Posted in Chanson on Jun 30th, 2009 No Comments »
One of Charles Trenet’s most famous songs, full of nostalgia for his childhood in rural France - La France profonde that every Frenchman and woman yearns for, but which never existed. When it was recorded, in 1943, France was defeated and much of it occupied.
The song has a strange double signification. It is the dream of an innocent France, one untainted by defeat; the dream of a purer France that he yearns to recover, a dream he is keeping alive for the days when he will be free again.
It is also the dream of that ideal France which underpinned the philosophy of the collaborationist Vichy Regime, where ’Liberty, Equality and Fraternity’ was replaced with ‘Work, Family and Homeland’.
‘Sweet France, dear land of my childhood, sleepy, gentle, free from care. I have kept you in my heart. My village, church steeple, modest houses where children of my own age shared my happiness, I offer you this poem. Yes, I love you, in joy and in sadness. Sweet France.’
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Posted in Classical on Jun 25th, 2009 No Comments »
There isn’t one, of course. But for some obscure reason Arnold Schoenberg felt the need of it. So he arranged Brahms’s 1st Piano Quartet for full symphony orchestra as a substitute.
It’s way over the top - massive orchestra, over 100, including xylophone! - and absurdly Romantic. It rather belies the notion of Schoenberg as the cold modernist. It has much in common with his own early Romantic works - ‘Transfigured Night’ and ‘Gurrelieder’ - lush, highly coloured tones, an almost sensual intensity. He explores Brahms like some demented Freudian psychoanalyst drawing out a hidden sexuality in the music barely hinted at in Brahms’s original.
It’s a travesty - but I adore it.
Here is the luscious slow movement, from a public concert on 1 November 1981 by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by Erich Leinsdorf.
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Posted in Classical on Jun 22nd, 2009 No Comments »
This is Einojuhahi Rautavaara’s Cantus Arcticus - his Concerto for Birds and Orchestra - the third movement.
Swans are overhead, flying south. Their natural sounds intermingled with the orchestra’s. We’re left here, where it’s winter.
It is Sibelius done for the digital age. The orchestra mingles with the sound of the birds in a joyous acclamation of life and natural love.
The Royal Scottish National Orchestra conducted by Hannu Lintu.
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Posted in Country Music on Jun 19th, 2009 No Comments »
This is a song written by David Mallett, and recorded severally. There are popular versions by Dolores Keane, Eleanor Shanley and Kathey Mattea.
It’s a memory first of childhood, an almost too perfect memory of summer, of a field of clover, clouds, wind blowing, trees dancing. Then a shift to adulthood as he comes back, as from a world from which he is now retreating, back to the where he was a child, loved and where, improbably perhaps, she, his own true love still waits for him.
There’s a lovely line ‘By the deep pool where the fish wait for the old fool with the wrong bait’.
I always think it’s describing me!
This is the best version, by Kathy Mattea.
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Posted in Classical on Jun 12th, 2009 No Comments »
This is a delightful short piece by the Czech composer Vitezslav Novak. It is from his Slovak Suite, the third movement. You can almost see them, the two lovers, in the sweet, languorous theme of the opening section, mooning over each other, all long looks, deep sighs and dreamy smiles. The middle section is livelier, catching them at play, flirting and teasing. Then back to the mooning and sighs.
All is innocence and delight, captured as if at the very last moment, before passion, and sex, break the spell forever.
Here it is played by the Prague Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Jiri Belohlavek.
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Posted in Popular Song on Jun 5th, 2009 1 Comment »
A little while ago I bought a CD compilation of songs from the 1940s. Out of copyright compilations of this type are widespread now - and cheap. I bought it for one song - ‘So Tired’ by Russ Morgan. It was a replacement for an original 78rpm record I had of it which broke when I dropped an armful downstairs - along with Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman and Louis Armstrong.
It was a hit in 1946, the year I was born. Morgan had another hit the same year with the cheerful ‘Cruising Down the River on a Sunday Afternnoon.’ Hearing it again reminded me why I liked this corny tune - the downward cadence of the opening ‘So tired of waiting for you.’ Morgan’s singing is less sensitive than my memory is of that 78 record - and who nowadays calls their sweetheart ‘dear’?
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