The great Russian cellist died at 80 years old.
He was one of my favorite cellists.
He lived all over the world. Gave asylum to his friend Solzhenitsyn. Defected from USSR. Was conductor of the National Symphony in D.C. And was awarded Order of Service to the Fatherland by Vladimir Putin.
Another of Schubert's lieder. "Auf dem Wasser zu singen" also sung by Ian Bostridge.
Auf dem Wasser zu singen
Mitten im Schimmer der spiegelnden Wellen
Gleitet, wie Schwäne, der wankende Kahn:
Ach, auf der Freude sanftschimmernden Wellen
Gleitet die Seele dahin wie der Kahn;
Denn von dem Himmel herab auf die Wellen
Tanzet das Abendrot rund um den Kahn.
Über den Wipfeln des westlichen Haines
Winket uns freundlich der rötliche Schein;
Unter den Zweigen des östlichen Haines
Säuselt der Kalmus im rötlichen Schein;
Freude des Himmels und Ruhe des Haines
Atmet die Seel im errötenden Schein.
Ach, es entschwindet mit tauigem Flügel
Mir auf den wiegenden Wellen die Zeit;
Morgen entschwinde mit schimmerndem Flügel
Wieder wie gestern und heute die Zeit,
Bis ich auf höherem strahlendem Flügel
Selber entschwinde der wechselnden Zeit.
translation found here
In the middle of the shimmer of the reflecting waves
Glides, as swans do, the wavering boat;
Ah, on joy's soft shimmering waves
Glides the soul along like the boat;
Then from Heaven down onto the waves
Dances the sunset all around the boat.
Over the treetops of the western grove
Waves, in a friendly way, the reddish gleam;
Under the branches of the eastern grove
Murmur the reeds in the reddish light;
Joy of Heaven and the peace of the grove
Is breathed by the soul in the reddening light.
Ah, time vanishes on dewy wing
for me, on the rocking waves;
Tomorrow, time will vanish with shimmering wings
Again, as yesterday and today,
Until I, on higher more radiant wing,
Myself vanish to the changing time.
Ever since Funke posted MC Solaar's "Le belle et le bad boy" the other day, I've just beenobsessing over MC Solaar.
Les sous ensembles dans les grands ensemble, s'assemble. Le belle et le bad boy It's been stuck in my head for days!
Unfortunately the album Cinqueme As is no longer in circulation, and someone on Amazon wanted to sell it used for $75. No way! Since I don't have any kind of mp3 player, iTunes isn't really an option. i don't want to be tied to my computer to listen to an album. (Am I old-fashioned to want an album?)
I did preview Mach 6 at B&N last night, and I was favorably impressed. I love his use of words. French is a beautiful language to rap in, because it elides where English is more "choppy," for lack of a technical term. So much a literary genre as much as a musical one.
I liked "Jumelle." I feel like there was a fair amount of American influence in this one. (but like what do I know about rap?)
But I'm ALL OVER "T'inquiete"
It's amazing. It's so...dramatic.
In other music news. I'm thrilled to see Putumayo's Christmas in New Orleans.
I saw this at Dial m. What looks like about a 10yr old Vienna Choir Boy singing the "Queen of the Night Aria" from Mozart's opera, The Magic Flute.
They weren't kidding. This is astounding! But what's next? Career? Burnout? Vocal damage?
On the other hand, you kind of wonder if the kid did it, like any kid would try to conquer the soccer field or other such challenge.
In lieu of Poetry Friday, I thought I'd do "Song" Friday. (I intend to do mostly songs, but I reserve the right to post a piece that isn't officially a song if I want to.)
This week's song will be Schubert's Erlkonig, because I'm sure there's enough of my readership that haven't heard that should. This piece is in every anthology, every survey. It sits comfortably in the "canon." I've listened to it 500 hundred bazillion times. I've analyzed it, written papers about it, probably taught more than any other piece, but I never get tired of it. I still tear up at the end! (My students must think I'm crazy, when I'm wiping my eyes, "sorry guys, it's just so sad." [yea, try teaching this when you're pregnant.])
Erlkonig is a classic lied, that is, a German song; mostly a nineteenth-century genre. It's about a boy riding with his father on a horse, through the woods on a "dark and stormy night." The boy is plagued by the king of the elves, who tries to entice him away. The boy cries out to his father, "Mein Vater, mein vater!" who reassures him that it is nothing but the wind and not to let his imagination get away with him. The story gets progressively more intense. After not getting his way, the erlkonig decides to take the boy by force; to which the boy cries frantically, "My father! He's taking me!" This is also the climax of the song. The father doesn't reply this time, rather the horse's pounding feet (portrayed by the piano) intensify as the father races home. He gets there; the horse comes to a stop (in the piano); and we are told in reverant tones that in his arms the boy lay dead, "In seine armen das kind war todt." What is a boy's nightmare? What is a real threat?
Here's the song with Ian Bostridge singing. Listen for three voices of the boy, the erlkonig, and the father. The horse is in the piano.
Erlkonig
wer reitet so spat durch nacht und wind
es ist der vater mit seinem kind
er hat den knaben wohl in den arm
er fabt ihn sicher, er halt ihn warm
mein sohn, was birgst du so bang dein gesicht?
siehst vater du den erlkonig nicht?
der erlkonig mit kron' und schweif?
mein sohn, es ist ein nebelstreif
mein liebes kind, komm spiel' mit mir!
gar schone spiele spiel' ich mit dir
manch bunte blumen sind an dem strand
meine mutter hat manch gulden gewand
mein vater, mein vater un horest du nicht
was erlenkonig mir leise verspricht?
sei ruhig, bleib' ruhig mein kind
in durren blattern sauselt der wind
willst feiner knabe du mit mir gehn?
meine tochter sollen dich warten schon
meine tochter fuhren den nachtlichen reihn
und wiegen und tanzen und singen dich ein
mein vater, mein vater, und siehst du nicht dort
erlkonigs tochter an dusterem ort?
mein sohn, mein, sohn, ich seh' es genau
es scheinen die alten weiden so grau
ich liebe dich, mich reizt deine schone gestalt
und bist du nicht willig, so brauch' ich gewalt
mein vater, mein vater, jetzt fabt er mich an
erlkonig hat mir ein leid getan!
dem vater grauset, er reitet geschwind
er halt in den armen das achzende kind
erreicht den hof mit muhe und not
in seine armen das kind war tot
Katie Melua, "Nine Million Bicycles" Album: Nine Million Bicycles (2005)
Good instrumentals. Pleasing melody. Lyrics cutely poetic. (I mostly listen for instrumentals, though. Is that bad?) As an artist has great potential, but not tapping into it all yet. But, like what do I know about pop music? I'm still getting over the fact that Led Zeppelin is the name of a band.
I've added a few things in my recent past that have greatly improved my quality of life in blogging: Google Reader, which has allowed me to keep up with what's updated, and Google Video, which has opened the world of videoblogging, which is especially important when you have the Cutest Kid in the World.
So, I just want to shout out to Funke for giving me my newest blogging adventure. Radio Blog!! (no, it's not Google)
I'm still exploring its possibilities. For now there's this little window popup that is playing all this cool music. I have no idea how it got there, but I'm totally pumped at this FREE venue to find new music.
Check out this track. A French dude Serge Gainsbourg. I can't really figure him out. Kind of groovy. Kind of retro. This song about Dr. Jekyl and Mister Hyde cracked me up.
That was after "Qui est in qui est out"!
Who IS this guy??
Anyway, I have soft spot for French music of ANY century. So this was a fun find.
But since I don't, I'm grooving at my desk.
My brother introduced me to the album Rendez-vous by the n. Italian singer In-Grid, named after Ingrid Bergman by her cinema-loving family. Apparently, she is something of a hit (but like, what do I know? I couldn't even recognize J. Lo on the cover of a magazine), especially her single "Tu es foutu" (translated in the English version of her album "You promised me").
It's fun music with catchy electronica dance beats underpinning the straightforward French lyrics and tango/accordian influence, doubtless drawn from her native Italy, giving an enticing feel to a few of the tracks. The lyrics are so simple that I can understand a lot of them, which actually makes it fun for me, because then I can groove along in French and feel all that for knowing another language. (like I do when I can groove along in Latin to chant...oh wait...nevermind.) "La,la,la, l'amour..." I mean, it doesn't get a whole lot deeper than that.
In-grid has a wonderful voice that's pleasing and compelling. Musically, it is a straightforward album. Solid, well-done, interesting, and true to the artist's own voice. But I wouldn't call it inventive, imaginative, or excitingly unique. It is an early album; I'm looking forward to hearing more.
One of my favorite comedic songs is a parody of Pagliacci by Spike Jones, loosely based on the tune "Vesti la giuba" (or "invest in a tuba") from the opera except for the part where it's loosely based on the tune "Sabre Dance" by Kachaturian. My sister asked me for the lyrics, so I typed them out and checked them with the recording. Since I couldn't them anywhere else on the internet, here they are (and so I don't forget, for future reference):
Palyatchee
When we was in the city, we was wonderin' where to go.
The sign spelled out "pagliacci" up in lights above the show.
We thought it'd be a Western, 'til the stage lit up with lights, and
ninety-seven people sung without a horse in sight!
We couldn't understand them 'cause spoke a foreign (fur-in) tongue,
but we can give you some idea of what we think they sung...
*mimicking opera voice* "Ridi, Pagliacio!! Sul tu'amore infranto"
All at once there's a fat guy in a clown suit.
T'ain't Haller-ween, that's for shore.
Then this here feller, this Punchy Neller,
Begins to beller -- Like we all was deef.
*aaaahhhahaa*
That was Pal-ya-tchee, and he sung:
Invest in a tuba, and somewhere other 'bout Cuba.
He sung about a lady, who weighed two-hunderd and eighty!
When she takes up powder, he just starts chirpin' louder,
he don't do a gol' darn thing, 'cept to stand up there and sing.
When we listen to Pal-ya-tchee,
we get itchy and scratchy.
This sure is topcorn
so we go and buy some popcorn;
we hate to go back
but we can't get our dough back,
Ain't no use complainin'
'cause outside it's a-rainin'.
Seven hours later,
we're still in the darn theater.
Takin' turns a-nappin'
waitin' for somethin' to happen.
Pal-ya-tchee, he ain't hurryin'
but the folks on stage are flurryin'
it sounds like Ketchy-tur-eean's Sabre Dance.
Then ol' Palyatchee finds the guy he seekin' cheek to cheekin' with his wife, he grabs the knife and stabs the louse who stole his spouse, and then he stabs the lady and himself.
T'ain't very sanitary.
They all collapse, but ol Palyatchee sets up then gets up sayin' "I am dyin'! I am dyin! I am dyin'!'" We start cryin', 'cause, to tell the truth, we're dyin', too.
As the footlights fade out,
We see Pagliacci laid out,
but the dagger never caused it.
Pagliacci was plumb exhausted.
*opera voice* "Ridi, Pagliacco! Sul tu'amore in....."
da, da, da dum dum Dah!
Fellow music department alumna, Funke is writing for the masses: Classical Music on Suite 101. She's got great insight into classical music and its broader intellectual context. And she gets paid by the hit. So be sure to visit her page!! (I'm looking forward to many of years of reading Funke rather than Alex Ross.)
(per Stina's request) okay, I started this entry on Sunday night, but I've been battling this permanent headache and haven't felt much up to blogging, but I may as well finish it
Being the resident musicologist around here I will offer off the top of my head, 10 classical must-have's. These, in my opinion, are 10 CDs that will give adequate breadth to classical music, historically (duh, I'm a musicologist!) and hopefully genre-wise, too. This is entirely arbitrary, and I probably can be argued out of anyone of them, because, really, to distill all of music history into 10 CDs? I've also tried to link recordings that I would particularly recommend, even if I didn't mention the performer information per se.
Sadly, I will skip a medieval era. Though if you really want something from the Middle Ages, this CD of motets by Guillaume de Machaut, sung by the Hilliard Ensemble is a good place to start. In some ways the fourteenth century motet is the quintessential medieval genre: the multivalence, the symbolism, the non-linearness. But this doesn't count as one of the 10.
Okay, so Number One!
Renaissance. Josquin, Motets and Chansons, Hilliard Ensemble. Don't be confused with the Machaut motets, because, though they are called by the same name, they're practically a different genre. A Renaissance motet is a sacred genre with a polyphonic texture. Josquin uses imitation and textural contrast to create vivid musical imagery and to enliven the text. An example of a motet could be either a psalm setting, such De profundis, or a Marian antiphon, such as, Ave maria...virgo serena, which is also one of my favorite Josquin pieces to teach, because of its rich musical content.
Baroque. I'm going to choose J. S. Bach because of the impact he's had in more recent times, not because of his music as representative of style and/or popularity of his own time (neither of which was very high). He's at the VERY end of the Baroque era and in so many ways isn't really like the rest of the period. Bach's music, though, is undisputably interesting and complex, though.
I think I'll choose his Mass in B Minor, conducted by John Eliot Gardiner, a masterful choral work, which probably requires a more concentrated listening to. For something a little easier to listen to (and which I would kind of prefer to recommend anyway) go for the Brandenburg Concertos (this recording by Boston Baroque).
Addendum--I just can't let the Baroque go by without recommending some Monteverdi--either Vespers of 1610 or his opera The Coronation of Poppea.
Classical. Mozart's opera Don Giovanni. Any of Haydn's London Symphonies (I like the recording by Sir Neville Marriner and the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. I prefer Haydn for an example of a symphony. The ways he deals with themes I think is more developed than Mozart.
Beethoven gets his own period, since he's sort of transitional. Symphony No. 5. I prefer this one out of all the symphonies to recommend on a "basics" list because of its cyclicism--the way the four movements are tied together with the short-short-short-long rhythmic motive that opens the symphony.
Romantic. Schubert, Lieder (There's nothing like Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau's recordings of these.)
Token opera example: Verdi's La Traviata or Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. Depends on if you go for the more lyrical Italian style or the big orchestral German style.
More recent eras.
Stravinsky's ballet The Rite of Spring.
Debussy's ballet Prelude l'apres-midi d'un faune (Prelude to the afternoon of a faun).
And to round it off may as well choose Copland's ballet Appalachian Spring.
I got Chris the album Global Soul for Christmas. We heard a song from it a few years ago on the radio and were really intrigued. It's international R&B and hiphop. The first track opens and sounds like a typical R&B song, but then vocals come with "J'attendrai". The lyrics aren't printed in the jacket, but in passing I hear the phrase--the one phrase I can pick out in French pop music--"J'ai besoin de toi" (essentially I need you, baby) This delightfully fresh sampler contains rapping and soulful singing in French, German, English, and other languages from around the world.
I'm not big into vocal music, because I don't really get into lyrics generally, with a few notable exceptions (for another post), so there's a level here where I don't care that I don't understand what's being said. What I revel in is the sound of the words--the smooth French spinning from the front of the mouth, soulful rolling Portuguese. Each language colors the familiar beats of the genre in slightly different shades. This album makes me happy and groovin'.
The dilemma I keep returning to. I reached a transition point in what I like for Christmas music about five years ago, when I was in the middle of my last Madrigals, and just plain tired of it all. I don't know what it was. The magic had worn off. "Silent Night" failed to captivate.
So every year it gets later and later, but I feel like I have to "get in the spirit" and pull out the Christmas CDs. I really do enjoy them, but the fanaticism, the obsession, the warm fuzzies, the exclusion, it's not there anymore. I'm even tired of Charlie Brown! So every year I try to pull out something new, to make it all fresh again. I even taken polls to try to find some new music. I don't like just anything. I've gotten beyond "exclusively classical", but I still am very particular. I really do want to be listening to the Christmas music. Music is such a part of my daily existence that to have it betray me at Christmas time is a bit disconcerting.
But I don't want to be going and buying albums every year, you know? You only listen to the CD for a month. I'm very picky about this. There are a few songs that I really want in my Christmas song repertoire, though, so yesterday I broke down and signed up for iTunes. I don't want to get sucked into iTunes, especially since I don't have an mp3 player of any sort, but desperate times call for desperate measures, and now Louis's "Christmas time in New Orleans" has a happy home on my computer.
I also downloaded "Santa Baby" sung by Eartha Kitt. Last year on the way to airport to pick up my brother and sister who spent Christmas with us, an earlier version of "Santa Baby" came on the radio. I wish I could remember who and when. It was a little more playful and fun than the more well-known polished one, and the lyrics were slightly different.
I must have a thing for Louis this year, because "Baby, It's Cold Outside" also made the cut. I love the close counterpoint of Ella and Louis. And finally, "All I Want for Christmas is You" from Love Actually rounds out the foursome. It's fun. I may get tired of it. But this year, it's fun.
Edited to add
Thanks, katiek, for remding of me of the Sufjan Christmas album on Josiah's site. I'm listening to them now, and it's nice. I do like it. I was looking for something kind of folksy to give a little balance to my Louis. I know a lot of people in my immediate blogosphere are ardent Sufjan fans. I'm new to him, hearing him occasionally on XPN, and I like him. But I'm not crazy about him. Maybe I haven't heard enough, but I don't find him musically edgy enough. On the other hand, the gamelan-esque clatter of banjos and whatever else is beling played is fun and interesting. Plus I'm not one that's not drawn to an artist for their lyrics (half the time I can't even make them out! I think I have some kind of disorder!), but that's not as relevant in the case of Christmas. And sometimes he's so Indie-sounding that it almost a cliche. (I feel the same way about the movie Garden State...which isn't to say that I don't like it or that I'm not entertained by it, just not as fulfilling on a higher aesthetic level.) So in summary, Sufjan is a like, but not an answer to all my musical problems. :-)
I also wanted to say that I'm also currently enjoying this Verve label Christmas album. It's more New Orleans-y.
A new Beethoven autograph score was discovered in the basement of Palmer Seminary outside Philadelphia. It's a piano, four hands version of his Grosse Fugue. It's not a new piece of music, but it's a new book containing music written in Beethoven's own hand.
This is my first traditional autumn in four years. The leaves are changing. It's been so long since I've seen the leaves change! They're so beautiful. It's been raining for days. Brown, yellow, red leaves bluster down in the breeze and stick soggily to the streets.
I'll admit, I'm susceptible to the mood a CD puts me in. And on a cold, chili day like today, I'm in the mood for the Baltimore Consort. I'm listening to On the Banks of Helicon: Early Music of Scotland. It's early music with a fun Celtic flair. It makes me feel less guilty to listening Celtic music, which I enjoy, but sometimes feel too faddish to enjoy. (Like that should really matter to me, but, hey, it does.) On this CD there are the fun folksy dances and ballades, but also more studied instrumental pieces.
One of my favorite features of this CD is the fact that all the facets of Scottish history in the 16th c find their place musically in this collection. There are dances from The English Dancing Master, and then there is the French influence. If you remember your 16th c Scottish history, you'll recall that there was a decided French presence/alliance with Scotland. I love how this CD takes the delicate political and cultural interplay of England, France, and Scotland and weaves together an interesting musical collection.
Is there an aria that is at the same so musically interesting and so lyrically divine as "Casta Diva" from Bellini's Norma?
So the New Yorker just reviewed Prince's new album "Musicology". To those of us who are actually musicologists, the fact that he named his album and the subsequent tour thus is old news. We've all gone through the shock of seeing the name of our esoteric discipline plastered in newspapers and billboards. And discussion has ensued about whether or not he thought he made up the word, with my opinion leaning towards the affirmative.
At first I was upset that the New Yorker didn't address this in their review, but on the other hand, it's not reallly relevant. The critic (Ben Greenman) reviewed the music, and that is what it's about. The name of the album is something that only startles and fascinates the very few of us who belong to this discipline that is so small that Prince probably hasn't heard of it.
In other news. I made the mistake of looking at the schedule for JazzFest. Arguably as big an event as Mardi Gras, we are in JazzFest season. I haven't gone, because unlike mardi gras, it costs money and comes in the final weeks of a semester. So it's better just to not know what you're missing. However, I looked, and now I'm sorry. On Saturday, I could go here the Dave Brubeck Quartet one hour and the next go hear Santana. Oh cruel fate! Okay...back to these papers.
In other culture news. The New Yorker also has a review/discussion of a couple of art exhibits featuring Minimalist art. Since I'm really intrigued with minimalism in music, I'm putting this link here, because I don't have time to read the article at the moment.
Last night I went to see the Emerson Quartet, one of the country's best strings quartets, at Tulane. A fabulous concert comprising a late two-mvt/'unfinished' quartet by Haydn (op. 103), Mendelssohn's String Quartet, No. 2, op. 44, and Debussy's String Quartet. For an encore they played a second movement from a/the(?) quartet by Benjamin Britten (wh., I think, was actually my favorite part of the program).
What I love about a string quartet is the intimacy of the ensemble. It lends itself to such a blending of tone that it is almost like one voice. A successfully composed quartet, I think, can really use this intimacy in marvelous ways. Each quartet on the program did this in its unique way. I especially liked the last chord of the slow movement to the Debussy, it was almost like an organ, the way the chord was spaced and the absolute one-ness of the group as a performing ensemble was absolutely spectacular. I was familiar with everything on the program (esp the Debussy) except the Britten encore. I really want to get that whole quartet on a CD. It was really amazing. Some of the techniques and effects that Britten produced were so intriguing. For instance, the way he made one instrument "chase" another so that it almost sounded like a slow reverberation. Or how each instrument tossed around this one particular accented note such that it was the same note, in the same register, and they made it sound like one instrument was playing it, but they were actually tossing it around. Wow!
Last Saturday night Chris and I went to see Richard Wagner's Das Rheingold performed by the New Orleans opera association. This was the second opera each of us have been to (if you exclude the partial dress rehearsal of Tosca I saw and my participation in Pagliacci): I had been to Carmen several years earlier, and he had seen some Mozart something in Prague. I don't really like Wagner. But the Ring Cycle (four operas) is such a standard in the Western musical canon, and so many people just love it, that I thought perhaps actually seeing it live might help me warm up to it a bit. For the most part I wasn't disappointed.
The staging, scenery, and stage effects were really terrific. The soloists were all quite good, with Wotan being especially so. We were so far away, though, that it was difficult to really feel into the drama of it all. I could barely read the supertitles. The Wotan, though, had such good vocal presence that he felt right there even though we were in the nosebleed section.
I went back and forth from being really into it and being coolly detached, though still enjoying it. Like I said previously concerning my concert-going, I don't have an "aesthetic experience" anymore. I think I'd like to see the rest of the cycle as it is performed in subsequent seasons.
What I hate, though, is the real degeneration of concert etiquette. I don't know what it was like in the other sections of the hall, but in the nosebleed section there was constant whispering. It was driving me crazy. It wasn't from just one or two particular people, it was all over. It's like people are used to "entertainment" being in the "background". Gathering from the demeanor of most people around us, it was clear they hadn't a clue about what was going on, the various unique facets of a Wagner opera, or the fact that perhaps if they were wondering these things, they should voice these wonderments at the end of the opera and not during it. It's understandable and acceptable for these ignorances to be, but there were extensive program notes they could've read before hand to assuage their ignorance. I kind of wondered if people came because they thought it would be like Lord of the Rings, and I can't blame them, because that's how the opera people tried to bill it for popular appeal. Other than a ring that gives the owner unique world power, it isn't at all like LOTR. And everybody thinks the Ring Cycle is three operas, but it's four.
A Wagner opera takes a unique kind of concentration to watch, because it is through-composed. In other words, it doesn't have recitatives which are speech-like passages and in which most of the "action" and narrative takes place or arias, the lyrical solos in which the character soliliquizes (is that a word?). Rather a Wagner opera is continuous drama of somewhere in between a recit and an aria. There's no settling back for an aria, it requires your constant attention, which was a little difficult as I was scrutinizing the supertitles. We did enjoy it, though, and I think we'll go back.
When I was in high-school, the height of existence for me was going to the symphony. I would cajole and beg until someone would schlep me and possibly any friends I could drag along the 35 miles to the nearest city, usually in the cold (this was in Iowa). I would watch breathless drinking in every minute. I continued this frenzied concert mania into college until my first senior year. Then I just quit going to symphony. I was bored with it. I can't really explain it. I used to love the thrill of getting dressed up, drinking in the music, staying out late. Perhaps I got to the point where I was performing so much that concerts began to be equated with work instead of pleasure. I don't perform anymore now, but I study music as an academic discipline, so perhaps I still view it as work. And what I really want to do on a weekend evening is stay at home and watch a movie.
This said I went to the symphony last night. A friend called with an extra ticket, so I went. Looking at the program, I probably wouldn't have chosen to go to this particular one. It was almost an all Mozart program, and as someone said, you're either a Mozart person or a Haydn person, and I'm a Haydn person. It's not that I don't like Mozart, though. I enjoyed it nevertheless. First up was the overture to Le Nozze, then a Divertimento. The third item on the program was on the only non-Mozart piece, a set of four brass pieces by Gabrieli. When they started played it all of a sudden struck me: oh my word! Early music at the sympony!! I love our conductor. I really enjoyed the pieces. Last up was the "Jupiter" symphony, no. 41.
I was not the euphoric teenager heavily involved in an aesthetic experience. I felt a bit more seasoned. While listening to the pieces, I could tell you exactly where we were formally at a given moment; I could appreciate the 'moves' Mozart was making (for example, modulating down three steps successively in the development of the fourth movement of the Divertimento); and I was interested in the interpretation of the pieces, so well-known, by the conductor (who is really fabulous) as he conducted from memory.
I realized that the last time I have been to the symphony was almost two years ago when I sang in the chorus of Missa Solemnis by Beethoven. The last concert I've been to was Monteverdi's Vespers last November. I really need to get up, get out there, and here some more live music.
Because of German, I find myself randomly wanting to capitalize nouns.
I highly recommend these two albums:
Toufic Farroukh - "The Pain in Spain Stays Mainly in the Brain"
Album: Drab Zeen (Label: Harmonia Mundi)
Year Released: 2002 Media: CD
Joy Denalane - "Hochste Zeit"
Album: Global Soul (Label: Putumayo)
Year Released: 2003 Media: CD (Release: New)
Comment: Germany/South Africa
Chris and I heard these songs from them the other day on wwoz, and they were amazing. Drove us batty!