|
Post by jk on Jan 6, 2020 9:35:47 GMT
There's no need, sir. A second pair of eyes always looks further than the first. (Anyway, I'd say your face is an alarming shade of grey.)
|
|
|
Post by Kapitan on Jan 6, 2020 12:35:15 GMT
There's no need, sir. A second pair of eyes always looks further than the first. (Anyway, I'd say your face is an alarming shade of grey.) If that means I’ve expired, that’s worse!
|
|
|
Post by jk on Jan 6, 2020 21:44:08 GMT
There's no need, sir. A second pair of eyes always looks further than the first. (Anyway, I'd say your face is an alarming shade of grey.) If that means I’ve expired, that’s worse! There's no answer to that! Except perhaps this rather unsettling late piano piece by Franz Lizst called Nuages Gris: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuages_gris
|
|
|
Post by Kapitan on Jan 6, 2020 22:57:02 GMT
Unsettling is right. Nice though.
|
|
|
Post by jk on Jan 9, 2020 13:26:40 GMT
Today is the fateful day in 1905 in Russian history when soldiers of the Imperial Guard fired upon unarmed demonstrators marching on the Winter Palace in St Petersburg, killing several hundred of them. Shostakovich commemorates it in the second movement of his Eleventh Symphony, although it is more likely a depiction of the then recent crushing of the Hungarian Revolution by Soviet troops. Play at full volume, otherwise you won't hear the deathly hush at 15:06. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._11_(Shostakovich)
|
|
|
Post by Kapitan on Jan 12, 2020 17:01:55 GMT
That's disconcertingly powerful. Even brutal.
|
|
|
Post by jk on Jan 13, 2020 9:40:45 GMT
That's disconcertingly powerful. Even brutal. It is. Whether it's about 1905 or 1956, it's terrifyingly graphic! Still, after decades of living in fear of his life, with friends disappearing left right and centre, Shosty had a personal reason to sound aggressive. The opening movement preceding this "scherzo" is an unsettling portrait of the Palace Square (made even more unsettling after actually standing in it). Listening to it, you just know shit's about to happen. And that violent second movement is followed by an impassioned requiem for the victims of whichever aborted revolution. Funnily, when I bought my version under Cluytens (recorded in the composer's presence) in 1963, my record store didn't have the second, one-sided LP, so I didn't get hold of the finale until thirty years later. Valentyn Silvestrov's "To Thee We Sing" takes us to a much more serene place. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentyn_Silvestrov
|
|
|
Post by jk on Jan 17, 2020 22:07:03 GMT
|
|
|
Post by Kapitan on Jan 17, 2020 22:11:55 GMT
Beautiful! And also a great tidbit on his name from the wiki page:
"There are several theories regarding the origin of the epithet "non Papa". One holds that it was jokingly added by his publisher, Susato, to distinguish him from Pope Clement VII—"Jacob Clemens—but not the Pope.""
|
|
|
Post by Kapitan on Feb 14, 2020 15:24:05 GMT
A beautiful sonic backdrop to my work this morning--which actually repeatedly has distracted me from the aforementioned work.
Pergolesi's contributions to this world were too few, as he died of tuberculosis in 1736 at the age of 26.
|
|
|
Post by Kapitan on Feb 14, 2020 19:57:44 GMT
A lot of Stabat Maters in one day for a Lutheran-born atheist, but there you go...
|
|
|
Post by jk on Feb 14, 2020 23:22:34 GMT
A lot of Stabat Maters in one day for a Lutheran-born atheist, but there you go... Good work, Cap'n. There used to be an annual Stabat Mater festival in the south of NL until a couple of years ago. They performed the above two; I also remember hearing a modern one by James MacMillan and this less-known offering by Marc-Antoine Charpentier: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc-Antoine_Charpentier
|
|
|
Post by Kapitan on Feb 14, 2020 23:41:25 GMT
Stabat Mater festival strikes me as hilarious. I'm not entirely sure why, I guess because I imagine the "power ballad festival" or "train song festival"...
Anyway, that Charpentier is BEAUTIFUL. Absolutely swells the heart. Thank you.
|
|
|
Post by jk on Feb 27, 2020 21:57:58 GMT
This is Marguerite's aria "Autrefois un roi de Thulé" from Berlioz's La Damnation de Faust, which I heard on the radio a couple of days ago. We saw La Damnation given a thrilling live performance under Gergiev a short while back. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_damnation_de_Faust
|
|
|
Post by jk on Feb 29, 2020 12:13:14 GMT
This is one I heard last night on a US radio station playing classical music during the day and jazz at night (it's more or less the other way round for me!). Schubert's Sonata in C major for piano four-hands, D 812 ("Grand Duo") has been orchestrated several times. The earliest is by Joseph Joachim, the one linked here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonata_in_C_major_for_piano_four-hands,_D_812_(Schubert)
|
|