Sibelius: Symphony No. 1 in E minor, Op. 39 - III. Scherzo: Allegro

i am trying to get around to a fair number of composers before giving any one composer a second entry, otherwise i would do something else by schubert, whose birthday it happens to be today.

instead, though, i'm going to a composer that alex ross in his famous book "the rest is noise" described as more or less an isolated incidence of development in 20th century music. sibelius wrote music that was highly nationalistic, but like grieg, is not given quite enough credit for the musical loyalties he kept, which were called oldfashioned by the serialist and ultramodern schools developing in germany (there were actually articles published calling him "the worst composer in the world). i think most of us now can agree that this was pretty wide of the mark and that sibelius had some pretty unique, not at all backwards sounds.

sibelius wrote this symphony in 1898 when he was 33, with some revisions the subsequent year.

this is ashkenazy and philharmonia. there is a better video of bernstein with sappy slow bernstein tempi, but unfortunately the videos are not divided by movements so the movement starts in the middle of video 3 and ends halfway into video 4, if you are interested in looking it up.
this scherzo is, in form, as most are: a brisk 3/4. the recurrent tattoo of quarter notes is brought in emphatically  (and somewhat unusually) by the timpani, which comes back and brings it sharply back down to the ground every time it looks as if the other instruments will fly away with it. the motif gets shortened as instruments interrupt each other mid-sentence, giving the feeling of acceleration through instrumental compression, even though the rhythm and tempo remain the same.
slow section is somewhat rhapsodic, starts at 1:56 with the horns putting a sudden brake on the galloping scherzo with a big diminished chord which sounds totally out of nowhere, but manages to relax into a warm set of chords, later with solo winds adding a countermelody. then oboes come in with a pastoral little answer, but before you know it a rude awakening by trombones and tuba and bunch of swirling descending scales in winds and strings lead us back into the scherzo, which is a straight ride to the end.

listen to the other movements, which are actually from just about every aspect more intense and interesting. there is a high chance i'll do at least one of them sometime later. this movement is fun, though.

Smetana: Má Vlast - Vyšehrad

having had a headache for the last hour or so, this is a great balm and destressing piece. 

wikipedia has a perfectly acceptable and fairly comprehensive overview of the entire suite, and an especially fair explanation of this particular movement, so fair warning, i'm about to just copy most of it.

this tone poem, Vyšehrad (VEE-sheh-rad), is the first in a set of six that belong to the set "Ma Vlast," or "my country." smetana's vision/mission was basically to establish nationalist music for the czechs, and he accomplished this splendidly, with current czechs treating this and the moldau (the outrageously popular second poem of the six) as something like a second and third national anthem. in the course of this whole suite, we explore the Vyšehrad, a castle in Prague which was home to the earliest Czech kings; the Vltava, the river which runs the bohemian countryside; the local czech legends of a female warrior named Sarka and the army of knights which sleeps inside a mountain known as Blanik; the countryside and woods themselves, and Tabor, a city.

another interesting thing about smetana was that he went deaf in 1874 at the age of 50 (yea i bet that reminds you of someone). the Vyšehrad was composed/mostly completed almost immediately before he went deaf. which means that the rest of the cycle was composed in silence. here's an amusing take on that compositional process.

weird to call this a "movement" because they're not very commonly played as a complete cycle. think of it as a set of independently functioning pieces with a common theme, like dvorak's slavonic dances. they were all composed over a span of 5 years (1874-1879) and all premiered separately.

kubelik and the czech philharmonic. who better?

ok, so apparently *the* thing to talk about is that theme: b-flat, e-flat, d, b-flat (or any other relative setting of those pitches). there are claims that this actually represent bedrich smetana's name, because apparently "b" and "s" represent b-flat and e-flat in german notation. anyway, regardless what that is, it is definitely the most important recurring motif in the entire set of six poems, coming up again and again, from the dreamy double-harp arpeggios that nostalgically open, to the warm orchestral entrance, to the gigantic grandiose music that occurs about five minutes in (and if you think about it, the only possible visual incarnation of this music for me is some great hall with a huge court in a castle like the vysehrad...). but all this is still just overture, and the exposition or plot doesn't seem to start until almost six minutes in.

now we get some curiosity-inspiring drama. if you think of this whole piece as a sort of movie, this would be where the exposition actually starts, and according to the wiki article this is smetana taking us back and telling us the tale of the castle. a brisker tempo lends itself to a bit of distress but also streams of lush, "good-old-times" glory in the strings and fanfares in the upper brass. these are periodically interrupted by a tenser motif, the descending halfstep followed by a descending fourth. finally the tension builds until we get a gigantic descending chromatic scale at about 9:30, depicting the fall of the castle. the flutes enter again tentatively, followed by string tremolos, and a few quietly mournful wind passages. then at about 11:30, the opening harp flourishes return again, this time with string echoes pregnant with remembered glory. the big climax at this point seems to reaffirm the glory, but a shade of darkness in the strings swells out near the concluding measures, and the ending of the poem is actually quiet, seeming to say that all this is merely wonderful memories of days gone by. which, well, it is.

pretty good for sappy nationalistic music, wouldn't you say.

Rimsky-Korsakov: Russian Easter Overture, Op. 36

i know i'm not really doing much off the beaten path. after all youtube is flooded with high school orchestra recordings of this piece complete with comments of how this is their favorite piece EVER. it clearly requires little introduction. but i will branch out into a more diverse set of pieces after i have gotten into the swing of things. and anyway, this very fun piece deserves a bit more than mindless adulation.

this was written from 1887 to 1888, directly after he wrote capriccio espagnole, 1887 (op. 34), and scheherazade, 1888 (op. 35). right afterwards he basically stop writing orchestral works and focused entirely on opera. i think these three have proven more enduring than his operas, though.
this overture is a concert overture - no big opera or play attached to it - and is subtitled overture on liturgical themes. it's immediately clear why.

this is a reasonable recording by stokowski. there is one other decent one by maazel/cleveland, but i thought the stokowski a bit more interesting. there seem to be few professional recordings on youtube - the only other complete one i could find was by hollreiser/vpo, but the pitch on this recording is so high it basically just sounds like it's in the wrong key. there's also half of one by markevitch.

rimsky very much enjoyed playing around with liturgical themes and church tunes. in this piece he explicitly states that he was trying to explore both the pagan and religious aspects of the easter holiday. to that effect he actually puts in several bible verses into the score itself, and the main themes here are ostensibly church hymns, most prominently the paschal vigil (i tried to find a vid of this but only got crappy home vids, so this is the theme that the trombones give in the very beginning) and the angel cried, which is what the solo cello gives at 0:50. but there are tons more scattered around. see if you can pick out the lines that are hymns as you listen to the piece, but rimsky himself wrote a pretty comprehensive program note in his own autobiography, the excerpt which you can find here.
the cool thing about incorporating church hymns into music is that there are amazing ways of harmonizing them. especially for russian liturgical chants (or any chants really), all you are given is basically one unison line, and there are any number of ways to accompany this. what comes out can be purely major or minor, or, as rimsky ended up with sometimes in this work, modal. this flexibility goes for the rhythm too. usually with few rhythm markings, you can kind of stretch them to fit basically any meter. for example, the first theme, marked "lento mystico," is actually written in 5/2, though it's rather hard to tell from listening. it's not really important, as with chants, to stress strong and weak beats - this is more or less just for the sake of the notation. it's only after the first violin solo that we get something easier to nod our heads to.
apparently the violin solo, which crops up first at 0:29 and then again at 1:22 or so with the flute instead, is supposed to represent light from the sepulchre.
rimsky basically repeats himself twice in the first section, but he redoes the orchestration completely so that it still sounds fresh. the second time the original trombone theme comes back, it's maestoso, and written with reinforcement by a full string complement, which makes me hear, basically, an organ playing with several more stops pulled out.

we don't reach the "meat" of the piece until the allegro agitato at 3:52. here we get fast paced colorful writing - what everyone loves best about rimsky - with some occasional interludes for the violin solo theme to come back, and a more stretchy hymn (5:27). more grand entrances and even bells at the end are added for a huge climax at the end.
pretty much it's pure fun from the agitato until the end. but as one listens to this piece it's worth noting that even with the regular foot tapping rhythm, rimsky doesn't force these meter-less liturgical melodies into even, symmetric phrases. it makes this piece exotic and fun. not to mention all the fun off beat accents and syncopations. a good example is the slow hymn interlude. the chord at 5:37 would be longer in a less inventive person's piece.
the other thing one has to note is the saturation of pentatonic scale. they basically comprise the entirety of all the string parts (which are the busiest thing ever, but fortunately also the funnest thing to play).

ok, have fun.

Ravel: Sonata No. 2 for Violin and Piano, M. 77 - I. Allegretto

M stands for marcel marnat, who catalogued ravel's stuff.

this sonata was composed between 1923-1927, and is one of my favorite violin sonatas. friendly and sophisticated at the same time, it seems to have a lot of pull even with non classical listeners.

the reasons for its lengthy complicated birth period were things which plagued ravel from the end of WWI until the end of his life, including recurring illness and a creative block that only left in 1926. as a result the pre-war period for him was several times more productive than the last phase of his life from 1926 until 1937 (fifteen compositions versus fifty-six).

the main program note that usually accompanies this piece regards only the second movement which is noted for having some jazz/blues influence (it's quite unsubtly titled "blues"). this movement is indeed quite special and funky, but for me it's the outer movements which are so compelling.

analyses of ravel's music postwar usually stress his interest in making subtle and not-so-subtle references to the horrors of the war and his wish for it not to be repeated (see piano concerto for the left hand, which was written for the wittgenstein who had his right hand blown off in combat). some of this jazz inspired music is said to be a sort of homage to the american contribution to the war. this sonata is more abstract and seems to fall largely outside the scope of these more programmatic works. but it does reflect a lot of the changes in his musical language which took place directly after the war: "His attitude toward musical texture changes from lush and thick to spare and ascetic; his form names change from colorful to abstract, while his formal shapes turn a bit more unpredictable than heretofore; bitonality, harsh dissonance or unresolved friction, jazz sonorities, folk-like modalities, and all-but-incompatible metric interconnecting relationships increase exponentially in these later works." (this is a very good set of program notes on this piece.)

all of these are readily visible/audible in this violin sonata. it was first performed on may 30, 1927, with georges enesco on the violin and ravel at the piano.
two very different recordings. the first is monique haas at the piano, max rostal at the violin. i like this because of its plainness, which to me seems to adhere very closely to the nature of the work. the second is shlomo mintz and yefim bronfman. i expected this to be sort of lusher but eh.

the movement is meandering and dreamy, lots of asymmetrical phrases and bitonal chords. the meter keeps grounded in 6/8, but everything else seems to slide it around as if it were going to sort of take off any second. the tonality slides around constantly. after the opening theme the violin echoes the piano a fifth above, but then goes somewhere else entirely, from a tonal perspective.

i like how spare this writing is. it's totally clear and one can hear every note, but it boggles our musical instincts by not at all adhering to... well, anything, really. lots of augmented sevenths and ninths, things usually only found in jazz music - but the voicing is still off.
note the little inserted countermelodies starting at 1:11. these come back noticeably in the last movement. that plus the opening theme provide the grounds for the whole movement.
notable is how, while the violin and piano often trade off voicing melodic material, sometimes they go off in completely different directions.
development starts at 3:11.
there's a big climax with triplets in the violin. but the catharsis doesn't really come until quite a bit after that: the part i find most amazing is the "phrase" which begins directly after the triplets stop at 5:52. from then straight until 7:18 is the longest-spinning phrase ever. and it's not until 7:12 that we feel the relief of it ending.

ok, this entry was really difficult to write for some reason. O WELL SEE YOU TOMORROW

Britten: Simple Symphony, Op. 4 - IV. Frolicsome Finale

early britten. apparently he wrote this string orchestra piece just after he got dissuaded from taking a scholarship he had won to go study with alban berg in vienna, when he was 20. everyone in britain was so against the idea of serialism that everyone was like OMG and so he stayed, writing this directly afterwards in dedication to his viola teacher. (now that i think of it i can't think of any british serialists, although in late elgar and britten you can hear a different brand of semi-atonalism). it was first performed in 1934, and was a major success.

coming in at only 16 minutes, it's a brief but not silly work. the movements are sort of arrangements and rescorings of little melodies he wrote between ages of 9-12 (what were you doing as a prepubescent child, hmmmm?) they all have kind of misleadingly silly titles.
I. boisterous bourree
II. playful pizzicato
III. sentimental sarabande
IV. frolicsome finale

the opening of this last movement is a unison upthrusting sequence of fifths and fourths which lays the foundation for the whole movement. this developed through this very short movement. there is a playful minor theme played by the violins after the unison introduction, which gets played with between major and minor keys, modulating on a dime in unexpected ways that don't quite satisfy one's need for cadence. the rhythm is motoric and seems to just propel the movement full circle to the ending, which is pretty much as it began.

von Suppe: Light Cavalry Overture

bet you heard this all the time and actually have no idea whom it's by!! and reading the name won't really ring a bell either. at least, that was my reaction when i first played this piece. i was like, why is this so familiar if i don't even recognize the composer's name. but this contains some of the most recognizable cartoon music ever! see the second section, about 2 and half minutes in. can you see the cartoon horses?


so, Franz von Suppe  (whose name the announcer at the performance i participated in managed to mispronounce as franz von SOUP, and forever now i will read his name wrong in my head when i see it) was an austrian light opera composer who lived from 1819 to 1895. he wrote four dozen operettas, which is impressive, but most have fallen to the wayside. anyway during his life he also sang as a tenor and had a reasonably successful career writing music for productions done in vienna. light cavalry was written in 1866 and is one of only two overtures (the other being poet and peasant) which have survived the ages.

this overture is basically a mirror form. you've got a brass fanfare section, then the fun galloping section, which both come back at the end. sandwiched in the middle is a very fun melodramatic cello melody.
it's a very military-inspired little operetta, but i'm sure you don't need me to tell you that.

Elgar: Salut d'Amour for violin and piano, Op. 12

if you remember those kreisler pieces liebesfreud and liebesleid, this was originally going to be called "liebesgruss," which means the same thing in german - because his betrothed was german-speaking. he wrote this as an engagement gift, in july 1888 when he was 31 (his wife-to-be gave him a poem as her own gift, which he later set to music).

this is early elgar, and reflects a pretty young and optimistic composer, before he began to focus on his own alienation from both higher level music and social circles. he wrote enigma in 1899, which was his first breakthrough. but this is music of a different, simpler, very appealing sort.

here is a very lovely rendition by kyung wha chung.

through the years elgar and others have released many different versions/instrumentations of this piece which is really a song. the violin/piano arrangement is the original.

really very little needs to be explained about this piece :)

Grieg: Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 16 - I. Allegro molto moderato

grieg was 24 years old when he wrote this in 1868 in denmark on holiday. it was premiered april the following year, and has gone on to be probably his most well-loved work, certainly of the "large-scale" ones (really, i can only name like... three other pieces by grieg...)

the following statement about grieg is really very true:
Grieg's national identity-his embodiment of the Norwegian spirit in music-is so much stressed in discussions of his work that his purely musical affinities tend to be overlooked.
the analysis goes on to argue that the dominant musical personality in grieg's life was schumann, and that this is especially evident in the first movements of their respective piano concertos (schumann's was completed in 1845). wiki cites as an example the "single powerful orchestral chord" preceding the piano entrance in both cases.
the concerto was grieg's first major success. its premiere was attended by gade and rubinstein, and later when grieg was invited to rome to visit liszt, the latter took it upon himself to sight read the piece right then and there. apparently liszt's enthusiasm was so much that at one point near the end of his reading he "rose from the piano and strode about the room with his arms raised, singing the theme at the top of his voice," and then sat back down at the piano and finished playing it, after which he gave his unequivocal praise and encouragement to the young grieg. damn.

ok, obviously tons of great recordings out there to be found of this concerto, which has proved one of the most enduring ever written (and with its romantic flair and moderate difficulty - several steps removed from tchaik and rach - a favorite among students just getting into the concerto form). here are just a couple.

a fairly old rubinstein takes this with stateliness and matter-of-factness, very different from standard playful and more indulgent interpretations.

this is a bit more sympathetic. lipatti plays with tons of fire, briskness, and intensity.
if you have time, also check out gieseking, and richter.
the opening motif of falling half step/falling major third is supposedly characteristic of his native norwegian folk music.
the drama in this first movement is immediately accessible. there is an inherent songfulness and singability about this entire concerto, which is evident from the very first melody (given by the winds after the dramatic a minor chords in the beginning measures). this dotted rhythm and melody comes back again and again, always leaving an open end for subsequent developments.
second theme begins at . one of liszt's suggestions to grieg regarding orchestration was to give this theme to the trumpets instead of the celli. grieg made almost 300 edits to this concerto between its original completion and his death in 1907. liszt's suggestion was at some point incorporated but didn't make the final cut, for which i am pretty glad.

one more interesting tidbit - this was the first piano concerto ever recorded (in significantly abridged form) - backhaus in 1909. check it out!

cool.

Haydn: Symphony No. 100 in G Major, "Military" - I. Adagio - Allegro

the nickname doesn't come from the first movement: if you want to know the reason, give the middle section of the second movement a listen.
this symphony is the 8th of 12 "london" symphonies (which he wrote while he was in said city). these were haydn's last symphonies, his most well-known, and most of his best.
here we have the first movement.

there is a slow stately introduction, in the main key. this travels around the dominant and builds up suspense for a dancing theme which is scored only for flutes and oboes, repeated by the strings. second theme begins at 2:34, transitioning to d minor and then quickly going into D major, 2:51. after a repeat of the exposition, the development begins at 4:53 with a super dramatic 2 bar grand pause. and then the violin ostinato comes back suddenly in b flat major. this is a great moment!
cycle through lots of keys, play with the themes, and we eventually end up at an e minor statement of the theme at 5:36. this is reiterated upwards through several keys... and then we have a recap at 6:07. second theme in the correct key this time, and then the end! no coda.

:)

Schubert: Symphony No. 9 in C Major, D.944 ("The Great") - II. Andante con moto

apparently there is some controversy over what number to call this symphony. the germans call it 7, but sometimes also 8, and then everyone who speaks english call it 9. and then apparently a lot of american orchestras just don't even give it a number and call it the "great" c major. oh well. the story is that it was composed mainly in 1825, scored by 1826, and first played in 1827, but not actually performed publicly until 1829 (schubert died in 1828). it was another ten years before it would see the concert hall again, unearthed by schumann, and performed under the baton of none other than mendelssohn. schumann loved the symphony, even though it took a while to cotton on (it was basically only performed in pieces, even with other lighter music in between movements, to counter what was then considered excessive length and seriousness). but today it's regarded as one of schubert's finest works for orchestra (alongside his unfinished 8th).

this is the second movement of the symphony.

munch and bso

as an andante con moto, this "slow" movement is really not that slow at all but more of a fast almost-march. the instrumentation, rhythm, and mood all remind me of this section of the last movement of mahler 7, about 5 minutes in. the introducing few measures are strings with a firm rhythm, then oboe and clarinet solos singing above that. eventually (around 2 minutes) this softens into some A major tunes.
an F major second theme comes in around 3 minutes in, and finally the strings get to play some warm schubert tunes. ultimately this falls, though, and after a pause, the first, more tragic theme comes back, decorated with little string and wind inserts. the addition of these firm dotted rhythms (which just reinforce the marchlike rhythm) adds an undertone of murky trouble, especially since the horns keep it in the return of the a major section (6:08). it helps a lot to build towards the ultimate climax, the arc of which really begins at 7:58. here we hear almost nonstop diminished chords until the final one, marked FFF, after which there is a huge, loud silence.
the rest of the movement seems to me to be trying to reconcile us with this huge, scary climax. at first we've got a lone cello melody, which grows and flowers into a sort of super decorated reprise of the A major theme. the coda, however, beginning at 10:53, seems to gradually sink back into resignation, tolling brass and pizzicato strings leading us back into the march theme. we venture into some other key areas, but when the singing theme in A comes back, it's in minor, and then we're done.

one of the schubertian techniques on display in this movement is his ability to switch seamlessly between parallel major and minor (e.g. e major/ e minor, a major/ a minor). for the ultimate tour de force in this, check out his posthumous g major string quartet, in which he does this practically every half bar (i actually have a lot of trouble remembering whether this quartet is actually in g major or g minor). in that piece, the victory of major is proven by the end of the last movement, but in this movement, the tragic seems to weigh it down and prevail.

Debussy: Danse sacree et profane for chromatic harp and string orchestra, L.103

usually as per my one movement a day custom I would try to separate the "sacred" and "secular" (for that's what "profane" means in this case), because they are actually two separate movements, but in the first place it's extremely difficult to find a recording which only does one of the two, and in the second place the two combined are only about 10 minutes long. so this counts as a double post.

probably the most interesting thing about this very serene, fairly conventional piece is that it was originally written for the chromatic harp, i.e. a harp with a string for every chromatic note, 12 strings per octave instead of the usual 7, and no pedals to change said keys. this thing took, as you might imagine, a ridiculous amount of time to tune, and was soon abandoned after its 1904 debut. but this piece isn't actually so unplayable on a conventional harp. debussy wrote it on commission from pleyel, the company which was producing the newly minted chromatic harps.

the first movement is usually described as modal, perhaps inspired by debussy's impressions of music from the greco-roman period. it's a slow and ritualistic contrast to the second movement, which is a graceful d major waltz.

next in a continuing series of lazy-entries...

Granados: Intermezzo

ok, sorry, i'm really lazy tonight... (commuted to nyc proper today) will make up with beefier posts in the next few days. for now, enjoy this video!

Copland: Rodeo - III. Saturday Night Waltz

ok, i am lazy today. here is a short, sweet little movement from the very well known rodeo suite.

this is a ballet suite which premiered in 1942 with choreography to five movements, one of which (the "ranch house party" which would have been third) is not heard in the orchestral suite which was subsequently arranged. this would be copland's second "cowboy ballet" in four years, but the choreographer (agnes de mille) convinced him that it would be different enough. her influence was such that she determined every member of the cast and to some extent controlled the music as well. wiki says that it's a result of this tight control that copland, rather uncharacteristically, leaves the myriad folk melodies he incorporates mostly untouched (as de mille transcribed them).

everyone knows the last movement of this piece, but i rather like the constant switching of duple and triple meter in this movement. (the first movement is definitely worth checking out, if you don't know it.)

unsurprisingly, youtube is swamped with high school/cc orchestras of this whole suite (i first played it myself back when i was in 8th grade... ugh). but here's a recording by indianapolis symphony.

this whole ballet is basically about the cowgirl - danced by de mille herself, originally - trying to find acceptance within her society. she is awkward and seeks acceptance among the cowboys, particularly the "head wrangler." a tomboy, she is much more of a kindred spirit to these men than her competitor ladies, all the local girls. this movement is what happens at a dance in which everyone pairs off, leaving the cowgirl awkwardly alone until the "champion roper" actually approaches her (after being bested by the wrangler in attracting someone else).

this is the folk song which was transcribed to become the main theme.

the movement starts with the orchestra "tuning up" in preparation. presumably everyone is sort of pairing up during this interlude, and then the waltz proper begins.
i love the ambiguity between 3 and 2 with this theme. pick either and it will feel natural, but always with a slight tug at some point into the other meter.
a much faster interlude begins at 2:43. solo winds and celli play with two meshed seventh chords (a-flat minor, and e-flat minor) until all of a sudden a very short "development" theme blossoms out, dovetailing nicely into the main theme. presumably at this point the cowgirl has gotten her man and is dancing with him (or maybe i'm just making up all this? it's kind of hard to find info on, actually :o)
enjoy.

Holst: The Planets, Op. 32 - III. Mercury, the Winged Messenger

so all anyone ever really recognizes from this suite is mars and jupiter. here is movement 3, a sparkling 4 minute character piece.

holst wrote this from 1914-1916, and it premiered in september 1918 to an audience of 250 (and on short notice - the orchestra only saw the music two hours before the performance). it didn't go completely public until 1920, all the performances up to then being either semi-private or incomplete.

despite the name of the suite, it's common knowledge now that the motivation for the piece was not actually astronomic or mythological, but rather astrological - holst really liked astrology and fortunetelling, and he used a horoscope book to come up for the subtitles to all these. mercury is one of the movements for which the roman mythology coincides more or less with the astrology (a winged messenger, associated in astrology with intellect, communication, and mental facility). but saturn the bringer of old age (a god of dance, agriculture, and justice), uranus the magician (god of nothing in particular in mythology, but definitely not a magician), and neptune the mystic (god of the sea) have rather less going for them in the mythological sense.

here's a british recording for a quintessentially british piece. BBC and mackerras

this movement is fleeting and fast, like you might expect. it's scherzando, 6/8, marked vivace. pretty simple to grasp. it's basically in sonata form. the exposition has two main themes, one at the beginning, delicate ascending and desceding inversions of chords, finished off by a chromatic ascending flourish. the second is first played (after a few tries) at 0:38 by the oboes.

1:00 begins the middle section (it's actually not quite enough to call a "development"), and this middle theme is a little more dancelike, first played by a single violin. it basically gets repeated until all the orchestra is playing it, and then it dwindles back down to a single flute. then the recap, at 2:02. he takes the time to develop both themes from the first minute, until solo instruments (including a twinkling celeste) bring back all three and weave them together (or at least put them rapidly end on end).

if you really wanted to connect this to astrological properties of mercury, you definitely could, first with the speed of the movement, then with the rhythms - an incessant 6/8 or 2/4, mechanical and rapid - plus lots and lots of hemiola (listen to the middle section), cross rhythms, and orchestral relays, passing the baton of a melody seamlessly from instrument to instrument. it really leaves little to the imagination, which is one reason i think it's a popular suite - a bunch of character pieces tied up with a fairly compelling theme, even if a common misperception is that those characters are roman gods and goddesses. it works for the first four movements, which is why i suspect those have become the most well-known. i know that personally i enjoy thinking of the celeste as mercury's winged slippers.

Schumann: Manfred Overture, Op. 115

here is the overture from schumann's incidental music to manfred, written in 1849, today one of schumann's most performed works.
byron wrote his poem/drama manfred in 1816-1817, and it subsequently received tons of translations and ended up rather popular in germany (and elsewhere). it's the story of a guy named manfred who is guilty for an undisclosed reason regarding the death of his wife astarte. he summons spirits to try to forget, but they can't help him, so he goes on his merry way flaunting a lot of religious authority, ultimately killing himself and in so doing refusing to submit to the higher powers.

schumann began writing a libretto for an incidental music suite in july 1848, began writing actual music in october, and had finished the overture by the end of the month. the overture was premiered before the rest of the music and generally got better response (then as now).
juuuust to give you an idea of what both the poem and the music were generally like, goethe defended his distaste of the writing by saying that the "gloomy intensity of a boundless, profound despair" was tiresome. the mildly hypochondriac mood of the whole piece was considered overwrought and outdated.

three strong recordings.
this piece has had a lot of musicological analyses done on it which try to tie it to robert schumann's mental/creative decline. for example: the tempo is marked "rasch" (rushed), and this can be seen programmatically - the insistent and pervasive syncopation from the very beginning (you might not know it from listening, but the three initial chords are syncopated) destabilize it. this of course can be related to the plot of the piece - those opening chords are representative of manfred's crime, his spiritual struggle, or his guilt - but historians have pointed to the prevalence of aggressive syncopation, triplets, and three against two as indicators of schumann's tumultuous mental state. at any rate, this isn't a concert overture like the hebrides, but more of a character piece for what's to come, so i think it's alright to take a more programmatic view.

the overture begins with a slow introduction, then speeds up to a sonata-form allegro. in nature it's been compared with some wagner, berlioz, and liszt (and i happen to think the motif at 4:00 sounds really wagnerian), but thematically it has been called the older relative of lots of brahms (check out the syncopation around 3:20).
three wind/brass chords propel the piece into a development at 4:26. there is a recap that is more or less normal, but then the ending is subdued, and doesn't provide a conclusion but leads elsewhere. if you take it as a part of the whole, then maybe it leads to manfred sitting in his study, the opening of the play. but if you take it as a sort of microcosm of the entire work/story, it's a darker-toned implication about the ending of the actual story (the actual incidental music ends in e major requiem, implying a redeemed manfred - this overture, if you read it this way, doesn't whitewash his death).

there's a little cell of material which comes around every once in a while, starting with D-C#-G# (falling, quarter notes) around 2:39. clara schumann called this "astarte's theme," noting how it resurfaces every once in a while as a sort of second theme, then is quickly lost, dissipating almost immediately. you might see this as part of the story itself, and manfred's quest after her, in his guilt.

ok, dark work today. stay tuned for something happier tomorrow!

Kreisler/Corelli: La Folia for Violin and Piano

doing the daily thing is turning out to be pretty difficult.

for saturday: an arrangement of the famous theme la folia which has been used by over 150 composers throughout history, beginning at least in the 16th century.

d: (i)-V-i-VII-III-VII-i-V-(i)
this is the basic structure, which lends itself to an infinite number of fascinating variations. because the theme itself (and the chord progression) are so interesting, this is one set of theme and variations i find quite compelling.

the milstein below is corelli's own variations on the la folia theme.

enjoy.

Faure: Piano Quintet in D minor, Op. 89 - I. Molto Moderato

ok and here is your second dose of french music for today - a very different, rather lesser-known piano quintet by a composer who lived roughly at the same time (about 20 years later on both ends) as franck.

faure wrote this work in his middle years as a music conservatoire inspector, having actually been blocked from a teaching post at the paris conservatoire by faculty who regarded him as too modern (he would end up there in 1896 anyway). faure had little time to devote himself exclusively to composition and sat on works for a while before getting them done - this quintet was in the works from 1890-94, finally published in 1895. it was dedicated to violinist eugene ysaye.

here is a great description of how i see the first movement:

Fauré's Piano Quintets are very different from his more popular Piano Quartets, which were written much earlier and storm the heights and depths of High Romanticism. The Quintets are sublime, but elusive. They are warm and comfy, like climbing with your feet into an armchair in front of a fireplace. The emotions are reticent, all is calm, you sense the soft smile of a wise old man. Sometimes it is a sad smile, a sorrow, a regret.

the beginning of this work is just so sad and wistful. later in this same review the writer says that the opening of this movement is "brahmsian," but in a way which sings with a very french melody - melancholy, unfulfilled, almost stalled, as if it has nowhere to go and is forced to circle around the same small room. i think that's why these works aren't really memorable - they aren't singing - but like much french music, even the stuff we all know and love, it is great at establishing an otherworldly color.
(let me just say as an aside, i don't know what "molto moderato" means - i guess he really really didn't want the tempo to be too much in either direction?)
the first phrase almost doesn't end until 1:07, the first we get of a real warm cadence. everything up until this point is kind of a cold color, lonely, sliding back and forth between neighboring keys.
the piano arpeggios are back immediately, but a "b" section begins around 1:45. i actually have a hard time telling where phrases "end" in this whole piece, but the texture/rhythm change right around here into something that really reminds me of the second theme in schumann's piano quintet.
a different section at 2:47, with slower arpeggios in the piano and a more songful theme which then dovetails and develops on the initial theme.

critics express problems with faure's monochromaticism and i think they might have a point. but the long-breathedness and chameleon-esque character of this music is what makes it rather special. i always like hearing how everything just melts into everything else - themes emerge from an almost constantly flowing texture, transitions are so gradual you don't notice they've happened until all of a sudden something strongly familiar emerges. that's what i like about this piece, other than the fact that i just really like the opening feeling it gives me. kind of goosebumpy.

Franck: Piano Quintet in F minor, M. 7 - I. Molto moderato quasi lento

for this double/make-up entry, the first movements of two piano quintets by two contemporaneous french composers.
(this is also music i was more or less unfamiliar with, so it's easier for me to do these expositions of more well-known works)

M stands for wilhelm mohr, who catalogued franck's work in 1969.
this 3-movement quintet was written in 1878-1879, pretty much right in the middle of his fairly prosperous career as professor at the paris conservatoire (his so-called "late period" lasts from 1872-1890). his new job allowed him to spend a lot more time composing, and he had a pretty reasonable output of work during this period, including a lot of the pieces we now know him best for - le chausseur maudit, symphonic variations, and later, the violin sonata.
wikipedia indicates that he is represented in the "standard" modern repertoire only by a fairly narrow range of works. i think perhaps this has to do with the fact that the color of much of what he wrote was so similar - hyperromantic, instrumentationally/texturally standard, lapsing sometimes into stagnation, even. but this piano quintet was one of his few works which had a successful premiere.

this massive first movement is angsty and vital, with a "theatrical grimness," as one of the critics wrote back in the day.
his work before this was mostly just sacred work, and this piece was the beginning of his actual success as a composer. nyphil writes that the mood's likeliest explanation was "franck's infatuation with his student augusta holmes, a beautiful and gifted woman 25 years his junior." apparently saint-saens, who was the pianist at the premiere, rather disliked this piece, as well as franck's wife, felicite (for perhaps obvious reasons).
this movement is opened by a slow instroduction with two components: huge angsty, dramatic cry from the strings, and a melancholy melody for the piano which begins at 0:27. at 3:43, the tempo suddenly changes to allegro, and a nice characterization for what's happening for the rest of the movement is that instead of the piano trying to calm the strings down, it's the other way around. the super-dotted rhythm is derived from the very opening string statement.
at 5:06 is a very chromatic theme which plays a crucial role in the work as a whole, repeating at various points throughout the three movements. it comes back at the end of this movement, much more agitated, at 7:43. in between you have a return of the slow introduction, and lots of development based on said theme.
looooots of chromatic movement through this piece - does quite a bit to undermine the tonal center. some characteristically french melody writing, and quite a lot of the devilish arpeggio-work that anyone who's familiar with the violin sonata will recognize - which was the next and maybe even only work that was quite as overtly passionate and heart-on-sleeve as this.

enjoy!

Mendelssohn: Hebrides Overture (Fingal's Cave), Op. 26

this piece and its genesis are readily findable on the internet, so i will just do something abbreviated here. to be honest this post is definitely just about my personal enjoyment of this piece, which is one of my favorite short orchestral pieces of all time.

the title of "overture" is kind of misleading, as there is no opera or play to follow it. it's just 10 minutes of "mood-setting" music - an early form of program music which lacks plot, but delves deeply into setting.

mendelssohn had a pretty charmed life - he wrote this in 1830, during travels to england and scotland. he was barely 20 at the time and had already gained fame by conducting a performance of bach's st. matthew passion, and for these few years he basically just traveled all over europe.
this is dedicated to king william iv of prussia. he also conceived bits of the scottish symphony during this trip, but that work took much longer to mature - that would turn out to be his third symphony and didn't get completed until 1842, becoming his op. 56.

here is a pretty awesome furtwangler recording. for some reason it took me a little while to wade through the recordings that are unlabeled and simply come with pretty pictures of said cave, and i almost thought youtube lacked any legitimate recordings of the piece, so i'll post a bunch here for easier access.

but actually these recordings all sound sort of similar to me: this music is so simple, so well-distributed, that it more or less plays itself. this recording is actually pretty idiosyncratic mostly because of the tempi he takes, which are really extreme (the last minute and half are at a blistering speed, while the stretch just before that is really, really slow).

toscanini gets kind of a reedy sound - a lot of modern recordings get a huge wash of sound from the strings, which lends itself well to the swelling seas, but the slides and thinness in this orchestra give a sense of clarity.
ok, and just because this is a cool recording:

video of casals. it has his characteristic unbalanced tempo but he really knows how to extract some conviction from the strings.

any number of the rest of the recordings that come up first on youtube when you type in hebrides will offer you more "standard" takes.

the piece has two motifs. the first is the very opening, which he came up with the day before his visit to the actual cave, and he included this in a letter to his sister fanny:

it is undulating, floats on top of the murmuring sixteenth notes of the strings. the second begins at 1:41 in the furtwangler recording. it's sweeter, in d major, and a bit wistful, swelling up and then receding, like the minor melody.
notice how tension is always built up by the moving sixteenths - you only become conscious of it at certain moments when it bursts into focus, for example around 2:35 with the ascending chromatic bass line, which provides some excellent impetus for the orchestra with its repeated notes.
the other thing to notice is the repeated wind and brass fanfare like figures - tattoos of sixteenths and dotted rhythms.
my favorite moment is 5:16 when the theme from the beginning is transformed into muted staccato notes for the strings. the key changes here are really leading, and the rhythm is compelling when articulated in a way that is completely different from the main melody.
ok, just enjoy this awesome piece. i have to put this in though, which i found courtesy of wikipedia:

see you tomorrow.

Tchaikovsky: Marche Slave (Slavonic March) in B-flat minor, Op. 31

this is a highly programmatic piece written by tchaik at the behest of the russian government during the serbian war against the ottoman empire. a propagandistic and accessible piece, it depicts russians coming to the aid of serbian military forces, premiered in moscow on nov 17, 1876.

wikipedia pretty much has the component themes and such explained, and i did this on a pops concert (complete with demos of the various motifs), so this is kind of a slacker entry...
from the beginning: here is a slavic melody called "Sunce jarko, ne sijas jednako," or "oh bright sun, your light is unequal."

tchaik directs this to be played with a funeral march's tempo and mood. notice the basses' ascending grace notes of doom that lends it that air, much like at least one other funeral march we can think of...
the other, more songful serb melody begins at about 1:10.
here's the battle that the serbs are laboring under at 1:24 - notice the dark brass ascending from underneath, the skittering of the strings.

at 3:10, here come the russians - a chipper little rustic tune. (if you want to see a really amusing conductor antic go just a few seconds before - about 3:00.)
here's god save the tsar at 4:34 (also an awesome little conductor gesture...). hmm, now what other piece might one ever have heard that before?
now they're just entering the battle - back come the warlike strains and a basic reprise of the two slavic melodies.
6:51 - according to my conductor last week, the russians *actually* help the serbs here.

and from there on it's on to VICTORY the end

Respighi: Pini di Roma - III. "I pini del Gianicolo" (Pines of the Janiculum)

so the first thing you might be thinking after actually reading the title is, what is the gianicolo?
the janiculum is a hill in western rome. it happens to be home to some of the most ancient temples and monuments in rome, one of which (the temple to the god janus) is claimed by wiki to be the site and setting of this movement. right now i am too annoyed at the fact that this fact is neither cited nor substantiated on wiki's site and yet every info site on the internet seemingly has just taken to mirroring wiki's entry that i am not really going to give this notion the time of day. i think this movement is about said hill, the sense of isolation and elevation one might have standing atop it, and the proximity to nature that it provides (it is, or apparently was, covered at one time almost completely in pines).

pines of rome is a four movement suite or orchestral tone poem, which became respighi's genre of choice after his more or less unsuccessful run at opera (the great italian tradition...) the first of his most famous works (set of three suites known as the roman trilogy) was fountains of rome, written in 1916. pines of rome (or just "pines" as orchestra players usually call it) was composed in 1924. the third, roman festivals, is actually played quite rarely. it was written in 1926.

before we go any further, here are two great recordings of this particular movement, sifted out of the mass of university orchestra and high school band ensembles that are on youtube.

Tosca and NBC. before i saw this video i had actually never seen toscanini conduct. this recording is very... straight. no nonsense, nothing fluffy. nice sound though. check out the cello soli at 2:15.

this is a much more "typical" recording and achieves the dreaminess that i think attracts a lot of people to respighi's music. i'm posting it for comparison's sake and also because it's ridiculous having to wade through all the band performances on youtube to find an actual well done recording of this piece that even a recording by this relatively unknown orchestra is definitely in the top echelon... and it's pretty good. some nice wind solos.
you'll notice right away that the most characteristic writing of this movement (and maybe of the entire suite) is the solo wind writing - the long-winded opening clarinet solo is famously difficult to pull off. the movement is lush and tranquil. the obligatory program note is just respighi's accompanying description -

A quiver runs through the air: the pine trees of the Janiculum stand distinctly outlined in the clear light of a full moon. A nightingale is singing.

the string writing evokes something of debussy - washes of colors and blobby chords that sort of metamorphose into other key areas by sliding around chromatically. the main theme is super chromatic and always seems to want to rise up but never quite come into the sun.
and of course there's the famous nightingale. maybe the first ever recorded instance of using pre-recorded sounds in a piece. done tastefully and to great effect.
ok, off to new york.

Bizet: Prelude to Carmen

i can't find an opus number for almost anything bizet wrote: apparently all of his stuff was catalogued by a guy named winton dean, an english musicologist born 1916. so all his stuff mostly just has WD numbers, and this is WD31, composed in 1873-4 on commission by the opera-comique in paris. the first run didn't go so well, and it wouldn't begin gaining real popularity, starting in vienna, until just a few months after his death in 1875. it took almost 8 years for it to come back to paris.

this whole opera is full of memorable tunes, a lot of which make an appearance in the prelude. in fact there isn't really any "form" to this overture except the prominence of said tunes. the overture's theme, is a jolly, festive, whirling dance in two, notable for its vibrant percussion and excitement-building trills. it's interspersed with a f-sharp major section that has a softer, lilting melody (which doesn't last long - too much celebration going on).
next is everyone's favorite melody of course - the toreador's song, sung by escamillo later on. the theme returns and brings that to an affirmative close.
this is as far as the recording above goes, which is really a good one - kind of dry acoustics but i like how the direction builds through all the repeated sixteenths and the clarity of the whole instrumentation, which sometimes gets to be a problem (i won't post levine's version here because i think it's really over-muscled. his orchestra is gigantic btw, for some reason this didn't seem to be as much of a problem in the mozart in the previous entry, but i really think they are being overzealous in the carmen recording).

here's mehta doing all of what is technically in the prelude. there's a sultry theme that enters, heralding a darker undertone. lots of harmonic minor and dramatic bass-instrument thumps. and then the prelude ends on a huge diminished 7th chord, and... the opera begins!

see you tomorrow.

Mozart: Overture to Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute), K. 620

OK, as i've been promising for a few days, some Mozart!

composed in 1791, and unique because it's one of the only works Mozart composed to german text. the libretto was written by emanuel schikaneder. it was his last really major work, produced in vienna.

i don't really want to focus on plot synopsis, so we'll just dive right in to the actual overture.

levine has near perfected the art of opera, and is one of the most consistent big name maestros for the form today. this is a rather beefy version. he also looks incurably goofy (i cannot be the only one who wants to laugh when i see the cue right before the first note), but it cannot be disputed he gets the job done.

the first few chords are always done differently. the pickup is actually written as a sixteenth, but they're usually so heavy that they sound like something different. in any case: these chords are like a foundation - they set up a "realm," both tonal and emotional, within which the opera resides: graceful yet grand, dramatic and delicate. or as dale put it more poetically, "it's like describing eden." and indeed the whole overture of an opera is all about setting up a musical stage. the rest of the overture uses mainly just one brisk theme of eighths and sixteenths, which is developed in a fugal form. a brief middle section begins with a sort of reprise of the opening chords in the dominant major, B flat. a minor section which develops the sole theme with more fugal interplay gets furious and dramatic but remains light. a truly mozartean ring around the circle of fifths leads us to a fake recap which dissolves into a series of descending scales, and then back to the theme for the real recap.

notice the fantastic brass fanfares in the coda ;)

just for reference, you can also check out the muti/vpo one - i won't host it here because i think it's quite similar to the levine, except perhaps a bit more delicate and "classy." it is nice because you can see the orchestra for most of it, ionno about that bg picture though :D

here's something very different.

a perfect example of what i was talking about with the opening sixteenth notes. abbado decides to take them pretty much in time, and doesn't stretch the half notes *or* the fermatas. the opening is muuuch brisker than you hear normally, and the overall sound is thinner - almost as if he's trying to go for a period feel with the modern orchestra. lots of decay on longer notes, super short chords, and generally everyone is playing quite light even for this overture. it's also quite a bit faster, clocking in at over half a minute shorter than levine or muti (in a 7 minute piece, nontrivial). i enjoy this though. very unsentimental, but classy.

dammit

ok, i forgot to do it for saturday. i will do a makeup today. sorry :(

Brahms: String Sextet No. 1 in B-flat Major, Op. 18 - II. Andante ma moderato

chamber fridays, in honor of classical music hour on fridays at princeton (or because i felt like i needed to have a day dedicated to chamber music)

this sextet might be brahms's best work for a chamber group that doesn't include piano. the problem with a lot of his string quartets is that he basically tries to write a piano piece and then divide it among the four string parts - at least, this is what it sounds to me. so invariably some instrument ends up with an ostinato or half of a chord that isn't quite as fulfilling because it doesn't fill out the texture the way it would on a piano. even if he assigns double stops and the like to the string instruments, because of all the different voices/timbres, it still often sounds sort of thin or ungrounded.

this is a problem brahms solves in this piece by adding more instruments. it's easy to imagine that things might get bogged down quickly with six instruments - 150% the normal group - and it is indeed a very, very different experience playing with six people as opposed to four. but i think i would be hard-pressed to find moments in this sextet that are actually too thick the way they might be if other composers tried to tackle the same ensemble.
there aren't that many string sextets out there - the other famous one is, of course, tchaik's souvenir de florence, which also doesn't have *that* much trouble being heard clearly, but this is because it's basically a first violin concerto (and sometimes a cello concerto). the same goes for mendelssohn's string octet. it seems the bigger the ensemble, the more need for one, perhaps two parts to come out prominently by virtue of being higher or more melodic). there's something about the magic number four that makes the string quartet full enough to be gratifying, but still an "equal" partnership among the four players. i think this is still the sort of aesthetic brahms goes for even with six players, though, and i think this is actually much more successful than his string quartet endeavors.

ok, on to the actual piece.

this sextet was written in 1860, just after the first piano concerto (op. 15). during this time he was basically juggling jobs between hamburg and detmold. this was also at the height of his public "feud" against the school of wagner and liszt, who thought he was too old-fashioned. he would later withdraw from that argument entirely. he later earned more widespread popularity in 1868 with Ein Deutsche Requiem.

this movement is a set of theme and variations. brahms is one of the only composers whom i consistently "trust" to handle this form in a way that maintains my interest. i think this has something to do with his ability to fill in a plain theme with a unique contour and insert a moment (in this case, a couple variations) of absolute gorgeousness. with this movement, every variation taps something really visceral, and the soft/major variations are sublime.

fantastic, raw, and very powerful recording, especially the first major variation. for comparison's sake,

this version is much more demure - you can hear it in the first two seconds. it's got its own beauty in its cleanliness and grace, but for me there's no real comparison.
edit: after discovering the first video is no longer legal in the US (and actually not having any idea who it was), i have begrudgingly looked up a second recording which i also consider to be very powerful.

the movement has the following variations:
I. theme, which is so simple and tuneful and yet angsty and intense that it really keeps your interest from the get-go, something already unique in the realm of themes and variations - themes usually are so simple you can't wait to hear what the composer's going to do and can we please just get the theme over with. not so here.
II. a variation which passes the arpeggios between all the instruments while keeping the firm marching chords on top of them
III. triplet variation. he throws in some great harmonic changes just at the end of the first half - switching to F major just briefly before descending back.
IV. stormy harmonic minor scales with lots of surging swells
V. the first major variation: songful and broad and breathy. the transition into this variation is an awesome moment.
VI. a much more delicate gossamer variation - the melody, given to the first viola, becomes something gentle and flowing (it doesn't even really sound like a melody - more like the harmony part, if a more straightforward version of the melody were present). it's accompanied by open strings and falling open intervals in the violins.
VII. a reprise of the theme, except made more solemn, heavier, by giving the melody to the cello and accompanying that with heavy, rhythmic pizzicati. marches on to a quiet close that somehow morphs into major magically just before the end.
aaaaaahhhhh it's so good!!!

Bruch: Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Op. 26 - II. Adagio

ok so i'm putting off mozart another day because today is a very special day! and i'm going to commemorate it with some sappy romantic music that everyone already knows :D and today is bruch's birthday, so this is also a pretty good excuse.

bruch wrote this concerto and, unbeknownst to a lot of violinists, two other ones that apparently he thought were just as good (history has not been kind to these other concerti, unfortunately). this first one was composed first in 1866, premiered, and then revised with help from the famous joachim, who premiered that in 1868. and that's the piece we hear today.

i have always felt that the second movement was *far and away* the best of the three movements. from the warm key to the core melody, the majestic arpeggios, the beautiful climax, it's pretty much all there.

ok i wanted to upload the recording i grew up with - isaac stern with ormandy and the philadelphia orchestra. classic, clear, and never overdone. i love it. but unfortunately it's not on youtube and blogger doesn't have audio hosting services. blah. well if you can find it, give it a go. for now we'll go with...

can't really lose here.

i've always felt that this slow movement is great at being melodic without being shrill, even with the alternating a-bflats in the climax. just listen to the beginning of the movement. it is romantic without really being thick, even though sometimes the movement does get a hair repetitive or cheesy with arpeggios, stretched out chromatic passing tones, etc. this is really quite well mitigated by many violinists though, if they can convey the pathos of these moments without necessarily making them excessive, and also if they can find moments other than the obvious ones to deliver on. it is so easy with romantic concerti to fall into a rote interpretation.

there is pretty much no better example of the ability to convey intensity without excess (yeah, he does this weird open d string thing in the second line or so that just sounds strange, but just listen to the length of his phrases...)

ok i really want to kill blogger right now for its fail youtube search which refuses to give me this video among its search options. but you must watch this! you need to turn the volume up because it's set so low on this video, but it's definitely worth it.
Ida Haendel at 77(?) years in 2005
i'm ashamed to admit i didn't even know whether she was still alive, but this video is fascinating. there are a number of orchestral following fails and also fairly common intonation blunders. but this is so amazing by virtue of the fact that she has *so much conviction* it makes me want to back up because of the intensity. i would usually call mistakes in intonation "slips," but after listening to this you will have to agree that nothing she does can be really called a "slip" because through all these 'errors' she is playing with such oomph that you don't even care that the errors are being made anymore. it's like THIS IS THE WAY I'M GONNA DO IT NOW PUT UP OR SHUT UP. lets keep in mind that she's 77, if you or i can play like that at 77 then we can talk about those things.
o my this is so intense.

Dinicu: Hora Staccato

OK, I admit it... i forgot to do the post earlier oops. and now i had to configure email submission bc my postwriter is being slow and retarded. so, here is the most awesome hora staccato you'll ever hear (and watch)!

check out that downbow staccato.

dinicu was a romanian composer/violin virtuoso. he wrote this piece for his own graduation from bucharest conservatory in 1906 and played it there. win!

i promise not to forget tomorrow :(

guess!

i love to play this game with this composer in particular because he wrote some stuff that was so very atypical of what we (as musicians) know him for. this has been stuck in my head for a bit. if you feel like playing the guessing game, click here and close your eyes and try to guess the composer.
after you've finished the little guessing game read on below.

this is the waltz from "the first echelon," film music written in 1956. it was later included in his "suite for variety orchestra no. 1" (8 movements from various film/ballet music scores)
much as i hate to do this, i'm just going to paraphrase a blurb i found while searching: shotakovich wrote quite a lot of light-spirited music, for films, plays, or plain entertainment, and they don't really have much meaning apart from that. after an initial growing pains kind of period while he suffered the "initiation" of becoming a "soviet" artist, he got used to writing music that toed the line. and paid the bills. by this time stalin was dead, of course, but film music had become one of his staples, financially speaking.
this waltz is so cute. i'm playing it in an orchestra right now for a coffee concert and it's been stuck in my head all day.

i was originally going to do some mozart today, but i got home with only 20 minutes to midnight to spare so you get something really simple today. enjoy ;)


(originally had the jump function incorporated into this post. however apparently using this feature causes the text editor on blogger to royally freeze up, so no more jumps. sorry if seeing the extra information spoiled it for anyone.)