text:
Patch reliability is unclear. Unless you have an immediate, pressing need to install a specific patch, don't do it.
Aren't these the greatest performances of classical music?Posted on OscarCP Comment on the AskWoody Lounge
Home › Forums › Outside the box › Fun Stuff › Aren't these the greatest performances of classical music?
Viewing 91 reply threads
- This topic has 137 replies, 12 voices, and was last updated 1 month ago.
Viewing 91 reply threads
It's been a slow day, and suddenly, as it nears its end, I 've had this idea of "Classical Music" being a topic for a new thread in "Fun Stuff". Well, as I said: slow day.
Now, I don't expect this topic to set Woody's on fire (although one never knows here.) But one discussion earlier on gives me a glimmer of hope this shan't be a totally wasted effort. That conversation I just mentioned was completely off topic, but maintained enthusiastically by several of us, until KP blew her whistle and the concurrence adjourned sine die and in a hurry (although Wavy made up for that, to some extent, by starting a thread on PDQ Bach, also in "Fun Stuff".)
To open up proceedings, besides choosing a hard-hitting title I hope will provoke some people to react at all, here are two links to an equal number of not very long performances by good musicians, posted on YouTube. They are among my favorites, and the many ecstatic comments and their two million-plus views each might give some support to that. If you dare go in there, then make sure the Ad Blocker is fully on, so you can enjoy all the beautiful notes, chords and melodies without having to consider toilet cleaning products as well.
This first one is 24 minutes' long and remarkable for the beautiful and sensitive playing, but more than that, also for the fact that, unlike what is common practice when playing chamber music, the two performers not only do not have the score in front of them, to help stay in sync, but the cellist keeps his eyes shut pretty much throughout, so it is up to the pianist to watch him, now and then, to keep both going together. And without doing a lot of watching, at that:
This second example is 17 minutes' long and is from the breakout album that brought its then sixteen-year old performer to world attention and marked the start of her brilliant international career, one she is still at with continuing success. For more reference, she is a Virginian and hails from that state's Appalachian Piedmont, in the USA.
I have recordings of this particular piece by some of the greatest performers of the XX Century, some still alive and playing today, some, sadly, no longer so on one, or even both counts. And of transcriptions for several different instruments, some scored by the likes of Brahms and some played by artists with names like Andrés Segovia on guitar, for example. However, this is my own favorite recording, because her playing is so simple, so clear and, well, so right. The way perhaps, as the old saying goes, "Angels play Bach to God (and Mozart to each other)":
OK, the deed is done, now let's wait and see if anything more ever happens here. I still might be pleasantly surprised, who knows.
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
By the way, for anyone wondering what "arpeggione" means:
(I discovered the arpeggione watching "Whisper of the Heart", a Studio Ghibli movie. That, in turn, lead me to learning about this sonata by Schubert – quite a famous one, but I had missed it completely until then.)
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
If there are some videos of classical performances you, gentle reader, would like to share with us loungers and anonymous visitors here, that would be definitely very good of you — and even outstanding!
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
3 users thanked author for this post.
A Suggestion for this topic.
According to this site http://www.classicfm.com/discover-music/instruments/piano/best-pianists-ever/
"There's a strong case to be made for Vladimir Horowitz to be crowned the greatest pianist of all time." and one of the most fun pieces to play ( as in Difficult ) is Lizst's Hungarian Rhapsody #2. The two together fix this topic
Thanks, anonymous, for that link. Horowitz was indeed a great pianist, although he declined noticeably at the end of his career. But when he was good, he was very great.
I must say my favorite is Arthur Rubinstein, who kept playing flawlessly until he retired when he was already in his late eighties. By then he was practically blind. Someone asked him how he could manage to play so well when he could not see well enough what he or the conductor were doing and he answered: "Well, I still can hear the orchestra and know where all the keys are in the keyboard." Second in my list: Martha Argerich. She is still at it, also well advanced in years, and keeps intact the extraordinary ability to play, those passages that allow for it, at supersonic speed but with perfect articulation. (Someone once commented that she must have a cerebellum the size of a watermelon hidden under that still magnificent head of hair).
These links are for: (1) a long, complete recording of a historic concert given by Rubinstein in Moscow in the 60's and (2) another, in the 70's, playing Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 2. He is considered, to this day, to be the greatest of Chopin interpreters of the last century and, perhaps, ever (Chopin does not count, because he was not really an interpreter of Chopin, was he?) (3) Martha Argerich playing the Liszt Concerto No. 1, with her Argentinian – Israeli childhood friend Daniel Baremboin conducting, at the Albert Hall, during the 2017 BBC Proms in London. Look at her acknowledging, deservedly, an orchestra player that rarely, if ever gets any accolades, at the end of the concert…
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
True, many older performers are so great; for me Willem Mengelberg, conductor, was very inspiring to many.After all.. Just because we're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get us.
Hi Fred! Did you get to hear him conducting at the Concertgebouw, or was he there before your time? He was a great artist. I remember listening to recordings of his work on the radio, when I was a skinny young student doing my first engineering degree. Beethoven, Strauss, I am sure it was some of it. It was a long time ago… As it is made clear by watching this video:
Now here is a perhaps a little better sounding example:
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
woodyDa Boss
Fred asked me to post this:
When you graduated, I was in high school, a little younger. Willem Mengelberg was punished shortly after the war by the puritan Dutch community for his views on society during the Nazi period 1933-45. (Was he the only one who thought so? In the 1920-30s it was modern to think so; also the royal family and notables in society did). He became a very bitter man and withdrew from the Netherlands, and then lived his life in his house in Switzerland. His much younger beloved (the only lady?, misstress?) Miss Van Eeghen was with him for a long period and was very often in Switzerland, and of course this was a social scandal in the Netherlands and was kept silent by historiography.
The last years of her life, in the early 1980s, she was looked after by her younger nephew Jan van Eeghen in the Van Eeghenstaat in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. At this time Jan van Eeghen (a technical engineer) was a retired sports friend of mine –and a co-director of the Amsterdam Jeu de Boules Bond (the Pétanque competition sport)-. After the death of Jan's favorite aunt in about 1986 I inherited a few things, including her large collection of classical music records under the condition that they should never be allowed to be sold. This collection also contained many old and original signed recordings (78rpm) of the Concertgebouw Orkest and Willem Mengelberg from before the 2ndWorldWar. That is the time that I started to appreciate this music from him so much.
A few years after the death of his aunt, Jan finally moved to France to continue living among friends in a better and Mediterranean climate (in terms of weather, culture and lifestyle). Unfortunately I lost contact with him, and I became an unknown but "very important" I.T.-security&privacy-
specialist, hahaha. I very much regret this loss of contact and friendship, but now it's too late. It always is.
In the new CD era I passed on the inherited record music collection to someone who was really crazy about these older music recordings; but my heart is still there. I also passed on my other music records, lack of space and time, and analog recordings was out. Oh dear, new is always better, is it not?
In contradiction to my non-keeping of the old analog music I have always been very critical of this newer digital future, hence my previous professionalized interest in security and privacy in the computing industry.
Old versus new, oh boy, what will the future bring? "Franz Kafka" in civil administration has started to become normal (again). "George Orwell's 1984" is all around, freedom and civilization are being minimized or killed. The west of the Netherlands will drown for shure, just like many other parts of human civilization. Here the ice and snow {as I knew in my youth, see the painter "Hendrick Avercamp (1585-1634)"} in the wintertime have already disappeared, the summers are already getting warmer; drinking water from the major rivers is decreasing, etc.
The earth will survive for the next billions of years; but will humanity survive?
Tulips and greetings from cheesy Holland
Now that Fred's comment has been finally brought to see the light of day — and a very fine comment it is! I am moving on with something I have been wanting to bring to this thread.
The cello, of all stringed instruments and maybe of all instruments, with its register in the same range as human voice, can be made to really speak, most movingly, by a gifted musician.
Here, two examples of the power of this instrument in the hands of perhaps the most gifted of cellists ever to walk this world: more gifted than even Pau Casals, in my opinion, and that is the highest possible praise I can think of for anyone who has played the cello.
First, the "Kol Nidrei" of Max Bruch.
Kol Nidrei is spoken at the solemn opening of the service of Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, with these words:
Light is sown for the righteous
וּלְיִשְׁרֵי לֵב שִׂמְחָה
u-l'yishrei lave simchah
and for the upright in heart—joy
Please pardon the sins of this nation
kih goh-dell
in accordance with the greatness
of Your lovingkindness;
וְכַאֲשֶׁר נָשָֽׂאתָה לָעָם הַזֶּה
vih ka'ashare nahsahtah la'am hazeh
and as You forgave this people
מִמִּצְרַֽיִם וְעַד הֵֽנָּה:
mee-mitzrayim v'ad haynah
from when it left Egypt until now.
וְשָׁם נֶאֱמַר
v'shahm ne'emahr
And there it is said:
Congregation says three times:
וַיֹּֽאמֶר יְהֹוָה
vah-yoe-mare adonai
And Adonai said
סָלַֽחְתִּי כִּדְבָרֶֽךָ
sah-lach-tee kid'vorecha
"I have pardoned [them] as you have asked"
And here is the player of this ghostly work by Bruch, a player of whom we only have now also a ghost of the recorded sound, but never to be forgotten by those that love hear music well played, with great depth of feeling and a most delicate nuance at the same time:
And here in a coincidentally named piece by Offenbach that, played by a lesser musician, could be just a treacly over-sentimental nothing, but here is made to speak to the soul with great charm and power: "Jacqueline's Tears"
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
Thank you OscarCP, I get your point.
Both parts Jacqueline du Pré is playing unique here, her "Tears" will live on. In the coming days I will try this to play at a proper stereo. For common computers and phones are killing this quality of music.
💪👍👌 FredAfter all.. Just because we're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get us.
Fred, I use a decent pair of headphones plugged into my laptop and the result is very, very good. In my Mac I also run an application Nathan Parker told me about called "Boom 2", that lets one choose the type of sound enhancement one wishes to have and, or set the frequency response of the audio system that one prefers. Even with the OK but not great little speakers of the Mac, the improvement is quite remarkable. I imagine that there may be something like that for Windows too. Either way, with the headphones I manage to hear very clearly all the instruments over the whole audible range, in stereo. Harps and percussion, in particular, that tend to get their sound muddied and even lost in the sound of a full orchestra with the smaller speakers, come out loud and clear with the headphones. A different type of improvement should be possible, although I have not tried this, by connecting good external speakers to the PC or Mac. Maybe this is what you mean to do? Anyway, all the best with that, hoping you will appreciate better what you can hear better.
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
Of course, yes and okay; but it remains an approach to how the music is meant. And with a tear I had to think back to the time that I could regularly come to the Great Hall of the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, thanks to a passepartout from a very friendly person.
Your hints and links are more than worth paying with more attention to it than the more usual commercial rim-ram music.
The "electronic improvements" in pc's, loudspeakers and music still remain a tool that is not always very good to the original; is my humble opinion (without having become a vynyl fanatic now)
🙂After all.. Just because we're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get us.
Thank you OscarCP, I get your point.
Both parts Jacqueline du Pré is playing unique here, her "Tears" will live on. In the coming days I will try this to play at a proper stereo. For common computers and phones are killing this quality of music.
💪👍👌 Fred
I used high-end Audeze headphones with my laptop. Switched to a 2+1 Logitech Z623 THX.
Sound is great.
Taking a break from wrestling with some software I am coding and that is being really very uncooperative, right now, I've had the idea, after I answered Fred, above, to listen to some Beethoven, in particular his string quartet No 15, the penultimate of his five last quartets. These five pieces, in the opinion of musical scholars, well-informed critics, people who like to give opinions on anything and, of course, my totally unfounded but very own one, are some of the most extraordinary ever composed in the whole of the Western classical repertoire. And for a big heap of good reasons:
When he wrote them, Beethoven was completely deaf, could not hear anything at all. He was also in great despair, not the least because the world he lived in was going backwards politically and the new, great, fraternal society of free and equal citizens promised by the French Revolution clearly was never going to happen. He was also sick, mostly alone, and his own death was not far off. But the music he composed even so, had not only, and understandably, passages full of a deep melancholy, but also passages of transcendental serenity and others evoking a kind of profoundly serene joy. But for all that, they were intensely disliked in his time by many musicians and critics (*), because they were a radical departure from what people expected to be played in a concert of chamber music. It took another fifty years for the then musical innovators, the avant-garde of that day, to realize that they had been scooped by someone long dead, half a century before.
Here is maybe the greatest and best loved — although any difference in quality between them is a matter of personal preference: they are all very great works of art. Here in two different, but, in my opinion, both excellent interpretations, one quite recent, one much older.
The new one, by (I believe) students or recent graduates of the New England School of Music (or maybe of the NE Conservatory of Music) Shame the notes provided when it was posted in YT say nothing about this group:
And the older one, by the great Quartetto Italiano:
(*) But not by all: "Upon listening to a performance of the Op. 131 quartet, Schubert remarked, "After this, what is left for us to write?":
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
Bloch Prayer from Jewish life – Camille Thomas, violoncelle Beatrice Berrut, piano
Thanks for this clip. It gives a hint as to where "clesma" ('klezmer') music comes from, does it not?
Ernest Bloch, a composer that deserves to be remembered better, in his day was regarded "as one of the best Swiss composers in history":
(In case anyone is wondering: I have some good old friends that are Jews and am curious, so I ask.)
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
🍻Just because you don't know where you are going doesn't mean any road will get you there.
And, with apologies to Wavy, I am posting now one more sample of late Beethoven, one that he had meant to be the final part of the quartet I posted above, yesterday as of this writing.
It is the "Große Fuge", the Great Fugue — the most "out there" thing he ever wrote (as far as I know) and one of the justly most famous works in his late output and a landmark in the development of the string quartet as a musical form (or so I am told). He was totally deaf, as already noted, and his agent, somehow, persuaded him to replace it with the "Andante alla Marcia" (means. more or less, "moving at a fast marching-band pace") last movement that is now there and so it is played in the two videos.
To cut the discussion short, before Ludwig's short-fuse got to the powder, the agent suggested making the to-be-excised movement be made into a standalone, one-movement work for a quartet of string musicians, and maybe also the name to call it, as a fugue takes a a good part of this piece. Ludwig said: "OK, I'll do that."
The agent was right: people paid good money to listen to the quartet, but not so much to the GF. But not let those concert-goers of long ago poor sense of what is good music fool you. This one is a really great piece worth a good listening.
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
- This reply was modified 3 months, 3 weeks ago by OscarCP.
OK, I may be on a roll here. Got most of the Beethoven comment in, just maybe 25% missing!
So I am now adding this little something by J.S. Bach, played by Arthur Grumiaux, one of the maybe six or seven top violinists of the last hundred years. Also, for your greater pleasure, the video shows the score of the piece, turning its pages when the violin plays the last note of the one in view, so you can practice on-the-fly music reading while listening to the notes being played:
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
And before the well runs dry and my luck comes to an end, here is some Smetana for you, played by the Slovak "Gimnazija Kranj Symphony Orchestra" with some unusual stage decoration and great patriotic enthusiasm, precisely what the musicians, writers, sculptors, etc. of the Romantic movement were big on. This is the composer's most popular symphonic poem: "The Moldau", and one can hear the great river being born quietly at his source, run as wild white water further down, slow down to flow on, at a mature pace, through villages, towns, cities and finally reach, broad and serene, the end of its course.
And, when it comes to patriotism expressed in music and song, it does not get more patriotic than Sibelius "Finlandia", played here with a very large brass section, a hard hitting percussion section, a vigorous strings section and sang, in Finnish, by a really big and enthusiastic chorus:
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
- This reply was modified 3 months, 3 weeks ago by PKCano.
1 user thanked author for this post.
And finally, at least for right now, one of the most popular choral works of the XX Century. Dedicated to Nathan Parker, that is an assiduous student of Latin (but somehow doubt he got to study the sort of Latin the singers are singing here):
"Carmina Burana", the collection of songs put together by Benedictine monks in Bavaria, dating from the 11th or 12th through the 13th Century and set to music by Karl Orff a bit later than that:
Here it is, played and sang by a big bunch of, I would think, rather disreputable Dutch people:
And for the curious, here is the lyrics, in Latin and English:
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
2 users thanked author for this post.
Well, that did not come out right. Second try: The lyrics, here:
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
And before I let this be (but, please, if you want to add your favorite pieces by your favorite artists, this place is, I wold hope, always open for that), one more thing.
Richard Strauss "Four Last Songs", that were, really, not just called that, but the last music he ever composed. It is, like Schubert's "Death and the Maiden", a work inspired by the realization that life is coming to an end for the artist. Sang by the marvelous Gundula Janowitz, this is a work performed in a way that the world "sublime" fits perfectly. 'Sublime' means 'terrible beauty', and these are songs to the sublime magnificence of life and the majesty of its end, when seen in calm acceptance, as in the name and theme of the last Song: "At Sunset."
Herbert von Karajan conducts here the Berlin Philharmonic.
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
But not to leave everyone overly meditative, even sedated, contemplating their own mortality, here are a few high F's for you from someone quite actively and vigorously contemplating death — for someone else:
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
Regarding the 'Magic Flute' I really loved Kenneth Branagh's 2006 fantastic interpretation movie :
Alex573: Missed this one earlier; I'll see if Amazon has it on DVD or available for streaming. It looks wonderfully weird, and this work deserves no less. And Kenneth Branagh is really an amazing guy. And a tremendously gifted actor: I have the DVD of his performance in "Henry V" side by side with Olivier's, and it manages to look good even in such company.
Also Ingmar Bergman made a movie of a whole live performance of TMF, and it is available on YT, but am not posting here the link, because I am not sure if it is even legally there. But if one searches "Magic Flute", Bergman…
I must say, being one who likes "fantastic" and "entertaining" when they belong together in a movie or opera, or any kind of performance, this and Puccini's "Turandot" are my favorite operas, along with Richard Strauss' "The Rosenkavalier" and "Ariadne auf Naxos".
Once, in Salzburg, I even saw excerpts of TMF shown as a puppet show, with orchestral music and singing played from a recording — so no, the puppeteers were not singing, just moving those puppets. (And the people of Salzbug will not let you ever forget theirs is Mozart's town… just walk along the main drag and every other shop is called "Mozart this", "Mozart that"…)
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
Here is YT of The Magic Flute from Salzburg Festival 2006 :
This is just wonderful. And with English subtitles!, although the crystal clear, crisp, very good elocution of the singers makes it feel almost unnecessary… And with the Vienna Philharmonic under Ricardo Muti! But also with the reigning Queen of the "Queen of the Night" singing that showstopper to end all showstoppers!
And the strange fact about this work, meant mostly to entertain both children and grownups, a family-friendly opera, as it were, is that it was to be followed, as the composer's next major work, by the incomplete "Requiem" mass that was to be poor Wolfgang's very last thing he ever wrote and that turned out to be his own!
But let's leave aside such gloomy thoughts and listen to this marvelous work marvelously performed. And don't forget: listening to Mozart's music is assured to make you smart!
As of right now, I am posting a little something Mozart right after the two Argerich posts — more remedy for limited intelligence. Have a listen there, you can thank me later… Always tying to help!
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
RE Carmina Burana one must not forget the album by ray manzarek
Funny thing I wanted to take a closer look at the cover art and went downstairs to dig out my vinyl copy, spent a 1/2 hour looking w/o success 🙁 . Found a lot of stuff I couldn't have told you I had but not the thing I KNEW I had/have .
� 😄
🍻Just because you don't know where you are going doesn't mean any road will get you there.
MystAskWoody Plus
Ray Manzarek was such a fine musician, the one performance that stands out for me was Paradise, California with guitarist Roy Rogers in 2012. https://pbase.com/alansheckter/image/141740832 And of course the days with Morrison and the Doors taking a front row seat.
Win7 SP1 Home 64-bit, GrpA / MacOS / Chromebook
This is "Classical", so I was resisting the temptation of doing something that could bring in a serious off-topic drift here, but cannot keep quiet any more. I got to say this: listening to a video of one of the Doors concerts just now, with him on guitar, first the others open with their usual good doorsy things, then comes him, gets the audience to quiet down enough and starts with a clear, crystalline trickle of sound, then a bit louder. He riffs on the Beetle's "Eleanor Rigby" And it was as if a force field gathered around him and started expanding and expanding, sweeping away everything else on stage and leaving just him there, under a light of electric or — perhaps — divine light eternal, riffing and getting now rivulets, now thunderous rainstorms of sheer beauty out of the guitar. Nothing else that night, however good that was, could equal it. It was the pure magic of art. We are more the poorer when those such as him play for us for the last time. So, in the short time they are still with us, and us with them, let's make the most of it. And let's take a listen:
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
Word of warning to the unwary and the easily surprised: the part that follows the original recording of a segment of a Doors' concert is by a Mexican group (I think) doing a street concert as a tribute to the Doors. They are very, very good, they truly are, but theirs is not an actual Doors performance. It should not matter, but you need to know this so you don't start wondering: what, was that them back in the early 70's or something? What did Ray do to his hair? And so on.
And my next posted comment, in its position in the thread, not in strict chronological order, is about Roy and friends' "Carmina Burana", the complete recording, so this comment right here is unrelated to that one down there.
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
And here is the whole thing in one continuous 40-minute track:
Listen to these riffs and how they blend in with such a well-known composition that any misstep can be very, very embarrassing.
Listen, I say, and weep, you philistines, you adorers of Pink Floyd out there!
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
And here is the whole thing in one continuous 40-minute track:
Listen to these riffs and how they blend in with such a well-known composition that any misstep can be very, very embarrassing.
Listen, I say, and weep, you philistines, you adorers of Pink Floyd out there!
What a joy and pleasure to listen to this. It is almost sacrilege to listen to this with a smartphone and normal earplugs, because the quality (as Alex has it) I don't have.
A Philistijn, yes that's right, haha. But a good one, I hope). Coincidentally, I called/call Pink Floyd the classical music of modern times, of today. Although it has been like ages since I was at their performance, playing in the woods near a house I lived in at a three-day music festival. That was in "Kralingen 1970" in (Europe, The Netherlands, city of Rotterdam, 3 days in the month of June 1970 – half an hour's walk from where I lived at the time)
Yes, that was a music festival a year after you Americans set a good example in Woodstock, and that was shown here as a 3.5-hour movie in the cinema.
Thank you all for sharing such, very often real, moving music!
((But very bad for the nights sleep when started to listen late in the evening, like I did. Haha))
FredAfter all.. Just because we're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get us.
Oh, my Goodness! I forgot about the Mazarek version for choir (separate channel?) and electric guitar (solo?). Such a fantastic invention, such pure, enormous talent on display!
Usually,I am not keen on 'crossover': I like my Jazz to be Jazz, Rock to be Rock, Classical to be Classical, but there are exceptions I am prepared to make, and this is one of those.
And, now that I am here and I fear it might be getting lost among the remains of yesterday's big and painful to do, here is the Latin original and the translation of the lyrics of "Carmina Burana" that I make here available for the enlightenment of those with prurient inclinations (you know who you are.)
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
Considered, by those who consider such things, as the preeminent amongst all successful and famous pianists of the last 50 years, has lived a long and best described as very colorful life, survived three marriages and two bouts of malignant melanoma — and is still going strong.
I have thought, in view of recent developments, to close the Doors of Classic Rock and reopen the Doors of Perception to return to full "Classic" with an appropriately classy sampler of this classiest of artist's accomplishments — and looks — through these many years. Fell free to let me know how successful I have been in achieving this goal.
I know someone here will be happy that I've done this. I, for one. Also Alex5723. And possibly more and even many more.
So here she is, still great and at the top of her game: Martha Argerich, her life, in four performances:
At 11, in 1956
Bach Tocatta in G Major (Excerpt)
At 27 – 1969
Liszt, Hungarian Rhapsody No. 6 (Wished, but could not find a video of her playing Liszt piano-busting "Transcendental Studies", but the last part of this one should be a good replacement.)
At 73 – 2014
Bach Partita No. 2 in C minor BWV 826 (See Martha making a piano sing.)
At 78 – 2019
Liszt Piano Concerto No. 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQqQcWoTPaU (Some years after she did the one in the Albert Hall with Baremboin, but look at her! In particular, look at her hands and what she is doing with them!)
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
Hmmm… I left a big gap in there, between young-thing Martha and not-so-young-anymore Martha: so here is one from her middle years — hair no longer quite so black — with a pretty decent summary story of her life and work in the "Show More" part, to boot:
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
So, as Mozart definitely makes people smart(er) and there has not been enough Mozart here, so far, besides for that whole opera, I am making this additional entry as a public service.
Here is, once more, the lovely and so very gifted Ms. Hahn (two characteristics that seem to be a standard package when it comes to younger and talented musicians), accompanied on the piano by Ms. Zhu, playing a little something by Wolfgang Amadeus:
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
But let's leave aside such gloomy thoughts and listen to this marvelous work marvelously performed. And don't forget: listening to Mozart's music is assured to make you smart!
Best of all, you can download the TY video (I use 4K Video Downloader) and enjoy the full glory of the Mozart's opera on your home theater system with 4K big smart TV 🙂
Mozart Requiem :
- This reply was modified 3 months, 3 weeks ago by Alex5723.
Thanks, this is an unexpected gift and most welcome: not one, but two performances of Mozart's Requiem!
Can't imagine how Mozart, very sick and chased by bill collectors, might have felt composing music for accompanying the mostly seriously gloomy and, or forbidding (*) verses of the Requiem Mass! But the rent had to be paid, the family fed! He did not live to complete it. Others touched up the truncated score. But, finally, "all his work was done and all his debts were paid."
I have both the Karl Bohm (my favorite) and the Herbert von Karajan recordings of this work.
But the one by Sir Neville Marriner conducting the orchestra of San Martins in the Fields and assembled soloist singers and chorus, is one that I had not come across before when searching in YouTube's fabled "Musical Cave of Ali Baba and his Forty Thieves." I am listening to it as I write this comment, and it sounds as wonderful as could be expected from such combined forces.
(*) "Dies Irae
This day, this day of wrath
shall consume the world in ashes,
as foretold by David and the Sibyl.
What trembling there will be
When the judge shall come
to weigh everything strictly!
Turba Mirum
The trumpet, scattering its awful sound
Across the graves of all lands
Summons all before the throne.
Death and nature shall be stunned
When mankind arises
To render account before the judge."
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
Thank you Alex, the Cathedral of Saint Denis, just north of Paris France, where so many kings are burried; a tremendous historical place for Mozarts Requiem.
I will try to get it on my mediaplayerAfter all.. Just because we're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get us.
I have both the Karl Bohm (my favorite) and the Herbert von Karajan recordings of this work.
I have Claudio Abbado's Herbert Von Karajan's Memorial Concert and Live performance of Teodor Currentzis Salzburger Festspielen 2017
Mozart, Requiem, Neville Marriner
Sylvia McNair, Carolyn Watkinson, Francisco Araiza, Robert Lloyd
Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields
Mozart Requiem Sir Neville Marriner Cadaques & Amici Musicae
MicrofixAskWoody MVP
Modern day theme score to the movie 'american beauty' by thomas newman.
Great relaxing drift off to sleep classical composition that refreshes the mind.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqUwDI_bV-UWin7 Pro x86/x64 | Win8.1 Pro x64 | Linux Hybrids x86/x64 |
PKCanoDa Boss
Make "Brown Links" – use "Visual" Tab. See #2136519 above
Enter link as text
Highlight link, click on Link Editor, click on gear
In popup box, be sure the link is in both boxes, click update
Link should be hyperlink
Inaugurating the new, All-Brown Links Era, here is something that is good to listen for relaxation, for going to sleep with a big satisfied smile on one's face, and for when, by other means, attempting to achieve a relaxed state of bliss. Not because it is boring music, not that at all, but because it is relaxing.
Now, this is a set of sonatas and partitas for the lute, a stringed instrument with lots of strings, played like a guitar, but with the extra strings acting as resonators to create interesting chords and reinforce the sound of those actually played.
In modern times, up to twelve-string concert acoustic guitars have been built to have something of this effect, and played by some of the top guitar players of the last one hundred years: Narciso Yepes, most famously. But the two hours and change of pinging sounds to be found in here are interesting also as an illustration of the way in which people like J.S. Bach or W.A. Mozart, amongst the most prolific classical composers ever, managed to actually have time for other things. In the case of J.S.B., for example, to have all those children and, I suppose, to keep counting them to make sure not to loose some when the family went out shopping together, or to see a show, or something like that.
Their secret? They copied themselves with abandonment; they plagiarized themselves a lot. So, if when listening at what is in this video you say to yourself: "hmmm that sounds almost like…", have no doubt, that sounds exactly like some piece by the same composer for some other solo instrument you've heard before. For example, at around one hour and 17 minutes, if you happened to find the melody familiar, well yes, it better be: it is Bach's monumental "Chaconne" for solo violin, that you already have heard in the second YT video with the other "picture" link allowed here (see PKCano's tutorial on how to post a brown link just above this posting), in the top comment at the very beginning of this thread, played there by my favorite violinist of the last two decades.
So click on this link, take a deep breath, or two, or three, and prepare to relax.
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
Here is my other favorite relaxing, listen-just-to-listen YT video, as well as one that can be listen paying full attention to the music:
There is in there a complete recording of all of Bocherini's concerts for the cello; they are not very long concerts, because Boccherini lived and worked at a time, in the artistic period known as the Late Baroque, when, usually, they were still not very long. He was a cello-player himself, and the works in the video are a delight to listen to, probably because their composer new what it takes to play a particular series of notes in a certain way on a cello and had that in mind when selecting the notes to make sure they was something human cellists could play well if they were any good.
One interesting thing about the YT video is its accompanying picture: the partial portrait of a well-dressed and fine-looking young lady sitting down in a pensive attitude and surrounded by different string instruments while holding a lute herself.
The lady was Ann Ford, who was equally highly-regarded as a player of string instruments, as an actress and as a singer. The portrait is by one of the top English painters of her day, Thomas Gainsborough and, judging by this fact and by what she is wearing, it is clear that she was doing pretty well for herself. There is, as I have discovered, because I was curious about this painting, something of an artistic controversy about her portrait that had people saying things like; 'nice painting, but I would never let one of my daughters be painted like that"
So what was wrong? Well, and this to people of our times might sound pretty strange, it was the fact that she has her legs crossed. These days, that is considered ladylike, in Ms. Ford time, it seems, it was quite the opposite. Go figure. Her dress was fashionable for her time, but also conventionally modest. And is not that her legs, or anything from much below her neck down is visible of her that is not wrapped in some opaque material. But Gansborough thought — and obviously she agreed — that painting her in this "provocative" posture would express best her rebellious, unconventional views and life-style.
L-P Hartley wrote in "The Go-between", in the very first sentence: "The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there." I won't argue with that.
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
And is not that her legs, or anything from much below her neck down is visible of her that is not wrapped in some opaque material
Quite different these days, not a complaint, maybe in those days it was verboten to even acknowledge that there was any thing really human down there ?
Rather like the cello recordings thanks!!
🍻Just because you don't know where you are going doesn't mean any road will get you there.
Wavy: good point. I remember that someone who grew up in Victorian England, maybe Bernard Shaw, maybe Bertrand Russell, in a book or a play that I read years ago, wrote that, as a small child, he thought that women did not have legs, but "were solid underneath their voluminous skirts." But, for obvious reasons, she might have been wearing something less voluminous and more practical when on stage and playing her cello (or viola da gamba, as the old-style cello was called in her day).
And now that I am here and leaving the fashion subject aside, there is something I would like you to hear. Of Vivaldi has often been said that he wrote just one concert and all the other many hundreds to his name were merely slight variations of this Ur-Concert. Not true, and so very unfair!
Vivaldi, a priest and music teacher at the local orphanage for girls, grew up and worked for many, many years in Venice, where he become famous and his music was very much appreciated (until it stated to be seen as too old fashioned) — but did not die there. No, he died in Vienna, of a serious case of historical bad luck. When his music's popularity was already fading in Venice, he got an invitation of the Austro-Hungarian Emperor (the titular head of of the "Holy Roman Empire", as the official name of his domain was) to go and work at his court. So he packed up and went. Unfortunately, soon after he got there, his would-be host died, was succeeded by his daughter and (I think) only child, something that riled the Electors, the heads of the kingdoms and principalities that made up the Empire and were the ones that chose the Emperors. Particularly upset was the the King of Prussia, who immediately went on the war path. That meant that the fledgling Empress and the people helping her run things now had their hands full and no time for old Vivaldi, who was reduced to live in penury, endure the cold central European winter in a garret with little or no heating and was dead within the year of his arrival.
But that did not stop him from continuing to compose music, until that unfortunate final outcome, partly because he was hoping to sell the product of his efforts to some rich person and make some money; partly I suppose, because he was Vivaldi.
The result was six concerts for strings that, together, have became known as "I Concerti dell'Addio", or "The Farewell Concerts", for obvious reasons. And these very last concerts were something new and definitely not a rehashing of some old piece he once wrote. They are stunning and are stunningly performed here by Fabio Biondi, a violinist that specializes in Baroque music, and his "Europa Galante" strings orchestra:
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
Nibbled To Death By DucksAskWoody Plus
OK…here's one form I don't think was mentioned; The renowned organist Nicholas Kynaston on the Royal Albert Hall 1o,ooo pipe organ* with Mendelssohn's "War March of the Priests" (use a good set of earphones and turn it up!):
…and if you're still capable of cognition after this, here's "Summer" by Vivaldi directed by the great Von K.**; watch the 1st violinist NOT wilt under the punishment! Incredible.
*I grew up in the company of another 10,000 pipe behemoth that eventually destroyed the Cathedral it was in from 60 years of pounding. Good days of incredible music.
**Von Karajan was rumored to have rehearsed an orchestra for 12 hours, and said at the end, when the musicians were near hypoxia, "Well! That was almost good!"
Win7 Pro SP1 64-bit ESU, Dell Latitude E6330, Intel CORE i5 "Ivy Bridge", Group "Patch List", Multiple Air-Gapped backup drives in different locations, "Don't check for updates-Full Manual Mode."
"Just because you're an engineer doesn't mean you're good at everything." -Anonymous
- This reply was modified 3 months, 3 weeks ago by Nibbled To Death By Ducks.
Well, Nibbled … He has mentioned that the organ music form has been neglected here and, regretfully, I must admit that he is right.
… the old cathedral, the Thomaskirche, where you will be attending the concert, the all-Bach concert, given by someone called E Power Biggs (and what kind of a name is "E" anyway?) in the same cathedral and (mostly) on the same organ where J.S. used to play during his days working and living thereabouts with his wife and with all their many children (so far, there were more still coming and more to come; also another wife?) in the very handsome and very historical city of Leipzig.
So, now, here is Mr. Biggs doing something with, or to a (mostly) old organ:
And Nibbled also has written that he used to live near a cathedral that had a 10,000-pipes organ and, one day, got demolished (the cathedral), or blown down, by the sheer force of all those dB poured on its structural members over the years? Hmmm…
EDITED content re posting rules
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
Good days of incredible music
[at] Nibbled_To_Death_By_Ducks:
Thank you very much, thanks to you I found it: "J.S. Bach – The Four Great Toccatas & Fugues – Edward George Power Biggs – Organ in the Freiburg Cathedral" ;
Edward George Power Biggs was the great organplayer that my father brought me to in a concert in the late 1950's in the "Sint Laurens Kerk" in Rotterdam, Holland (that was miraculously mostly-saved during the may-bombardment in 1940, when most of the city center was destroyd) . Great and dear memories to me!
regards Fred
After all.. Just because we're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get us.
Back : Bach – Piano concerti 1 – 7, PERAHIA, St. Martin in the Fields
I have these recordings in my library of classical Music.
EDIT: Please use hyperlinks instead of text. See instructions above.
- This reply was modified 3 months, 2 weeks ago by Alex5723.
Alex5327: Thank you so much for these very fine performances by such a gifted pianist accompanied by the great St Martin in the Fields orchestra. (Those were the days!)
One of the works included there is the Brandenburg No. 5. So here is the whole set of 6 Brandenburg concerts, one of J.S. Bach more famous, best-liked and among his more popular works, played under the direction of the admirable Claudio Abbado, here conducting the Bologna, Italy, "Mozart" chamber music ensemble. Because he was its conductor in the last decade of his life, this is late Abbado in all its glory:
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
J SipinAskWoody Plus
Contemporary Estonian minimalist composer Arvo Pärt "Spiegel im Spiegel".
Thanks! I am not a fan of "minimalism", but this particular piece is something else. And it has more than five million views in that YT video! (I wonder how many Estonians are there in Estonia and elsewhere?) Lovely recording!
It puts me in mind of another one by Bach that his friend, the harpsichordist Goldberg, who had problems going to sleep, asked him for something to listen in bed that would help him to relax enough to drop off.
Unfortunately for Goldberg, J.S. obliged with what has become known as the "Goldberg Variations", that are something that was bound to keep the actual Goldberg, instead of going to sleep, trying to listen to the very last note and asking for more.
You might be the judge of my previous assertion, by listening to this recording by the extraordinary Wanda Landowska, who was one the great harpsichordists virtuosos of the past century and did much to help start the interest in Baroque music, as well as in the harpsichord repertoire. And my gateway, at age 14, to classical music, when I heard her playing, in a vinyl longplay recording with an assortment of Baroque works.
I believe that she is playing here in an instrument that was custom made for her, with three keyboards and a large and strongly built sound-box, so it sounds louder than an old-time harpsichord, although she owned a collection of antique ones and often played on them as well:
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
Here, a YT video of a performance in the Concertgebouw of Amsterdam by the violinist Ray Chen with the Amsterdam Sinfonietta strings' ensemble, playing Giuseppe Tartini "The Devil's Thrill" sonata.
It is called that because of some pretty lively passages and, in particular, the final cadenza, where the solo violinist's energetic plying is starting to break strands of the horse hair of his bow. All the musicians, except the cellists, are playing standing, which I believe was the way string orchestras used to play, in Italy at least, during the Baroque period. The composer was inspired by a dream he had, where the Devil asked Tartini to teach him to play the violin. At the end of the lesson, he handed the Devil his violin and the Dark One played on it music as never heard before of such beauty, perfection and complexity.
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
Here, for the weary and irritated Windows patcher: "Gymnopedies", a series of six pieces of very soothing and delicately playful piano music by the early 20th century French composer Erik Sati.
According to Encyclopedia Britannica:
"The word gymnopédies was derived from a festival of ancient Sparta at which young men danced and competed against each other unencumbered by clothing, and the name was a (presumably) droll reference to Satie's gentle, dreamy, and far-from-strenuous piano exercises."
Poor good old Sati: his music so simple, elegant, and playful, his life more complicated:
And, on top of Sati's relaxing music, even more relaxation: here is Claude Debussy playing his own piano music, recorded on pianola rolls.
Back in his day, there were roll-playing pianos and recording pianos for creating the rolls. In the latter, the pianist played as on a regular piano, except that the keys pressed resulted in corresponding perforations being made on paper being fed mechanically from a roll, these perforations being each of a size and shape corresponding to the note played, its intensity, whether it was allowed to resonate or not, and if so for how long, etc.
So here again and by the magic of this very old recording technique, is Debussy himself playing Debussy:
There is also mention in YT's the accompanying blurb, of "Accoustic" recordings, besides the pianola rolls already described. I am not sure, maybe is music recorded on wax cylinders? If so, those are of a pretty amazing quality for that kind of recordings.
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
Here, for the weary and irritated Windows patcher: "Gymnopedies", a series of six pieces of very soothing and delicately playful piano music by the early 20th century French composer Erik Satie.
Poor good old Satie: his music so simple, elegant, and playful, his life more complicated
thank you, this is an excellent choice, and I answer you here again to tell that more than simple headphones are needed. The beautiful low tones were lost, so I played it again over the the good music speakers. Just greatAfter all.. Just because we're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get us.
Hmm… It looks I got my Satie wires crossed: somehow the link I copied in the immediately preceding comment was for the Gossiénnes, also by Satie. Not that there is anything bad or regrettable about my confusion, as the Gossiénnes are quite lovely in their own poignant, nostalgic way.
So here is the recording of the Gymnopédies (also called "Gymnopodies, depending on whom one asks), as well as other pieces from (again) Gnossiénes and also from Sarabandes:
So: relax and listen, listen and relax some more.
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
Angela Hewitt loses her one of a kind 'best friend' as movers drop $200,000 piano
..Canadian Angela Hewitt is acclaimed as one of the world's leading classical pianists.
All of her European recordings since 2003 were performed on her Fazioli F278 concert grand piano, which was the only one in the world to have four pedals.
She says two weeks ago movers came into her recording studio to tell her they had "dropped" it.
The piano was kept at her home in Italy, and pianopricepoint.com estimates it is worth over $200,000 (£155,000).
"The iron frame is broken, as well as much else in the structure and action (not to mention the lid and other parts of the case)," she wrote on Facebook. "It's kaput."..
Moderator note: Please use the hyperlink instead of text.
Alex5327 writes here ( #2139325 ) "Angela Hewitt loses her one of a kind 'best friend' as movers drop $200,000 piano"
Great! So she and her piano now are all set to play a little something from Olivier Messiaen:
(Actually, this is a major work amongst those that influenced the way Western-style classical music evolved during last century.)
Messiaen, who lived and composed during a good part of last century (1908 – 1992), dying at the ripe old age of 84 — according to Wikipedia — "was a French composer, organist, and ornithologist [as well as] one of the major composers of the 20th century."
So far, with only one or two exceptions, all the music videos with links here have been to performances of works from somewhere between the mid-seventeenth century through the first decade or two of the twentieth. So Ms. Hewitt's piano problems are not only enabling her to play this piece better than ever before, but it also gives me the opportunity to include here something of a less than venerable age and even as close to being called "avant garde" as music from an established, long-lived and long-active, already dead composer can be said to be.
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
I am making this addition to this thread to make up for two big omissions in the videos chosen ti have their links posted here, so far.
Omission No 1 : No music, so far, from the Americas (you know, that land out there, made up of bits and pieces called North America, Central America and South America (with the Caribbean islands thrown in).
So here, from the North, a composition by Aaron Copland called "Salón México", in celebration of his birthday by the New York Philharmonic. The date of the concert: November 20, 1960.
And from the South, Heitor Villalobos' "Bachianas Brasileiras", by a Youth Orchestra conducted by Leopold Stokowski with the great Anna Moffo singing:
Omission No. 2 : No music, so far, from one of the greatest of musical countries: Russia.
So here, two works. The first, Rachmaninoff's piano concert No. 1, played by Rachmaninof (as far as anybody knows)
The second, Dimitri Shostakovich's Violin concert No, 1, played by my favorite violinist on her famous, historical and storied violin. With Riccardo Chailli conducting the Royal Concertgebow Orchestra:
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
Back now to the early Nineteen Century, this time with a remarkable performance of the early-romantic French composer Hector Berlioz "Symponie Fantastique" that he famously wrote based on an opium-induced hallucinatory dream he had. In its surrealistic musical program composition, one that tells a story with music: the Artist goes through a series of surreal and mostly not good experiences, ending with his untimely demise by way of being dragged to a place of execution, there to hang by the neck (or, in France, probably to have it neck scientifically cut off with a guillotine) until dead. As Leonard Bernstein put it: "Berlioz tells it like it is. You take a trip, you wind up screaming at your own funeral."
This item is remarkable both for the large scale of the work being performed, the way it is performed and, last but no least, by how the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, here in full-force, with a large and appropriately loud brass section, is conducted by Mr. Stephane Denev.
What is remarkable about the video: the remarkable quality of the sound and how remarkably well filmed it is, showing in detail how the various instruments are being played, something that always has interested me to see.
And above all, the super-remarkable fact that the conductor, Mr. Denev, is actually seen to be doing the job he is supposed to do: of giving entrance to the instruments, signalling the players when to play soft, when to increase the volume and when to go with all stops pulled out, so to speak. And to see the members of the orchestra following, for once, their conductor's instructions, or at least bothering to look at him, now and then, and definitely managing to follow his hand movements one half-beat behind, as it should be.
So here is the video:
(Sorry, MVPs, but I have done all I can to get a brown YT link and just keep getting this "picture" link instead. I can't think of what else to do. This is really very odd. Never happened before}
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
Hope you like this superb interpretation (best "Elvira Madigan" I've heard):
Mozart: Piano Concerto N° 21 in C Major, K467
Orchestra Filarmonica della Scala (Milano, Italy)
Director: Riccardo Muti
Piano: Marizio Pollini
And this one, Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto N° 2 op. 18 Personally I preffer Martha Argerich's style but seems, based on viewers numbers, like youtubers disagree
- This reply was modified 3 months, 2 weeks ago by migongo.
mgongo: Thanks! That is a fine combination of forces: the orchestra of La Scala, conducted by Ricardo Muti and with Pollini at the piano, performing Mozart's piano concerto No. 21. I wonder how many saw — or saw and remember much of that 1970's movie. But those of us who saw it I doubt can ever forget that last scene, where everything stops, frozen for ever in that last, perfect, timeless instant before the end.
Now you have brought this other thing to my memory: here is an all-Ravel concert that begins with Martha Argerich at the piano playing Ravel's Concerto in G, performed by a certain orchestra conducted by Riccardo Chailli playing in the open air, in a particular square of a much storied city, guess where:
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
Pachelbel: Canon & Gigue; Bach, Handel, Vivaldi (Musica Antiqua Koln, Reinhard Goebel)
wonder how many saw — or saw and remember much of that 1970's movie.
I have the movie in my collection as well some of Mozart's work.
And here is piano solo performance : 'Elvira Madigan' theme performed by Werner Elmker
- This reply was modified 3 months, 2 weeks ago by Alex5723.
First of all, thank you, Alex5723 for posting all those links to performances that are big crowd pleasers.
And also some apologies for some erratic spelling in a couple of recent comments. One of them I could not edit, because it was immediately abducted by the system running AskWoody and taken away to be moderated. I think that I triggered some automatic action of the system, perhaps by posting four links in the same page.
Now here are three links to an equal number of YT videos (and we'll see how that goes — latest news: it went just fine). The links are to three performances of works by American composers, meaning not those of any particular country, but those of the continental mass known as 'America', that nearly reaches from pole to pole.
First, from North America, a truly great performance, with equally great audio engineers recording it, of the "Grand Canyon Suite" of Ferde Grofé. This is a late fifties, monoaural recording made by the extraordinary combination of Eugene Ormandy (one of the maybe five conductors of last century that I can honestly call "Great") and the Philadelphia Orchestra he directed for many years. Don't be stopped by the early date or the mono recording. Just go ahead and listen to it – and then you can thank me. OK, you are welcome.
Here, again from North America, something by Aaron Copland, with Aaron himself conducting the National Symphonic Orchestra at the Kennedy Center, in Washington DC: "Appalachia Spring":
And here, last, but not list, something from South America, from Argentina to be more precise: a short piece for the piano by Alberto Ginastera (from "Danzas Argentinas", or "Argentine Dances) played by Argentine pianist Martha Argerich in her true, signature piano-busting mode:
The name of this short piece is "Danza del Gaucho Matrero", that means something like "Dance of the Gaucho Fugitive from Justice and Gone Feral")
Not all of Ginastera's pieces are this energetic, so if you use the link and find some more of his works played by Argerich or her fellow Argentinian-born (an also Israeli citizen) Daniel Barenboim, consider taking a listen to some of those as well.
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
R.I.P.. "Reinbert de Leeuw (8 September 1938 – 14 February 2020)", Director & composer, and honored.
One may call him a putist and non-pleaser ::
Opposite to only fame, and the greatest, and the best etc as some cultures and classes pursue :: there are others working more originally …
Playing early works::
It is a pity that "Reinbert de Leeuw" has passed away.
FredAfter all.. Just because we're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get us.
What an intelligent and lovely performance! The "Gossiénnes" are such a balm for the irritated, distressed or plain angry soul; it is music that says: "Sshshh! There are better things worth caring for; take a break, listen to me and forget about those things you are upset about. Those are, ultimately, trivial things. Here, from me, you may relearn the beauty of what truly matters, because here and in me there is true beauty, besides which little else matters."
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
I have stated in a commentary on Ray Manzarek and his very fine and original rendition of "Carmina Burana" that I am not keen on "crossover" music (blending classical and rock styles, in this case), but that I make exceptions and that was one. Here is another example where I definitely have no problem with a "crossover", in this case the blending of traditional Catholic religious music with folkloric music. I am making an exception because the "Misa Criolla" ("Creole Mass", 'Creole' here meaning 'of the sons of the land') by the Argentinian folklorist and distinguished musician Ariel Ramirez, is truly exceptional.
When back in the 60's, the Vatican Council II agreed and Pope John XXIII promulgated a wide-ranging series of reforms to the traditions and practices of their millenary institution, the reforms included the permission to celebrate the Mass in the language of the people, in every nation. This brought about a tremendous flourishing of religious music in the vernacular and, in Argentina, Ariel Ramirez took part of it by producing the remarkable work I am providing a YT link here to a performance by a choral group and musicians of the University of California Los Angeles. The result is both impressive sounding, while keeping faithfully to the idea of Ramirez of it being very moving, but also faithful to the forms and spirit of Argentinian folk music
Argentina covers a very large portion of South America, made to look smaller in most maps by the same distortion that makes Greenland look almost as large as Africa. But in reality, because of its size, it contains many different regions with quite different landscapes, climates and diverse mixes of Native American and European cultures. From all of which fairly diverse musical styles arouse and are represented here in the various parts of the mass, each of which belongs to a different traditional form typical of a different part of Argentina. Some of it shows mainly an European influence, others that of the native people, particularly in the northwest of the country, that once was part of the Incas' Empire and, before that, of other powerful nations that had preceded the Incas. So music from there is mostly built on the pentatonic scale. This region is also part of a continuous of culture and traditions that extends from central Chile and NW Argentina, through the uplands of Bolivia and the mountains, deserts and jungles of Peru, all the way north to Ecuador.
Now, here, performed by the UCLA University Chorus, Chamber Singers & Guitar Ensemble, conducted by Rebecca Lord, is Ariel Rodriguez's "Misa Criolla":
The mass is sang in Spanish and is divided in the five canonical parts, each sang to music in a different traditional Argentinian style: Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus and Agnus Dei
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
Now here …. is Ariel Ramirez's "Misa Criolla" of course, but not '.. Ariel Rodríguez…' as I wrote in the last sentence before the link. What was I thinking? Miserere mei!
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
Talking about Argentinians:
As part of the series of celebrations of the 2009 edition of the Nobel Prize, Martha Argerich performed this concert (see Report #2140409 above), captivating an audience chaired by the kings of Sweden, the laureates, the jury and a select minority of guests.
It will not be casual that, seven years later, she chose to interpret the same piece. This time in Milano, in the Piaza del Domo, in the open air, with the maximum philharmonic orchestra of Italy (the La Scala orchestra), and for a heterogeneous audience with free assistance.
Stresses, in this interpretation, the emotion to the skin of Martha: smile, gesture, "dance", swinging on the keys to the rhythm of the piece, enjoy, have fun … All without taking into account that he suffered a wound in the left thumb, which is bandaged and that, only a thousandth fraction of a second, as fearful when hitting the keyboard.
That fame of cold, sharp, haughty and distant … Even the qualification of despot (poured by his daughter), may well be paid to the benefit of the doubt (or the idiosyncratic "savoir faire" Argentine).
I do it personally. I already admired her, now, after seeing her and listening carefully to this concert, even more. Not to doubt it, the best I have attended from Martha Argerich. Thanks again for sharing.
"crossover" music
I love "crossmusic" when Classic music meets Jazz like in Jacques Loussier – The Best Of Bach
Or his Goldberg Variations – Jacques Loussier Trio
Beethoven Triple Concerto & Choral Fantasy – Yo Yo Ma, Perlman, Barenboim
R.I.P.. "Reinbert de Leeuw (8 September 1938 – 14 February 2020)", Director & composer, and honored.
One may call him a putist and non-pleaser ::
Opposite to only fame, and the greatest, and the best etc as some cultures and classes pursue :: there are others working more originally …
Playing early works::
It is a pity that "Reinbert de Leeuw" has passed away.
To indicate: even this picture is part of the tekst, to indicate the atmosphere; the text in this picture is in German and French, and not in Queens_EnglishAfter all.. Just because we're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get us.
For those musichistorians and musiclovers who are interested (and are willing to use Google_Translate), they will understand;
this is a hommage and grand salut ….
https://www.willempekelder.nl/home/muziek-als-reden-van-bestaan/After all.. Just because we're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get us.
Using Google Translate: "Until then, modern music hardly had a place of its own in the Netherlands. In November 1969, young Reinbert de Leeuw (anno 1938) went along with a group of fellow composers – called De Notenkrakers – to the Concertgebouw, 'the bastion of bourgeois culture', armed with squeeze frogs and a performance by Bernard Haitink. to disturb. The same group, supplemented by writers Harry Mulisch and Hugo Claus, had already premiered six months earlier in Carré the radical-left opera "Reconstruction", dedicated to freedom fighter Che Guevara."
I may not be a great fan of "el Ché" for many different good reasons, but, oh yes, there are 'Lions' in Holland! Thanks Fred for this comment and link. My Dutch is rudimentary, but I've got the gist of it (without help from GT).
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
Here is a historical recording of Schubert "The Trout" quintet. An unusual work for its time, written with a double bass replacing the second violin in the string quartet that, along with the piano. had always formed the classic piano and strings quintet. Schubert, at 22, back in the 1810s and already popular for his songs but just starting his career as a composer of larger instrumental works, arranged it this way to satisfy the fanciful request of a rich would-be sponsor that he really needed to please.
The video starts with a documentary section where first the players careers so far are summarized in voice over, as they are seen going about their everyday lives; then they are seen arriving by jet plane at a London (Heathrow?), where they will perform together. Then they can be seen, an heard!, practicing (and horsing around) for their concert that will take place soon after; one of them is filmed buying a viola for his wife, and so on. There is more laughing and fooling around just before the beginning of the concert, then the artists file into the concert hall and their performance begins (at about 14:00 minutes into the video — if you wanted to skip those preliminaries, there is where you click to hear — and see — the music begin.
And now here they are, as they once were, in the now so distant late 1960's, in the full vigor of their youth: Jacqueline duPre and her cello, Daniel Barenboim, playing the piano, Pinchas Zukerman, the viola and Itzhak Perlman the violin, and Zubin Mehta, the double bass, in this one-for-the-ages performance of Schubert's "The Trout":
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
Here is a later recording by three of the same artists that played in the "Trout", Barenboim, du Pré and Zukerman, of a work from Beethoven's "middle period", when he was having a tremendous creative outpouring with little to compare with in the history of music. Among some of his landmark works, he wrote two trios, of which the one in the YT video linked here (No. 1, Opus 70, in D major) got to be known as "The Ghost" for its eerie sounding slow middle movement.
The music was recorded in what seems to have been a large and, at the time, empty church. The sound quality of this video is superior to the one of "The Trout", so one can appreciate better that of the sounds each player gets out of his or her instrument. The mood of the players, in contrast with their playfulness in the "Trout" video, here is a serious, at times even solemn one.
Two of the performers are still active and playing as well as ever. The other one, Jacqueline du Pré, was at the time of that performance just a few short years away from experiencing the first symptoms of the devastating illness that progressively destroyed her central nervous system, depriving her first of that delicate an subtle touch that characterized her playing, then of her ability to play at all, then of that of teaching, then of that of taking care of herself and, at the very end, of that which is the last thing that is left to anyone: the light of her eyes.
So here, to be evoked once more by using this link to bring it back, is the ghost of that moment in a day, more than forty years ago (as I write this) when the three, who were all still alive, fit and young, performed Beethoven's "Ghost":
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
And to end this little series remembering the great performances by du Pré and her fellow eminent artists, here there are two more videos. I could not find in YT her recording of two of Bach's Suites for solo violoncello, some of the most profound works written for that repertoire and interpreted by her with her usual sure touch and authority in every note, she played, because once it was there and now it's gone, as often happens.
So, instead, here is her monumental?; towering?; epoch-making?; all of the above? performance of Elgart's Cello Concerto in E minor, Op. 85, her then husband Daniel Barenboim conducting I'm not sure what orchestra, but it hardly matters here.
Because if Helena of Troy had a face that launched a thousand ships, if the sight, in real time, on TV of Neil Armstrong setting foot on the Moon and flubbing his famous one liner launched the careers of tens of thousands of engineers, scientists (YT's included) and even of scores of astronauts, then du Pré's early performances of this old concert hall workhorse, a broody work by Elgart who, at the time was both mourning the death of his wife and the slow-moving disaster that was World War I, this one performance, then, is the concert that launched a thousand careers of cello players.
I have heard, since then, many good cellists perform this work, but no one has got even near her level when playing, even when some did extremely well:
And here, the same trio of du Pré (cello), Bernboim (piano) and Zukerman (violin) that did Beethoven "Ghost" are back, in memory still green, to play another of his trios, No.7 Op.97, known as the "Archduke":
Finally, du Pré (an English lady with a French name she got due to her father family's origins in the Channel Islands) with her cello and Barenboim conducting, I think that at the Albert Hall in London, some time back in the sixties — play Antonín Dvořák's Concerto in B minor, Op. 104. She does it with her usual passionate enthusiasm, and breaks a string. But, unfazed, walks out, puts a new string in her cello, comes back and Barenboim gets he orchestra to start to play the same, interrupted movement again, from the beginning. And she plays as usual, as if nothing, in absolute, had ever interrupted her:
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
Oh, well, I can't help adding this one example of very fine cello playing, not by du Pré this time, but by a most excellent cellist still very much alive and that by way of the included YT link can be seen and heard in concert with her lucky husband, Pinchas Zukerman, who is also still very much with us, along with Yoel Levi conducting the Korean Broadcasting System Orchestra. So here is the Canadian Amanda Forsyth in Brahms Double Concert for Violin and Cello in A minor, Opus 102. (And based on the two outstanding cellists — counting this one in — that I have commented on so far, for me this brings to mind the interesting question of whether for women to be great cellists, they are required by Nature to be stunningly gorgeous blondes with long hair? If you know of any who are also fine looking redheads or brunettes, with long, short hair, or dreadlocks, please let me know 🙂
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
Another "crossmusic" : Dave Brubeck Quartet – Brubeck Meets Bach (2007)
Concerto For Two Pianos And Orchestra, c-minor BWV 1060 (J.S.Bach)
01. Allegro 5:21
02. Adagio 5:04
03. Allegro 4:00
Points On Jazz For Two Pianos And Chamber Orchestra (Brubeck; arr. Kaska)
04. Prelude 4:17
05. Scherzo 1:58
06. Blues 4:57
07. Fugue 3:13
08. Rag 2:42
09. Chorale 2:09
10. Waltz 2:08
11. A La Turk 7:23
01. Jazz Selection (W.C.Handy) 11:53
02. Unsquare Dance (Brubeck) 5:42
03. Lullaby (Brubeck) 6:17
04. Brandenburg Gate (Brubeck) 14:22
05. Regret (Btubeck) 10:10
06. Blue Rondo A La Turk (Brubeck) 10:56
07. Take Five (Desmond) 10:30
08. Guten Abend, Gut' Nacht (J.Brahms) 2:07
OK: all the crossover enthusiasm around here is starting to get to me, but in a certain way that some might not expect.
Let's first consider the most frequently encountered kind of crossover, also referred to as 'Fusion': Classical, mostly Bach and, now and then, a few others, fused with Jazz: 'Cool' Jazz, to be more exact. So what the "fusionists" mostly do? Here is the recipe:
(1) Take a few measures of, probably, something by J.S. Bach.
(2) Add a dash of jazzy improvisation, and riff it wonderfully well.
(3) Chill and serve with a dash of whisky (or vodka) and a corkscrew of lemon peel.
In other words, take some Bach, play it a straight for a few bars easily recognizable by many, then improvise, very loosely, on that foundation borrowed from J.S.B.
But how about going the opposite way: Create a completely original structure of sound and rhythm and color it with the right mix of instruments, then infuse it with something else from what then becomes the other half of the 'fusion'? Why not do that as well? Well, truth be told, that it is much, much harder, because it takes not just a top instrumentalist with a knack for riffing on any giving theme, but it requires a higher level of skill both as a composer as well as a performer.
Now, let me be very clear: Brubeck, Muddy Waters, and other greats were truly great. But there is always a higher level to be aspired, and when it is reached, then we have something else altogether.
So, how about the fusion of Tango and Jazz? What happens when one innovator in one musical form joins up with one in quite another?
Well, this is what happened when Astor Piazzolla (Tango) and Greg Mulligan (Jazz) joined forces to make this recording:
Or when Piazzolla put together his own orchestra (one of several) and 'fused' Tango and Jazz acting both as original composer creating the musical foundation, not by borrowing it from J.S.B, for example, but entirely "from scratch" and then perform it along with the brilliant colleagues he had chosen to form his orchestra? Well this is what happened:
Or when Yo Yo Ma decided to put together a number of compositions from Piazzolla, and made this recording of the result:
So who was Astor Piazzolla again?
And, say, who was Greg Mulligan?
Oh, really?
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
Brahms Double Concert for Violin and Cello in A minor, Opus 102.
With Jascha Heifetz · Gregor Piatigorsky : 1 – Allegro
A whole different atmosphere to the music. More mature in my eyes.
AJNorthAskWoody Plus
For myself, Brahms is the autumn composer; to my ears, his music captures the colors, textures and overall ambiance of fall.
The double concerto was composed, in part, as a reconciliatory piece by Brahms for "his violinist," Joseph Joachim, with whom he had had a falling out; one can hear the dialog between the two solo instruments representing the two (particularly in the first movement).
This recording is my hands-down "desert island" recording of the Op. 102; I am fortunate to have a copy of the original stereo LP issued in RCA's Soria Series, with the included booklet (LDS-2513) in 1961.
As a side note, my mother knew many of the RCA Victor musicians from her days in the 1940s and 50s working for Don Gillis (Toscanini's assistant and producer), and later John Pfeiffer (the father of Living Stereo).
See: https://scholarworks.bgsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://metager.org/&httpsredir=1&article=1027&context=ul_pub
The anecdotes she used to share would fill a book. On a trip to Las Vegas, Nevada while visiting California in 1956, she saw Gregor Piatigorsky in a casino playing a slot machine. She walked over to him in mild astonishment and exclaimed, "Grecia, what are you doing?" Piatigorsky turned to her and with an absolute deadpan expression replied, "I am exercising my bowing arm."
AJNorth wrote: "For myself, Brahms is the autumn composer; to my ears, his music captures the colors, textures and overall ambiance of fall."
While Richard Strauss' "Last Four Songs" (1), or Schubert's "Death and the Maiden", or Vivaldi's "Concerti dell'Adio" (2) capture the late, inevitable autumn of life itself.
All three were created when their composers knew themselves to be already in it and near the end.
(1) and (2) have been included elsewhere in this thread.
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
But how about going the opposite way
This type of fusion doesn't get to me. I stay on Classic > Jazz 🙂
Alex, for my part, I think I get both. And while Classical+Jazz is very interesting and even great on occasion, the fact remains that those on the 'Classical' side, old J.S.B., for example, while great innovators in their day, are not around now to actively collaborate, like Piazzolla and Mulligan, to create a totally new, from scratch, original kind of fusion music — or just a plain new kind of music never before heard. And that I find even more interesting — and also quite rare and not easy to find, for obvious reasons.
So if someone here can give other examples of this second kind of fusion (and there has to be more around), perhaps of Swahili choral music from southern Africa with Brazil's Bossa Nova? Why not? To those truly creative, the world is their oyster.
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
And to close with a golden brooch, I expect, my own little excursion into 'Fusion' or 'Crossover', here is another example of a different mix: Stan Getz and Joao Gilberto with a little something they whipped up together to get this 50 – 50 Jazz and Bossa Nova treat that is a bit like both and a lot like neither, but when they came up with it, was something quite new in the world:
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
Now, back from my 'Fusion' hike, here I am also back in full-classic mode with something that more classic that it simply does not exist:
The six suites for unaccompanied cello, played in their totality by two of the greatest interpreters of these remarkable and very difficult works, with significant, and audible, differences in their interpretation of them: Paul Tortelier, French, and Pau Casals, a patriotic Catalán and the most principled of men.
He famously chose to live in a permanently self-imposed exile from his beloved Catalonia, now a semi-autonomous region of North-East Spain, rather than to live there and be, even by implication, in complicity with the tyranny of Franco. But not as a passive exile, as he in every possible way kept reminding both the powerful and the common citizens of the kind of wrong that should never be forgotten nor forgiven. He was acting in the best tradition of the great romantic composers, such as Chopin, or Verdi, that made of their music subtle but unforgiving weapons against the oppressors of their people.
Also, and very interestingly, he was wont to play the whole six suites in one sitting (with "convenience" breaks? History is irritatingly mute on this very important point). He played them, in fact, or so we are told, every single day and, towards the end of his life, he said that he had started to notice "some improvement", So here is he playing the six suites for unaccompanied cello, by J.S. Bach:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePPMrX4YtkM Casals I
And here are Tortelier's two parts of three suites each:
OK, I have this also by Mischa Maisky, as well as two of the Suites by du Pré (now not available in YT), but I don't believe in piling it up. So enjoy.
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
The "Musical Offering" by J.S. Bach consists of a series of different types of counterpunctual music, from canon to sonata, composed by J.S.B. at the strong suggestion from King Frederick II (called "The Great") of Prussia, who was also a respectable musician: flute player and composer whose works are still played at concerts. The king, at Bach's request, then played a rather long theme of, presumably, his own invention, on his flute, and Bach promised to make something of it. The result is the topic of this comment.
One of the most famous parts of the "Offering", and of the whole Bach repertoire, is the "Ricercar a 6" a composition for six voices that play both with and against each other in a most fantastic cascade of sound. Bach also wrote a version adapted for keyboard instruments, because human piano, organ, or harpsichord players only have four extremities (and only organ players can really use all four).
Here is an interesting looking animation of the Ricercar a 6:
And here is an episode from a German/Hungarian TV program (in German, with English subtitles) chronicling Bach's life, with a reenactment of the meeting between the king and Bach where he got his invitation to compose a little something based on the what right away became known as the "Thema Regium" or "King's Theme".
And here is the actual thing, all of it — to me one of the most delightful stimulant and beautiful things I have ever heard and I often listen to. (And listening to it also does make people cleverer, take it from me — although, full disclosure, I started being clever, or so my mother and some of my better girlfriends have informed me, which always helps.) The music begins with the king's theme without any ornamentation or harmonization, just the same plain sequence of notes Frederick played in his flute, and then Bach takes it from there…
Finally, from "Gödel, Escher Bach: an Eternal Golden Thread" by Duglas R. Hoftstadter (the book many bought because Martin Gardener so much recommended it, but never got past page 20) is this excerpt, where the actual meeting between Frederick and Bach is recounted as told by Bach's biographers, near the beginning of Chapter 1:
"One May evening in 1747, an unexpected guest showed up. Johann Nikolaus Forkel, one of Bach's earliest biographers, tells the story as follows:
'One evening, just as he [Frederick] was getting his flute ready, and his musicians were assembled, an officer brought him a list of the strangers who had arrived. With his flute in his hand he ran over the list, but immediately turned to the assembled musicians, and said, with a kind of agitation, "Gentlemen, old Bach is come." The flute was now laid aside, and old Bach, who had alighted at his son's lodgings [the son was emplyed as a King's musician], was immediately summoned to the Palace. Wilhelm Friedemann [Bach's son], who accompanied his father, told me this story, and I must say that 1 still think with pleasure on the manner in which he related it. At that time it was the fashion to make rather prolix compliments. The first appearance of J. S. Bach before se great a King, who did not even give him time to change his traveling dress for a black chanter's gown, must necessarily be attended with many apologies. I will not here dwell en these apologies, but merely observe, that in Wilhelm Friedemann's mouth they made a formal Dialogue between the King and the Apologist.
But what is mere important than this is that the King gave up his Concert for this evening, and invited Bach, then already called the Old Bach, to try his fortepianos, made by Silbermann, which he kept in several rooms of the palace. [Forkel here inserts this footnote: "The pianofortes manufactured by Silbermann, of Frevberg, pleased the King se much, that he resolved to buy them all up. He collected fifteen. I hear that they all now stand unfit for use in various corners of the Royal Palace.' "
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
This collection of J.S. Bach concerts for oboe and oboe d'amore (an early form of the oboe) is a collection of works from the lighter side of his huge production. The video has a good execution of the works, but it is illustrated with a tragic and depressing "cautionary tale" that has nothing at all to do with the music, particularly with its warm and bright style. The background illustration is in the form of a sequence of Hogarth's prints called "The Rake's Progress" (a sarcastic pun on John Bunyan's "The Pilgrims' Progress"). Being by Hogarth, the prints are both gorgeous and very, very realistic. This sequence is definitely OK to look at once, but I would minimize the screen after that and just listen to the music again, instead.
And to complement the above video, here is one where my favorite fiddler plays J.S. Bach's violin concert BWV 1060 in C minor, that is really a double concert for violin and oboe, here with both violinist and oboist pretty evenly matched in the quality of their interpretations and playing some truly lovely duets, particularly in the second, slow movement:
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
@OscarCP, you asked something about Bossa Nova. In fact Bossa Nova is a fusion of brazilian "samba" –wich, in turn, is a fusion of african, portuguese and brazilian tribal rythms– and jazz (Carlos Lyra, Bossa Nova composer, has a piece titled "Jazz Influence").
I hope you enjoy this superb interpretation of a classical, the most known Bossa Nova theme: "The Girl from Ipanema", composed by Tom Jobim, who recorded an album with Frank Sinatra singing his music.
I'm son of brazilians, lived in Brazil for many years, love his musical weath and, believe me, I think this is the most awesome interpretation I've herad about this classic:
Here is the full concert:
Best regards!
migongo: Thanks! That is a real classic.
To attempt repay such a favor, here is the famous recording of Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd's trumpet and guitar with a group of good musicians they put together, that in the late 60's started the explosion of Bossa Nova in popularity here in the USA and other places as well. I first heard this when I was living in Australia and still remember the big impression it made on me and my friends then:
And is this a sort of re-fusion, because Gilberto invented Bossa Nova as a fusion of Samba and Jazz?
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
Oh Dear! I have really been going on about Getz and his 'trumpet'?!
And, er, where is my head now? It's always getting lost somewhere.
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
To atone for my mistake, here is my offering of an album by Toquinho and Paulinho Moreira of music by several composers of Bossa Nova and of other things, such as J.S.B. (track no. 2):
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
Bossa Nova is the result of the integration of three people (known as the "Holy Trinity of Bossa Nova"). A poet, Vinicius de Moraes, who decides to integrate Brazilian rhythms into prose and verse compositions. That concern was joined by Tom Jobim, musician, composer and performer of classical and jazz music. Who revolutionized their initiative was João Gilberto, a musician (not a composer: he only composed a dozen songs, none of which achieved success, as he himself recognized). That revolution was of a musical nature: with a very personal style of playing the guitar, a very soft rhythmic cadence (in contrast to the very moved of the Brazilian "samba"), and a quiet song, almost in whisper and similar to "Lullaby" result was astonishing and acceptance too.
Science and Music : https://bgr.com/2020/02/21/violin-surgery-brain-tumor-kings-college/
The brain is a complicated organ, and when surgeons are tasked with removing dangerous brain tumors they have to be incredibly careful not to cause unintended damage. For Dagmar Turner, a 53-year-old tumor patient at King's College Hospital in London, ensuring that she could continue to enjoy her passion for playing the violin, that meant demonstrating her musical talents for the surgical team as they were performing their operation.
In Turner's case, the tumor the doctors were targeting happened to be near her right frontal lobe. That's a tricky area to operate on, as removal or damage to certain brain structures could cause a loss of fine motor skills. That's where the violin came in.
By allowing Turner to remain awake and alert enough to play her violin during the operation, the surgeons could be certain that they weren't impacting any areas of her brain that were being actively used. It's a technique that has been used before, and it proved to be useful in this case as well.
Watch a violinist play her instrument while undergoing brain surgery
Years ago we were driving back from a picnic, an uncle, his son, a cousin of mine who was the driver and myself in the front seat, and my cousing's wife and her father in the rear one.
My cousin put on a CD with a collection of old popular music. It was a good one, the tracks were mostly old numbers played by top of the line musicians and singers from the past.
My cousin's father in law, a retired medical doctor, was suffering from advanced dementia, perhaps Alzheimer's disease, and was already fairly unresponsive in conversation or any other form of normal interaction. However, when he heard the music, after a short while, he started to look more animated and to hum along with the music, looked pleased and smiled, while he had been quite inexpressive until then.
To me this was a revelation of the close interaction between music and the living brain, even one seriously damaged by illness. Music, I concluded, is much more than something we listen for relaxation, or because we like the tunes, or to dance along, or for many of what may seem as mundane reasons, but all that and more might instead respond to some very profound need of the human mind.
Here is a research article that I have found and seems well and clearly written, on something that has been known for some time and is the focus of neurological inquire that has already yielded some helpful therapies meant to mitigate and even slow down the progression of the symptoms of some common forms of dementia:
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
And for this number, I think that the following is enough introduction:
Vaughan Williams "The Lark Ascending"; Hilary Hahn, violin, with the Camerata Salzburg, Louis Langrée conducting, performed in front of a live audience. A Rumanian TV 2 production:
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
And this performance where every one on stage seems to be having a good time, took place in poor old Detroit, where chances to have a good time were and still are, for all I know, things to be specially cherished and treasured. The performers even enjoy when the audience applauds in the wrong place following the wrong cue.
So here is Ms. Hilary Hahn in violin, with Leonard Slatkin conducting the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, playing Beethoven's Violin Concerto in D Major, Opus 61. And check out those cadenzas! And also those ever intriguing violin bracing accessories of which Ms. Hahn seems to have a large collection of all shapes and sizes. She finishes with an encore, playing "a jig by Bach" (from one of the partitas for solo violin) She has declared elsewhere that she plays Bach nearly every day when practicing "because Bach keeps you honest."
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
Vivaldi's "The Fours Season" are the first four of twelve concerts collectively named as "Il Cimento dell'Armonia e dell'Inventione", or "The Dialog Between Harmony and Invention". Probably anyone with the slighest interest in Western classical music has already heard these four concerts played together and separately many times and by many different musicians. It is, after all, the most popular of Vivaldi's works and, possibly, the most popular of all music from the Baroque period (17th – 18th Centuries).
But this thread being about the best performances ever, here I present you with two complete performances of the four and with an excerpt of "Summer", all three by, possibly, the most outstanding of string chamber orchestras specializing in Italian baroque of all times: "I Musici", recorded at three different epochs in their illustrious history, with a different first violin player (who was also the lead musician) in each.
First, this 1959 version, with Félix Ayo, first violin:
Second, this excerpt from "Summer" under the leadership of Federico Agostini, in a venue not usual for this kind of performance, in an amazing, strings-setting-on-fire 1988 performance:
Finally, a 1995 recording with Mariana Sirbu as 1st violin, playing in Tokyo, during a tour of Japan:
Are these really the best performances ever of "The Four Seasons? You tell me.
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
And I have just found the complete 1988 performance of the "Summer" concerto by I Musici, again with Federico Agostini as 1st violin, but with a better video picture, that includes a trip along Venice's canals and shows also some people doing restoration work of priceless works of art, some (sculptures) damaged by air pollution, others (paintings), by the dramatic episodes of "acqua alta", the storm tide floodings that have repeatedly in recent times filled with dirty water the first floors of palaces and the naves of the magnificent medieval and Baroque churches, where some of those paintings were located.
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
- This reply was modified 3 months ago by OscarCP.
For the pleasure of sharing the ever joyful rediscovery of Verdi. Highlights deserve the incorporation of the anvil as a symphonic instrument, in the interpretation conducted by Riccardo Muti and, in another, the friendly driving style of Valery Gergiev. Best regards!
mgongo: Thanks for bringing not just Verdi, but Opera into this thread. So far, the major choral work by Karl Orff "Carmina Burana", the brief but beautiful and beautifully sang by Anna Moffo, Bahiana No. 5 by Villa Lobos, and Sibelius rousing "Finlandia" are all that represents here the singing side of classical music.
Opera is a fascinating topic, because it still draws big crowds to listen, performed by orchestras and singers, ranging from OK to great, works that range from three hundred to a few decades old. As still new operas are being composed and produced, and it is the desiderata of many budding and even seasoned composers to write at least one opera in their whole careers.
Since you have started this again with Verdi, here I am adding more of that, with several arias sang by the "La Divina" at the top of her singing form and of her extraordinarily beautiful looks:
First, a selection from "La Traviata":
Love is the very breath of the Universe entire
Mysterious and noble, and a delight to the heart.
And here, "Casta Diva", from "Norma": a Chaste Goddess sang to beautifully by that most beautiful "Goddess"– una Casta Diva cantata da quella bellissima "Diva":
In memoriam Maria Callas.
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
I should have mentioned above Alex5723 contribution of the link to the whole of Mozart's "Magic Flute" as well as of the link to Kenneth Branagh wonderfully weird cinematographic production of this opera (an my little one, the excerpt with the "Rache" Aria of the Queen of the Night from the same opera).
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
Perhaps to make up for my previous omissions (above), probably because I like this work very much, here is a performance of the Berlin Philharmonic, Conducted by Claudio Abbado, with the Swedish Radio Choir, the Eric Ericson Chamber Choir and soloists Barbara Booney and Bryn Terfel, in a performance of Johannes Brahms' "A German Requiem", a work inspired by this passage in Isaiah 40:6, (echoed by another in Peter 1) :
" The voice [crying in the wilderness] said, "Cry out!"
And he said, "What shall I cry?"
"All flesh is grass,
And all its loveliness is like the flower of the field.
The grass withers, the flower fades,
Because the breath of the Lord blows upon it;
Surely the people are grass.
The grass withers, the flower fades,
But the word of our God stands forever."
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
- This reply was modified 3 months ago by OscarCP.
And I have just found this YT video of the full opera "Norma", by Vincenzo Bellini, with a superb late ninety seventies' performance by a stellar cast of singers, chorus, conductor and orchestra, that I think is fit to add to my previous entry dedicated to this most exquisite of singers:
Maria Callas, soprano, Franco Corelli, tenor, Christa Ludwig, mezzo soprano, Nicola Zaccaria, bass, Edda Vincnzi, soprano and Piero de Palma, tenor.
Orchestra and Chorus of La Scala Opera House, Milan.
Tullio Serafin, conductor.
Chorus master, Norberto Mola.
This is the story of a druid priestess, her heresy and star-crossed love, fated for a truly fiery, but not lonely, ending.
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
I must clarify that this recording of Norma is a copy, released in 1977, of the original, probably made during a 1954 performance with Tullio Serafin as the orchestra conductor, at La Scala — there is no mention of the actual date in the YT notes on the video. 1977 was the year of her death, in September, at the relatively early age of 53. She did live a short life, but what a life! One that burned brightly and left a very long shadow.
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
Added here later, for further information:
The full recording of "Norma" available from YouTube of the link in the preceding entry ( #2173366 ), with Callas in the title role, is from her earlier period, before she lost weight and got to look so strangely and strikingly beautiful as most people who saw her picture as repeatedly as it was being shown at the time, might still remember her — but the general opinion is now that her drop in weight might also have caused her to loose some fine control of her voice. The human body is a very complicated thing.
So this is from the time when her voice was even stronger, fuller, better controlled. But always with that slight harshness that made it immediately recognizable and was really, in my opinion, a plus, the way she used it, although she herself never liked it. She was a ferocious perfectionist, driving herself very hard to always deliver a superb performance. An obsession that might had been one cause contributing to her relatively early death at 53.
By streaming the video, with only static pictures of her in the background, while the viewer might not be able to see her great acting skills in action, will still be able to appreciate fully how even more amazing her singing was in that earlier period. Made even easier, for those that would like to make the comparison, but do not want to sit and listen to the whole opera, by the fact that the aria "Casta Diva" is the very first thing that is sang in the opera and it begins just a few bars after the orchestra starts to play. And it is followed, immediately, by the second aria, and that is a bonus worth the few more minutes spent listening to it as well.
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
- This reply was modified 2 months, 3 weeks ago by OscarCP.
And to finish my detour into Opera, here is some more "Casta Diva", the first Aria of the First Act of Bellini's "Norma".
Now the Chaste Goddess of the Moon is sang at, first, by the sometimes called "La Superba", soprano Renata Tebaldi (a.k.a. the anti-Callas, although much of that was made up for propaganda purposes — a very old trick that still gets people's ears, perhaps not that surprisingly, as gossip, whether made up or not, is for ever popular.
From the YT notes: Renata Tebaldi, Alfredo Mariotti, Coro Lirico di Torino, Orchestre National de l'Opéra de Monte-Carlo, Fausto Cleva, chorus master. Circa ? I would guess back in the 70's.
And here is the one and only, "La Stupenda" (and guaranteed 100% Aussie), Joan Sutherland herself as a Druid priestess, singing at the Moon (that looks a lot like Jupiter, quite frankly) and doing some Druidy thing:
Again according to the YT notes: Joan Sutherland with The Elizabethan Symphony Orchestra conducted by Richard Bonynge, from Sydney Opera House — in the early 1970's, perhaps?
But are they, great singers as they were, better "Normas" than Callas? I really don't think so. Listen, if you care to make the comparison, to the video I posted a bit further up, of her singing this same aria — a video of a film made during a concert, not an opera performance — at the time when she had lost weight and was looking eerily beautiful, but had lost into the bargain also some of the fine control of her, nevertheless, still splendid voice, and even with that as a handicap, listen to her and see if I am not right!
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
And one more… Also known as "La Superba", Moserrat Caballé, one of the top opera singers of last century and the last of the great old-style Divas, singing "Casta Diva" in a superb performance.
But, while she has a better voice control than Callas, whose voice fails her for maybe two seconds, in the video, during a descending passage, but that she then recuperates from very quickly and nicely, faking the very brief flawed part into one plausibly belonging to that song, I still think Callas' Norma is better. Because she was, not just a singer of total honesty tin how she sang the works of her repertoire, of deeply moving passion that managed to convey to the audience and had them share with her, but also a great actress of tremendous physical eloquence as well as grace. And a crystal clear elocution, that even I, with my rusty knowledge of Italian, can follow her words and their meaning even when she sings will all the required decorations and grace notes, moving and even jumping, up and down her remarkable range — from the lower part of mezzo to the higher part of Alto — a range within which she could sing either as dramatic, or as coloratura soprano, depending on what the work being performed called for.
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
Finally: to end of this series of entries on Callas:
One who, once upon a time, made the air vibrate with tremendous fire and passion under the adoring eyes of thousands, now has an asteroid named after her, out there, forever circling the Sun in the eternal vacuum of space, between Jupiter and Mars, under the unblinking stares of the countless stars:
Asteroid 29834 Mariacallas was named in her memory. The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on 31 January 2018 (M.P.C. 108697) "Wikipedia."
And here what, is suppossed to have been her last appearance in an opera performance, singing the aria "Vissi d'Arte" from Puccini's "Tosca":
According to the YT notes:
"Maria Callas' final appearance on the operatic stage was in Tosca at Covent Garden's 1965 Royal Gala. For many opera lovers, Maria Callas and Tosca's Vissi d'Arte are inseparable. "I lived for art; I lived for love" became La Divina's cri de coeur, her swansong, the perfect expression of her own triumphs and tragedies."
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
Now, some great fiddling, for all those that are Irish, or carry and feel a certain Irishness in their hearts. By my favorite fiddler, from the early days in a great career, playing at the auditorium of (possibly) a Catholic church, somewhere up in one of the Mountain states — now, in the waning days of the not very wintery winter of 2020, here is, once more, a distilled fragrance of the "Last Rose of Summer", in the variations for violin by Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst, based on the traditional song of the same name with lyrics that Thomas Moore, poet and Irishman, wrote in the Year of Our Lord of 1805:
'tis the Last Rose of Summer left blooming alone
all her lovely companions are faded and gone
No no flower of her kindred no rose bud is neigh
to reflect back her blushes or give sigh for sigh
I'll leave thee thou lone one to pine on the stem
Since the lovely are sleeping go sleep now with them
Thus kindly I scatter thy leaves o'er the bed
where thy mates of the garden lie scentless and dead
So soon may I follow when friendships decay
and from love's shining circle the gems drop away
when true hearts lie withered and fond one's are flown
Oh who would inhabit this bleak world alone?
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
Now spring is getting near.
Here, in the USA, as an early warning of what is soon coming and we better get ready for it, this last Sunday, very early in the morning, the hour got switched from Winter (EDT) to "summer" time (EST) moving forward by 60 minutes.
Soon the usual activities of springtime will be upon us, in the Northern Hemisphere: spring cleaning, finding virgin, doing our taxes for the previous year, sacrificing virgin to gods, buying the local seasonal and still fresh fish at the supermarket, as well as fresh veggies at the nearby farmers' market, and so on. The usual, as I just said.
These are all rites of spring that have been rigorously observed and repeated year after year since time immemorial. Now, to help make it easier to carry them out, and particularly appropriate for accompanying those virgin-related activities, here is something from Stravinsky, Igor Fyodorovich, to listen to while performing them. And useful for covering those unnerving screams (that then have the neighbors complaining) with even louder noises from the orchestra.
Stravinsky "The Rite of Spring": the London Symphony Orchestra, Sir Simon Rattle conducting:
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
Some twenty years after last seen here playing "The Last Rose of Summer", here is favorite fiddler once more, this time doing some vigorous Bach gymnastics to keep in shape.
(1) "Presto" from the Sonata No. 1 for violin solo, played somewhere in outer space and wearing not very practical shoes:
(2) When "Presto" won't do, it has to be "Double Presto", from Partita No. 1 for, yes, violin solo, this time in fiddler's living room, during the daily practice and, naturally only informally dressed:
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
I have, by pure chance, heard just now four young musicians playing Beethoven's Quartet No. 1, the first of the three Razumovsky string quartets, so named after the Russian aristocrat that was ambassador to the court in Vienna at the time and had commissioned them.
These four musicians are either senior students, or recent graduates of the New England Conservatory, playing this great work and, in so doing, giving a remarkably fine account of themselves.
Listen to them. I have found their performance not just very good, but also profound and profoundly moving. This recording was made on 2012, eight years ago as of this writing. I do not know what has become of them. For their own good and the good of audiences, I hope they are still active and pursuing successful careers. And delighting, enlightening and deeply moving the hearts of those who are lucky to see and listen them perform.
Beethoven String Quartet Op.59 No.1 "Razumovsky"
Matthew Vera and Michael Rau, violins David Mason, viola Marza Wilks, cello
Jordan Hall, New England Conservatory, December 11th 2012
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
Great gusts of wind blowing long, curving waves of grass across meadows; deep memories of centuries, deep dreams of generations fading, of generations surging, like the wind in the grass. Like the grass in the wind.
The call of ancient things, deep in the ancestral memories of the blood and the bones.
The music of the heart that meditates on the old, that contemplates the new turn into the old, and then is gone. Things once familiar that changed, as all changes. Like the wind, like the grass, like the wind in the grass:
Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis for Double Stringed Orchestra: David Nolan, Leader London Philharmonic Orchestra:
And here, a selection of other William's works (including a repeat of "Tallis" by another orchestra):
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
Well, today might not be a bad one to add some Mozart music, that makes peopple smarter, and I have chosen two works:
(1) Mozart's Symphony 41 in C Major, K 55, called "Jupiter", with Herbert von Karajan conducting the Berlin Symphonic Orchestra:
(2) Mozart's concert for flute and harp in C Major, K 299, with Neville Marriner conducting the RTSI — the orchestra of the Swiss Italian Radio and Television:
Notice that the flute has square wholes and that the harpist, while perhaps not the prettiest one ever, can be heard playing every note with great clarity: this is a very good recording and the best I have found on YouTube, so I decided to bring it here for the enjoyment of both the eager Mozart's fan and of the casual passer by.
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
Of the stringed instruments the classical guitar is probably the least common in symphonic orchestration. Spanish composers take it up and honor it with these masterful pieces that are also a fusion of the Spanish flamento with classical music: 1.-) "El Concierto de Aranjuez", by Joaquín Rodrigo, here performed by the most important guitarist of the 20th century, Paco de Lucía, and
2.-) "Asturias", by Isaac Albeniz, performed by the Croatian guitarist Aba Vidovic.
Best regards.
1.- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhO5OSLZjl8
2.- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inBKFMB-yPg
EDITED html to text – post may not appear as intended
Wavy: "what??"
Care to elaborate?
And to migongo: I would go for Segovia as the best guitar player of the XX Century, closely followed byNarciso Yepes and then by de Lucía, Manitas de Plata…
To rest my case, here is Yepes playing a little something by J.S..Bach. Originally for the lute, but Yepes, with his twelve strings guitar is not too far off when playing something meant to be played on the lute:
And here, Segovia, also on a little something by J.S.B. transcribed from the solo violin to the solo guitar:
And here is another little something, this one by Wallace Stevens, commenting on how things are, and about a certain blue guitar:
The man bent over his guitar,
A shearsman of sorts. The day was green.
They said, "You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are."
The man replied, "Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar."
And they said then, "But play, you must,
A tune beyond us, yet ourselves,
A tune upon the blue guitar
Of things exactly as they are."
First stanza of "The Man with the Blue Guitar."
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
And John Feely is no slouch either:
And more Yepes, with a selection of works by Francisco Tárrega:
(With the always big crowd-pleaser: "Recuerdos de la Alhambra." — and much more.)
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
And here, even more Narciso Yepes, playing a pretty varied set of compositions:
Minutes from start Author Title
0:01 Castelnuovo-Tedesco Capriccio Diabolico
9:11 Sor Minuet in C
12:21 Sor Andantino Op241
15:30 Sor Minuet in D
17:34 J S Bach Prelude No 3 in C minor BWV999
18:48 J S Bach Gavotte (from Sonata No 6 in E major for unaccompanied violin BWV 1006)
21:41 J S Bach Chaconne (from Sonata No 4 in D minor for unaccompanied Violin BWV1004)
35:39 J S Bach Loure (from Suite No 3 in C major for unaccompanied cello BWV 1009)
39:18 Torroba Nocturno
42:46 Ponce Six Preludes Op Posth
49:50 Villa-Lobos Prelude in E minor
54:56 Rodrigo Sarabanda lejana
59:55 Torroba Madronos
1:02:42 Villa-Lobos Prelude No 4 in E minor
1:06:55 Milan Pavana
1:08:21 Sor Minuet in D Op115
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
And one more, of particular personal significance : Ana Vidova plays Astor Piazzola's compositions transcribed for the guitar:
Years ago, I went to Japan to collaborate with colleagues at the Hydrographic Institute of Japan in a project using a combination of GPS to position one of its ships and then a kind of sonar from sending pings from this ship to repeater equipment on the ocean floor that would send back the pings. The purpose was to use a combination of this two types of signals to find the position of the equipment on the seabed, with enough precision that, repeating the observations at intervals, one could determine how the Earth's crust was deforming there and building up stresses that, eventually, would be released in a powerful earthquake, something that Japan is always at great risk.
When we were done and I was on the eve of coming back to the USA, the man in charge of the operation invited a Japanese colleague and me to his house in suburban Tokyo for dinner. There, his wife had prepared a fabulous meal. When we were all full and happy, he went inside and came back with her cello: she is a cellist of the Tokyo Symphony orchestra. And she told me: "I am going to play something for you that I think you might like to hear". Then she sat down, grab hold of the cello firmly between her knees, put bow to strings, and played "Oblivion" by Piazzola, transcribed for the cello.
So, you see: life has a way of giving one the most extraordinary surprises at the least expected moments.
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
- This reply was modified 2 months ago by OscarCP.
Hmmm… Vidovic, not Vidova. Piazzolla, not Piazzola.. The years are catching up, you know?
Just wait until that virus hears about this…
To compensate, here is "Oblivion", this time transcribed for the guitar and played by Nadja Kossinskaja:
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
Not properly classical, but a remarkable strings performances and "ludens divertimento". Hope you enjoy.
- This reply was modified 2 months ago by migongo.
The cartoon is one example of "Animusic", a series of animated videos by that name, such as the one linked by migongo, a big hit on Public TV in the USA, maybe ten years ago. I had not seen until just now another one of those in a long time. So: thanks, migongo!
The marble machine: I saw a demonstration in a shorter video, I think on the BBC Web site, some years ago. This one in YouTube is a complete performance, so once more: thanks again, for making it possible to see that (second) video.
(Those 'marbles' used to hit and make various items make sounds look more like ball-bearings than marbles, but seem too light to be that. So, metal-coated marbles?)
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
I made a mistake earlier on, and posted a link to a selection of works played by Segovia, instead of to the intended one with Narciso Yepes as the performer. To make up for that, here is Yepes playing 24 guitar etudes by Fernando Sor:
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
This little section dedicated to the art of guitar playing cannot be complete without a set of Paganini's compositions for the guitar. He was very good at playing this instrument, although he was much more famous as a violinist. He composed a number of works for it, but was very cagey about playing them in public, keeping his performances to small audiences of people he was close to, and playing behind closed doors. In his own work as a composer for the violin, he tried out themes and certain melodies on the guitar before including them into his works for the violin.
So here you have Paganini's 37 Guitar Sonatas played by Guido Fichtner:
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould (1993)
(IMDB) "As the title suggests, this dramatized documentary about the eccentric Canadian pianist Glenn Gould is broken up into thirty-two short films (mirroring the thirty-two part structure of Bach's 'Goldberg Variations', the recording that Gould made famous), each giving us an insight into some aspect of Gould's life and career. Out of respect for the music lead actor Colm Feore is never seen playing the piano, merely reacting to Gould's own recordings, which are extensively featured"
Thanks Alex for the link to this remarkable film about this remarkable artist, as well as a remarkably unusual man.
Glenn Gould was unusual not only in being one of the most gifted pianists of the last century and perhaps the greatest interpreter in living memory of J.S. Bach's works transcribed for the piano, but also because of a number of peculiarities of behavior, some of which are mentioned here:
His best known oddity was his habit of humming along as he was playing, something that drove sound engineers nuts trying, often without completely succeeding, to scrub it off his recordings. I found those little sounds he made rather endearing, others found them plain annoying. Another one of his oddities was his choice of diet, consisting mainly of scrambled eggs. Not exactly what nine out of ten doctors recommend for keeping blood cholesterol within safe levels. He died at age 50 of a stroke that has been attributed mainly to his choice of diet.
Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS + Linux (Mint)
Welcome to our unique respite from the madness.
It's easy to post questions about Windows 10, Win8.1, Win7, Surface, Office, or browse through our Forums. Post anonymously or register for greater privileges. Keep it civil, please: Decorous Lounge rules strictly enforced. Questions? Contact Customer Support.
Plus Membership
Donations from Plus members keep this site going. You can identify the people who support AskWoody by the Plus badge on their avatars.
AskWoody Plus members not only get access to all of the contents of this site -- including Susan Bradley's frequently updated Patch Watch listing -- they also receive weekly AskWoody Plus Newsletters (formerly Windows Secrets Newsletter) and AskWoody Plus Alerts, emails when there are important breaking developments. Click here for details and to sign up.
Search The Lounge
Recent Replies
- Nathan Parker on Apple Making it Harder to Ignore Software Update Notifications 11 minutes ago
- DrBonzo on Apple Making it Harder to Ignore Software Update Notifications 20 minutes ago
- anonymous on Security Intelligence Update for Windows Defender Antivirus – KB915597 25 minutes ago
- Kirsty on How to use wushowhide 41 minutes ago
- TechTango on Falcon 9 49 minutes ago
- Kirsty on Need an IPhone 11 IOS 13.5 tutorial 52 minutes ago
- Nathan Parker on IPhone 11 os13.1 and nordvpn 1 hour, 47 minutes ago
- Nathan Parker on Contact Tracing App Sharing Data with Foursquare and Google 1 hour, 52 minutes ago
- Nathan Parker on Apple Making it Harder to Ignore Software Update Notifications 1 hour, 54 minutes ago
- GoneToPlaid on Try docking Falcon 9 at ISS 2 hours, 16 minutes ago
- OscarCP on Apple Making it Harder to Ignore Software Update Notifications 2 hours, 21 minutes ago
- DrBonzo on Apple Making it Harder to Ignore Software Update Notifications 2 hours, 33 minutes ago
- OscarCP on Apple Making it Harder to Ignore Software Update Notifications 2 hours, 38 minutes ago
- EricEWV on Patch Lady – I'm not worthy for 2004 2 hours, 47 minutes ago
- Bundaburra on How to use wushowhide 2 hours, 48 minutes ago
- MrJimPhelps on Multiple Monitors Not Displaying Properly 3 hours, Just now
- DriftyDonN on Contact Tracing App Sharing Data with Foursquare and Google 3 hours, Just now
- DriftyDonN on Where we stand with the May 2020 patches 3 hours, 10 minutes ago
- DriftyDonN on IPhone 11 os13.1 and nordvpn 3 hours, 16 minutes ago
- b on O365 Help Quit Working 3 hours, 18 minutes ago
- Nathan Parker on Family Sharing iOS Crash Bug and Bluetooth Security Vulnerability 3 hours, 25 minutes ago
- Nathan Parker on IPhone 11 os13.1 and nordvpn 3 hours, 26 minutes ago
- Nathan Parker on The awesome Mac OS Catalina fonts you didn't know you had access to 3 hours, 34 minutes ago
- jayinalaska on Patch Lady – I'm not worthy for 2004 3 hours, 36 minutes ago
- Nathan Parker on A bug in macOS 10.15.5 impacts bootable backups 3 hours, 37 minutes ago
- Nathan Parker on macOS Catalina 10.15.5 released 3 hours, 39 minutes ago
- KYKaren on Patch Lady – I'm not worthy for 2004 3 hours, 39 minutes ago
- Nathan Parker on AirParrot 3 3 hours, 40 minutes ago
- Bluetrix on Falcon 9 4 hours, 12 minutes ago
- JohnS1606 on O365 Help Quit Working 4 hours, 44 minutes ago
Recent Topics
How to Uninstall and Reinstall Cortana in Windows 10 2004
4 minutes ago
Need an IPhone 11 IOS 13.5 tutorial
52 minutes ago
Contact Tracing App Sharing Data with Foursquare and Google
1 hour, 52 minutes ago
Apple Making it Harder to Ignore Software Update Notifications
11 minutes ago
Try docking Falcon 9 at ISS
2 hours, 16 minutes ago
Falcon 9
49 minutes ago
Windows 10 Tutorial
9 hours ago
Defective power supply?
11 hours, 21 minutes ago
Patch Lady – I'm not worthy for 2004
3 hours, 36 minutes ago
How to use wushowhide
41 minutes ago
Window 10 2004 install on test laptop
12 hours, 28 minutes ago
Where we stand with the May 2020 patches
3 hours, 10 minutes ago
Taking the battery out of a laptop
1 day, 3 hours ago
Excel-IF error & Index / Match
10 hours, 34 minutes ago
Windows Feature Update Forces Reactivation of Office
1 day, 8 hours ago
The awesome Mac OS Catalina fonts you didn't know you had access to
3 hours, 34 minutes ago
How to Upgrade to Windows 10 Professional
12 hours, 57 minutes ago
Just in case…. R&R Hall of Fame
1 day, 8 hours ago
Delete hidden Win7 program from Win10 computer.
1 day, 23 hours ago
Manual shut down causes event log errors Win10 v1909
15 hours, 29 minutes ago
A bug in macOS 10.15.5 impacts bootable backups
3 hours, 37 minutes ago
Windows 10 Insider Preview build 19635 released to FAST ring
2 days, 12 hours ago
Anybody use KB4517245 "enablement package"?
2 days, 15 hours ago
Surface Pro 6 dropping ethernet connecton
2 days, 19 hours ago
Turing Machines – Interpreter and Compiler
2 days, 20 hours ago
When Linux Crashes… Don't Panic.
2 days, 23 hours ago
Moving to the 5.4 kernel stack in Ubuntu 18.04 derivatives (like Mint 19)
3 days ago
Whitelist Website from Ad Blocker in Brave
2 days, 5 hours ago
CVE-2013-3893 in Win7
2 days, 12 hours ago
W8.1 IE11/Edge- -Eyes glazed over?–Profusely!
2 days, 19 hours ago
Search for Topics
Recent blog posts
- Falcon 9
- Patch Lady – I'm not worthy for 2004
- Where we stand with the May 2020 patches
- Win10 version 2004 is here but… surprise!
- Patch Lady – here comes 2004
- Patch Lady – making sure you control your Microsoft account
- Mark your calendar: SpaceX launch today at 4:30pm Eastern Daylight Time
- Having audio problems on your Win10 PC?
Copyright © 2004 – 2020 AskWoody LLC. All rights reserved.