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 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 Classical, Choral on May 29th, 2009 No Comments »
A month late, but still welcome, and forever evocative of my childhood. The Glasgow Orpheus Choir, founded by undertaker Hugh Roberton in 1906, finally folded in the year of my birth. But the sound of it seeped into my childhood, like gravy, in the same way as Kathleen Ferrier, Bing Crosby and Billy Cotton did, forever on the ether that was radio - the ‘wireless’ as we called it then.
I have a 78rpm record of this, but listening to it now is like listening to the sound of a distant choir of angels singing in a thunderstorm sifted through a fish fat fryer.
Here’s a recent recording, made in homage of the original, by the Philharmonic Chamber Choir, conducted by David Temple.
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Posted in Classical, Lieder on May 24th, 2009 No Comments »
Songs wera a bit of a sideline for Beethoven. But this is one of his best. It is to a, frankly, rather crappy poem by Friedrich von Matthison. It’s just as well as Beethoven rides rather roughshod over the words. He wasn’t Schubert after all. Nonetheless the insistent calling of the loved one’s name - Adelaide -at the end of each verse in a five note rising phrase is heart rending.
The lover sees her face everywhere around him, in the springtime, in the light of the setting sun as it catches the snows on the mountain top, in the stars in the night sky. He imagines a flower growing out of his tomb, its roots in the ashes of his heart, and blossoming: Adelaide.
This is Jussi Bjoerling, recorded in 1939.
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Posted in Classical, Choral on May 22nd, 2009 No Comments »
Charles Villiers Stanford’s classic English Choral piece to words by Mary Coleridge.
‘The lake lay blue below the hill. O’er it, as I looked, there flew across the waters, cold and still, a bird whose wings were palest blue. The sky above was blue at last, the sky beneath me blue in blue. A moment, ere the bird had passed, it caught his image as he flew.’
It has that indefinable English quality, unmistakeable but impossible to explain, alluding to a world of lost content, forever out of reach, around the bend of a river, lost in the mists beyond the meadow, on the far side of the hill.
It is sung by the BBC Singers.
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This is an exquisite, short piano piece by the English composer, Percy Grainger. He wrote it as a wedding gift for a young woman he had once loved. It is enchanting in its own right, but film buffs may recognise it from the soundtrack of the Merchant Ivory film ‘Howard’s End’, E M Forster’s novel. In the opening scene, Vanessa Redgrave, the doomed mistress of Howard’s End, wanders through the grounds at dusk, in a reverie of nostalgia for the life she has lived there. She moves through the grass in her long Edwardian dress, the sounds of the breeze and her skirt brushing against the long grass like the sound of a distant sea. Behind her, shades moving across the lights of the house, are her family and friends, the sounds of their merriment carried on the summer breeze. The last sounds of joy and innocence, before tragedy falls.
In this version, I have taken the recording direct from the film, rather than the commercial recording. After dramatic opening chords from the soundtrack, foretelling the tragedy that is to come, we come back to the quiet summer evening and Grainger’s lovely theme; you can hear Redgrave moving through the grass and sounds of laughter from the distant house. It’s all the more poignant for it. The pianist is Martin Jones.
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Posted in Classical on May 10th, 2009 No Comments »
Mozart’s Variation’s on the French nursery rhyme ‘Ah, vous dirai-je, maman’ is no such thing. It’s the English ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’ stolen by the French.
It’s young man’s piece, written by Mozart when he was 21. Light and gay, frivolous and whimsical. Even in its melancholy moments, in a minor key, gaiety isn’t far beneath the surface. A mix of masculine vigour and feminine charm. It’s irresistible.
The pianist is Balazs Szokolay.
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This is the most moving of all choral versions of The Lord’s Prayer, in the Russian Orthodox rite. The opening chant, in the bass, is as cavernous as the cathedral it was recorded in. Instead of the English choral tradition of vibrato-free, neutered sopranos, we hear women’s voices floating over those dark basses, bringing real colour to the choral sound. It’s a sound that resonates with love and tragedy. Nothing compares with it.
This Bulgarian choir from the capital, Sofia, is conducted by Georgi Robev.
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Posted in Classical on Apr 30th, 2009 No Comments »
I first started collecting classical records around 1968. I was teaching in London and didn’t have much money. Most of my collection was of budget labels - Ace of Clubs, Classics for Pleasure and Saga. Saga LPs were the most interesting, but strangely recorded and badly pressed, warped, full of clicks and pops. But at 10 shillings (50p) I couldn’t complain. The Italian pianist Sergio Fiorentino made a number of recordings for the label. I particularly remember an LP (now lost) of Beethoven’s 5th Piano Concerto, fine and exhilerating, spoiled by a ‘wow’ tape fluctuation at the climax of the third movement.
The critical response to him at the time was rather lukewarm; some praise for his spontaneity, criticism for impetuosity. Not knowing what I was supposed to be listening to, I found him exhilerating and enchanting by turns. A real human personality shining through the crackle of clicks and pops.
Here he is playing Liszt’s famous Liebestraume No.3. It’s taken from one of those Saga LPs, so the sound isn’t perfect and you may also need to turn up the volume.
But I was right.
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