“Somebody That I Used to Know”‏ – Walk off the Earth Saturday, Jan 21 2012

 

this is surely a musical first, and quite probably a musical

last, not so much for the quality of the performance, which

is impressive, but for its daunting logistics

 

the five instrumentalists here, Walk off the Earth, are

apparently from Burlington, Ontario, they might be called

a quintet though this term usually applies to players playing

an equal number of instruments, they are performing what

I would call a guitar piece, a ballad maybe, for ten hands
 
can you dig it 
 
 
Richard

 
 

 

 

 

 

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Debussy, “L’isle joyeuse”‏ (“The Joyous Island”) Friday, Jan 20 2012

here’s Daphne doing Debussy, his “L’isle joyeuse“, from 1904,

a long way from Beethoven, 1798 

 

had it not been for Beethoven though, making music into a

language, instead of merely a Mozartean, a Haydnesque

aristocratic entertainment, Debussy wouldn’t have even

been possible, where were their ”Moonlight Sonata“s, their

“Tempest“s, their “Appassionata“s for that matter, their

“Hammerklavier“s, these earlier composers, for a weightier,

more abstract, topic, Mozart and Haydn were having courtly,

though ever so inspired, fun, while Beethoven would proclaim,

pronounce, discover and describe, open up to the imagination,

upon these earlier, nevertheless mighty, Classical shoulders,

a whole new, transfigured, world

 

 

“L’isle joyeuse“ is not a sonata, it only has one movement,

I would call it a soundscape, were I to define it, Monet,

1840-1926, is written all over it, the same shimmer,

ephemerality, must’ve been the light, not to mention of

course, at his most ethereal, Beethoven

 

 

Richard      

 

 

 

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Beethoven‏’s “Pathétique Sonata”, no 8 in C minor, opus 13 Monday, Jan 16 2012

the very first chord of Beethoven’s Pathétique Sonata,

no 8 in C minor, opus 13, does the same for the

Romantic Era as Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am”

and Shakespeare’s “To be, or not to be” did for the

Age of Reason, it defined its parameters, and set it

on its path, I can think of no other literary equivalent

with anywhere near the same power, the same clarity

and precision as that bold, peremptory statement for

that burgeoning period

 

Delacroix, too nationalistic, the Romantic poets too

introspective, Beethoven perfect, blending the political

with the personal, the personal with the philosophical,

the philosophical with the transcendental, and the

transcendental finally with the sublime, you come out

of a Beethoven composition not only entertained but

informed, inspired, transformed, he takes you there 

 

 

though unknown, to me at least, not yet among the

immortals, Daphne Honma acquits herself quite well

here in Beethoven’s masterpiece, perhaps a little too

plodding at the beginning, I thought, for my taste,

stretching nearly embarrassingly her sforzandos,

those initial arresting statements, Beethoven would

never ‘ve called for that, too much melodramatic

excess would only blur, he knew, the sheen of

unadulterated oracles 

 

but all is soon set aright, indeed redeemed by what

comes next, Daphne Honma deserves much more

applause than is here her portion

 

 
one of Beethoven’s early works, it’s 1798, Beethoven

is 27

 

 

Richard

 

psst: an “unadulterated oracle“ 

 

 

 

 

 

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untitled – a friend Thursday, Jan 5 2012

a friend wrote, after best wishes for the new year and 

generous comments about my postings, comments I

am of course too modest to include here, “Here is a

poem I wrote, probably for my grandchildren.  Hope

it makes you smile.”     

 

smile, I thought, I think it’s brilliant

 

what do you think 

 

 

Richard  

 

psst: it’s untitled, maybe you’d like to come up with 

         something, I thought maybe “Dinner”

 

               ________________

 

untitled

 

 

I am a fish I have a tail

I swim to the depths I tease a whale 

I dine on bits of this and that 

Blow Champagne bubbles through my hat

I am a fish with a mermaids tail

I thought for a while I loved that whale

But when he tried to dine on me

I found him too salacious

I am a fish with silver scales

A hundred percent better than whales

I spin with a shoal of metallic shine 

Cans of sardines drunk on wine

I look through my  mirror and see the sun

Rip tides dancing I join the fun

I travel knots till the sun goes  in

Silhouettes only the light is dim

Below the waves in a stormy sea 

I’m safe with an octopus having tea

He changes colour looking at me

I am a fish with enormous eyes

A bit short sighted but never mind

I see the colours of coral reefs

Colours quite beyond belief

Hermit crabs and tidal drifts

Seaweed gardens Neptune’s gift

I was a fish with a silver sheen

I dreamed of all I could have been

Ceto’s daughter Poseidon’s Queen

I shone in the moonlight luminesque

I bit at sunbeams I did my best

But like that mermaid on the rock

I really should have taken stock

I never dreamed I never wished 

To be a filet on a dish.  

 

 

                                  a friend

 

 

 

 

 

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from Haydn to Beethoven‏ Tuesday, Dec 27 2011

in my pantheon of pianists Sviatoslav Richter, 1915-1997, 

is a paragon, if you’ll pardon that parade of p’s, here he

plays two not especially eminent Classical masterworks, 

though neither not uninteresting nor unimportant

 

 

Haydn, along with other composers of his time, wrote

sonatas mostly for their students, young ladies frequently

looking for marriageable advantage, he saved the cream

therefore of his art for his more public pieces, symphonies,

oratorios, string quartets, these last, to my mind, his most 

impressive vehicle

 

you’ll nevertheless be delighted by this effervescent musical

jewel, Haydn’s piano sonata no 39, Hob. XVI 24*, in D major 

 

Richter plays it in the dark, in his later years a personal 

idiosyncracy

 

it’s 1984

  

 

you’ll note in a Classical musical composition even the

adagio, the slow movement, will be wistful, never even

melancholy, never ever forlorn, considered impudent, 

impertinent, by a genteel aristocracy, their code of

noblesse oblige would’ve frowned on emotional excess, 

considering it undignified, common 

 

Beethoven’s fire bursts through these Classical strictures

already in his very first piano sonata, opus 2, no 1, 

adhering to the Classical sonata form, even its intention,

but he’s revealed unequivocally by his passion and fury 

 

his adagio here might be lilting but it’s unmistakably

at the very least emotionally compromised, beyond

wistful, though Beethoven at this point, is giving it an

honest try, the movements are in traditional order

despite an extra fourth instalment, and of course any

extra length, as I’ve earlier pointed out, always means

more substance, gravitas, already something of an 

impertinence to the traditional, more unbending

contemporary social cast

 

by the prestissimo, the last and appropriately most

explosive of the movements, he is anything but courtly,

his music already, three years before the Revolution in

France, will no longer submit to imperious aristocracies

flexing no longer tolerable muscle, he cannot, in his very

bones, be confined to merely niceties, and you can hear it

 

Beethoven can no longer be Mozart, Haydn, though he

has studied profoundly at their schools, his are 

tempestuous seeds in that fertile, their Classical, soil, of,

just round the corner, its flower, the more unruly but

profoundly introspective Romantic Movement, the

exploration, the prioritization, of the human soul,

the burgeoning era of human rights 

 

Beethoven will define it, set it firmly on its path, give it

an anthem, a credo, a forthright example, a solid ground

to build a new world on

 

   

the piano sonata, opus 2, no 1, of three in his second

opus, is Beethoven’s very first piano sonata, it’s 1795   

 

stick around, this is just the start

 

 

Richard   

 

 

* Anthony van Hoboken, 1887-1983, rather than

   chronologically like Köchel Mozart, organized Haydn’s

   work according to its musical form, l for symphonies for

   instance, lll for string quartets, XVl for piano sonatas,

   of which this is the 24th, therefore Hob. XVI 24, van

   Hoboken‘s catalogue, the Hoboken-Verzeichnis, was

   first published in 1957

 

   an alternate method, published in 1963, from Christa    

   Landon, is arranged chronologically, where this is

   Haydn’s piano sonata no 39, incidentally, of 1773

 

   confusing maybe, but kind of like the EEU being

   referred to just as often as Europe, same place, 

   different organizational catalogue, not so tough

 

  

 

 

 

 

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Brahms Piano Concerto no 2 in B flat major, opus 83‏ Sunday, Dec 11 2011

though I’d no intention of presenting a piano concerto

quite yet I’d been trolling Celibidaches on the Internet,

after marvelling at his wondrous“Boléro”, and couldn’t

hold back this gem I found of his, Brahms’ Piano  

Concerto no 2 in B flat major, opus 83

 

same venue, same Münchner Philharmoniker, same

starched ceremonial ruffles, I thought, same even age

of the conductor, to the very minute, it appeared, in 

his unchanged eye and perspective, wise, serene,

omnipotent, perhaps the very same concert as in the

illustrious Ravel, I said to myself, though later I couldn’t

especially recognize individual instrumentalists 

 

Daniel Barenboim, who conducted earlier the speedy

“Boléro”, wears another hat here, he’s the pianist, but

in this incarnation he is transcendental, carried aloft,

I think, notably, by the Olympian Celibidache, who

cedes his fire and glory to the younger Barenboim

throughout, who supremely is up for the challenge,

a ready and rearing Apollo, taking on the treacherous

musical task, defying obstreperous planets, perilous

astrological constellations in nefarious conjunctions, 

stray or fleeting stars, to foster safely home to its

final hearth his solar chariot, in a towering sunset,

a finale of apocalyptic proportions, each purveyor

casting unutterable light, god and mere immortal, 

from his own particular perch, upon our beholden

world

 

Celibidache, as would Zeus, cedes serenely to his 

younger avatar his bow, his deserved adulation,

safe in his own unquestionable omnipotence 

 

 

this concerto has four movements incidentally, greater

length always suggests more gravitas, more substance 

 

is it warranted

 

you be the judge

 

 

Richard

 

psst: in another mythological context, note the hand of

         Celibidache resting on air, intermittently fluttering,

         at the beginning of the slowest movement, the

         andante, the third, the hand of God ministering, 

         according to Michelangelo, in the “Creation of 

         Adam”, should you not yet be convinced of the 

         maestro’s august and unequivocal stature 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Celibidache‏’s Ravel’s “Boléro” Wednesday, Dec 7 2011

Sergiu Celibidache is the granddaddy of conductors, 

a Methuselah, a patriarch, a high priest, a cardinal, 

a very ayatollah, Olympian, no less imposing on

Olympos than Zeus, god of everything, in his

majesty 
 
here he delivers the “Boléro” of Ravel, I think,

definitively, at a pace that would have made the

composer, I’m sure, exultant, proud, at an imposing

longer than 22 minutes, the most extended I’ve ever

heard, it is nevertheless the most imperious, mighty,

authoritative, a wall of adamant and ritualistic sound 

put in mesmerizing motion, indeed ignited, by the 

lascivious demands of the luxurious, undulating  

bolero

 

the slower pace seems to suggest a further distance,

an incidence, by the noteworthy by, of the expression

of spatial dimension through the manipulation of sound, 

fashioned precisely here by the measured increase in

volume throughout, becoming louder as it nears, settling

in your very face at its conclusion, like an apotheosis,

massive, unflinching, remarkable

 

 

it is not uninstructive to compare for metre the two

previous “Boléro”s I mentioned, the moderate Dudamel,

the galloping Barenboim, to gauge the impact of their

choice of tempo on your preference, the one you like is

the one you’ll want to return to, leaving the other two

in the evanescent dust, no fuss, no muss, just instinct 

 

it is also instructive then to wonder why, which’ll say

much more about who you are, you’ll be surprised to

note, who you still aspire to be, than anything you

might ever have imagined

 

 

Richard

  

psst: every advance in taste, quality, comfort, could

         only have taken place ever through comparison,

         the sum of two is greater always than its meager,

         even arid, parts

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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a haiku by W.H. Auden‏ Monday, Nov 28 2011

 

He has never seen God
but once or twice he believes
he has heard Him
 
 
                    W.H. Auden  
 

 

in trying to find this poem on the Internet after I’d come
upon it in the New Yorker, November 14, 2011, I settled
upon this unlikely site which gave the work enormous 
context
 
Colin Keenan pays heartfelt tribute to his friend, Wes
Wehmiller, both of them to me unknown
 
 
in preparing us for the poem Keenan says, 
 
                  “Auden came to understand that the essence
                   of prayer is not to talk to God, or to ask for
                   something, but to listen. I think that faith is
                   simply the ability to understand the language
                   that is spoken.” 
 
 

I think it is a profoundly insightful comment, it’s how I

listen in fact to music, for its easier access to the too

often too evanescent otherwise sublime, the mystical,

the miraculous

 

 

Richard

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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a couple of Mozart sonatas Wednesday, Nov 23 2011

if a symphony is a concerto without a soloist, a sonata

is a concerto without an orchestra, the soloist plays

alone, must deliver the same enchantment 

 

there are nevertheless always therefore the prerequisite

several movements, otherwise no sonata

 

 

the sonata, as we know it, originated in the mid-18th

century with more or less Mozart, earlier the term

applied to other structural notions in music

 

to still my consternation they were often not continuous,

movements were performed indiscriminately among other

eclectic acts in an evening of diverse entertainments, it

was Beethoven who put a decisive stop to that, though

the fame and popularity of Haydn and a few other

contemporaries, Clementi, Salieri, as well of course as

himself Mozart, had probably settled the matter for all

practical purposes somewhat earlier

 

Beethoven among his other theoretical principles codified

that, indeed wrote the book on it, like Moses delivering

the commandments, except that Beethoven presented

horizons in his mythology, miraculous and infinite,

instead of castigation and luxurious sin

 

his understanding of music, still now unsurpassed, is

demonstrable in his works through all the musical

innovations that have since, through all the very ages,

transpired, down to even his bagatelles, musical trifles,

which I’ll approach later, if you’ll stick around

    

 

but it starts essentially with Mozart 

 

Mitsuko Uchida, who is unsurpassed in Mozart, plays

the piano sonata in D major K.576, K for Köchel,

Ludwig von Köchel, who catalogued finally, in 1862,

nearly a hundred years after Mozart’s death, in 1791,

the complete works of the master, other works have

been intermittently added since so that several

revised editions have dutifully followed, lettered a, b,

c according to the revision, the last Köchel number is 

626 

 

 

Mozart’s music is sprightly, effervescent, magical, but

not especially intellectually challenging, I think of toy

soldiers and candy cane, innocence and a child’s delight

in the infinite possibilities of creation, Creation  

 

 

Alfred Brendel  who stands shoulder to shoulder with

the iconic Glenn Gould when it comes to Beethoven,

plays Mozart’s piano sonata no. 14 in C minor, K.457

 

of 18 piano sonatas, the D major K.576 above, was

his last 

 

 

Brendel is too commanding to play authentic Mozart,

though his technique is irreproachable, admirable,

spotless, wonderful 

 

he is Beethoven playing Mozart however, an uneven

fit 

 

comparing the two interpretations is instructive, Brendel

will dazzle, inevitably, but Uchida will make you fly

 

don’t believe me, count on it 

 

 

Richard 

 

 

 

 

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an original composition‏ Thursday, Nov 17 2011

here‘s an aria, a musical composition for one voice, of

great tonal and rhythmic complexity, with an equally

challenging part for the piano

 

totally 21st century 

 

you’ll love it

 

 

Richard

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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