodies, it's here. In Zoltán Kodály's rhapsodic Hungarian Rondo (1917) you can hear snatches of “Love Me Tender" and "Moon River"! Based on an old Hungarian soldiers' tune, the work is scored for 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons and strings: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zolt%C3%A1n_Kod%C3%A1ly
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Post by jk on Dec 26, 2023 5:24:28 GMT -5
I'll bump this in lieu of anything else right now at this busy time of year. I heard "The Shepherds' Farewell" again this morning and marvelled (again) at the magical progression referred to below: This was one of my last posts at PSF, maybe the very last. The harmonic progression beginning about 51 seconds in (and a couple of times later) is one of the most magical in all music. This was one of my first posts here: The only great composer to my knowledge who couldn't play the piano was the Frenchman Hector Berlioz--and goodness me it shows. This is from Berlioz's Mémoires (in translation--not by me, I should add): "I had mastered three majestic, incomparable instruments, the flageolet, the flute and the guitar. Who could fail to recognise in this judicious choice the impulse of nature which was driving me towards the most immense orchestral effects and music on the scale of Michelangelo! The flute, the guitar and the flageolet!… I have never had any other skills as an instrumentalist, though these seem to me respectable enough as it is. But I am not being fair to myself: I could also play the drum. "My father was against letting me start studying the piano, otherwise I would probably have become a formidable pianist, like countless others. He had absolutely no intention of making an artist of me, and was probably worried that the piano might establish too strong a hold on me and lead me deeper into music than he wished. "I have often regretted not being able to play the piano; this skill could be of great use to me in many circumstances. But when I think of the frightening number of trivia that are produced with such ease day-in day-out – disgraceful compositions that would be beyond the reach of their authors if they had to rely on pen and paper and were deprived of their musical kaleidoscope – I have to thank my lucky stars for having been obliged to learn to compose in silence and with complete freedom. This has preserved me from the tyranny of fingering patterns, which are so damaging for creative composition, and from the seduction of commonplaces to which composers are exposed most of the time." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mémoires_(Berlioz)
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Post by jk on Jan 6, 2024 5:23:18 GMT -5
January 6th is the Christian feast day of Epiphany, what the Dutch call Driekoningen ("three kings"), part of which commemorates the visit of the Magi to the manger in Bethlehem. In the eighth of the nine meditations for organ that comprise Olivier Messiaen's La Nativité du Seigneur, according to the liner notes of my LP (recorded by Simon Preston in Westminster Abbey in 1965) we hear "the plodding modesty and deference of 'Les Mages' as, tired after following the star (so audibly presented in the pedal melody) they shyly present their gifts to Our Lord". en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Nativit%C3%A9_du_Seigneur
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Post by jk on Jan 9, 2024 6:42:43 GMT -5
It's that day again... January 9th 1905 is the fateful day in Russian history when soldiers of the Imperial Guard fired upon unarmed demonstrators marching on the Winter Palace in St Petersburg, killing several hundred of them. Shostakovich commemorates it in the second movement of his Eleventh Symphony (1957), although it is more likely a depiction of the then recent crushing of the Hungarian Revolution by Soviet troops. This is the complete symphony performed by the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra under Shostakovich's favourite conductor Yevgeny Mravinsky. This must be the recording made in 1959, on 2 November it would seem (not 1967, as stated by the uploader). Important note: Play at a reasonable volume -- much of the first movement is very quiet and, more importantly, you may otherwise miss the deathly hush (here at 30:04) in the second movement. I. The Palace Square II. The 9th of January (starts 15:33) III. Eternal Memory (starts 34:01) IV. Tocsin (Alarm) (starts 45:48) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._11_(Shostakovich)
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Post by jk on Jan 10, 2024 15:49:20 GMT -5
I heard this remarkable work mere hours ago and was at a loss to even hazard a guess as to its composer. I should have known it was Percy Grainger, one of 20th-century "classical" music's true originals. Shallow Brown literally stopped me in my tracks. As for the extraordinarily lush instrumentation, a Hyperion recording lists "Harmonium, four guitars, two mandolas, two mandolins, two ukuleles, piccolo, three clarinets, bass clarinet, bassoon, contrabassoon, two alto saxophones, horn, strings, piano, baritone and choir: and that's just the scoring for one piece, the famous sea shanty Shallow Brown." This may well approximate the forces employed for the rendition I heard this evening, sung by the baritone Stephen Varcoe and the Joyful Company of Singers (chorus master Peter Broadbent) with the City of London Sinfonia conducted by Richard Hickox: gavinbryars.com/work_writing/percy-grainger-shallow-brown/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percy_Grainger
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daytona
Grommet
I’d like to help you son but you’re too young to vote
Posts: 39
Likes: 30
Favorite Album: Love You/Per Sounds
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Post by daytona on Jan 10, 2024 16:15:59 GMT -5
Relevant to the title, The Firebird is featured on Wikipedia today.
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Post by jk on Jan 12, 2024 16:54:34 GMT -5
This next piece is for JH. It's the second movement, "Andante con variazioni", of Hummel's Mandolin Concerto in G Major, S. 28*, performed by Avi Avital accompanied by Il Giardino Armonico under Giovanni Antonini (the version I heard this afternoon): en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Nepomuk_Hummel* S. (rather than Op.) denotes the catalogue compiled by Joel Sachs of compositions not published during Hummel's lifetime
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Post by jk on Feb 1, 2024 13:34:15 GMT -5
There is something intriguingly modern about this third movement of Edvard Grieg’s Symphonic Dances, written at the tail end of the 19th century. If you told me it was a piece by Prokofiev I wouldn't argue with you! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edvard_Grieg
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Post by jk on Feb 11, 2024 7:17:13 GMT -5
This next composer's name has alway intrigued me. Looking through the classical albums to find my weekly purchase in the mid '60s, I repeatedly came across * this LP*, which included a work by one Gunther Schuller called Seven Studies on Themes of Paul Klee (an artist I had recently discovered). Written in 1959, its score is inscribed "For Antal Doráti", who conducted that first recording. It turned out the multi-faceted Schuller was also an author. Many years later, I recall reading The Compleat Conductor (Oxford University Press, 1998), a fascinating account in which "he castigates many of [the 20th] century's most venerated conductors for using the podium to indulge their own interpre[ta]tive idiosyncrasies rather than devote themselves to reproducing the composer's stated and often painstakingly detailed intentions." [ Source] A conductor himself, Schuller went on to record his Seven Studies with the Radio Philharmonic of Hannover in 1998. Its seven movements are entitled "Antique Harmonies", "Abstract Trio", "Little Blue Devil", "The Twittering-Machine", "Arab Village", "An Eerie Moment" and "Pastorale": en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunther_Schuller
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Post by jk on Mar 12, 2024 7:22:16 GMT -5
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Post by jk on Mar 16, 2024 9:11:53 GMT -5
It might be fun to draw up a list of psychedelic "classical" pieces composed before the word ever became connected with music. The first example would arguably be Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique. Others in my list would be Scriabin's Poem of Ecstasy and Prometheus, and Messiaen's Turangalîla-Symphonie. Another work that can be added to this list is Charles Ives' extraordinary Symphony No. 4. This is the fourth and final movement, marked "Largo", performed by Michael Tilson Thomas and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus (heard here at the close): en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._4_(Ives)
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