CLASSICAL OPUS no.50

 

Samuel Barber – “Adagio for Strings (Agnus Dei)”

サミュエル・バーバー – 「弦楽器のアガジオ・（アグナス・デイ）」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 8 minutes

Barber’s lacrymogenous tenebrism reverberates with bottomless anguish.  This latterday master of soaring vocal and choral works plunges us into cheerlessly elegiac veils until we reach transcendence in stagnant, cavernous candlelight.  Once it is finished, I recommend three minutes of complete silence and several deep breaths.

 

MUSIC

 

INFO

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adagio_for_Strings

 

A REFLECTION

Out of the day and night

A joy has taken flight;

Fresh spring, and summer, and winter hoar,

Move my faint heart with grief, but with delight

No more—Oh, never more!

 

Percy B. Shelley: “A Lament”

Published in: on November 10, 2018 at 6:20 pm  Leave a Comment  

CLASSICAL OPUS no.79

Henry Cowell: “Ongaku”

ヘンリー・コーウェル： 「音楽」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 14 minutes

In a belated bow to Japonsime, Cowell masterfully assembles a toxic palette of shimmering komorebi, diverting in form (though not in spirit) from the flute- and drum-reliant canon of traditional gagaku music.  As the grandfather of tone clusters and polyharmonies, the composer excelled in metrical inventiveness – which was abundantly clear in his Persian pieces, but is less immediately observable here.

 

MUSIC

 

INFO

https://www.naxos.com/mainsite/blurbs_reviews.asp?item_code=FECD-0003&catNum=FECD-0003&filetype=About%20this%20Recording&language=English

 

A REFLECTION

Softly, O softly we bear her along,

She hangs like a star in the dew of our song;

She springs like a beam on the brow of the tide,

She falls like a tear from the eyes of a bride.

 

Sarojini Naidu: “Palanquin bearers”

 

 

Published in: on October 12, 2018 at 5:28 pm  Leave a Comment  

CLASSICAL OPUS no.81

Miklos Rozsa: “Piano Sonata in A Minor”

ミクロス・ローザ – 「ピアノ・ソナタ・イン・Aマイナー」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 6 minutes

This monochromatic and elegant sonata appears alternatively contemplative and cosmopolitan.  More directly lyrical than the other Hungarian greats of the past century, Rozsa is too often derided for his Hollywood scores.  He may, indeed, be bathing us in traditionalist tonality, but his romantic flare-ups are bold, honest and somewhat irreverent.

 

MUSIC

 

INFO

https://www.cbcmusic.ca/posts/12261/forgotten-works-of-miklos-rozsa

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-double-life-of-miklos-rozsa/

 

A REFLECTION

I think it rains

That tongues may loosen from the parch

Uncleave roof-tops of

the mouth, hang

Heavy with knowledge

 

Wole Soyinka: “I Think It Rains”

Published in: on October 10, 2018 at 5:14 pm  Leave a Comment  

CLASSICAL OPUS no.88

George Gershwin: “Porgy and Bess”

ジョージガーシュイン：「ポーギーとベス」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 22 minutes

The composer’s dedication to kinetic leitmotifs is subverted here with the nonchalance of the continent’s heatwaves.  Gershwin incorporates extemporization, ragtime and jazzy phrasing on an orchestral scale but delivers this ratatouille with an emphatically theatrical lethargy.

The classic ballad celebrates warmer days and is reprised in the second video by Kronos Quartet (from the 9th minute).  Alas, their strident statement makes use of a distinctively Texan vocabulary, extinguished by heroin overdose in 1970.

 

MUSIC

 

 

INFO

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porgy_and_Bess

 

A REFLECTION

The wild bee reels from bough to bough

With his furry coat and his gauzy wing.

Now in a lily-cup, and now

Setting a jacinth bell a-swing,

In his wandering;

Sit closer love: it was here I trow

I made that vow.

 

Oscar Wilde: “Her Voice”

Published in: on October 3, 2018 at 5:17 pm  Leave a Comment  

CLASSICAL OPUS no.95

Charles Ives – “Symphony no.2”

チャールズ・アイヴス –  「交響曲第2番」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 42 minutes

An agonizing and exhilarating debut by this ardent Primitivist.  How could this insurance agent pool street brass bands and folksy citations into such complex layers of hymns, polyrhythms and nascent atonality?  Although it was his 4th symphony that pushed the boundaries, Leonard Bernstein’s delectable introduction here is, again, a must.

 

MUSIC

 

INFO

 

A REFLECTION

I have been one acquainted with the night.

I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.

I have outwalked the furthest city light.

 

I have looked down the saddest city lane.

I have passed by the watchman on his beat

And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

 

Robert Frost: “Acquainted with the Night”

Published in: on September 26, 2018 at 2:32 pm  Leave a Comment  

CLASSICAL OPUS no. 98

Alan Hovhaness: “Prayer of St Gregory”, op.62b

アラン・ホバネス：「聖グレゴリーの祈り」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 4 minutes

Performed in warm, cushioned tones, this celestial, sinuous invocation in B-flat minor strides confidently with a pace of ancestral maestoso.  The modal version for chorale-like organ (or harmonium) features Wynton Marsalis’s distinctly melismatic playing.  But it’s also worth exploring the less fluid variant for strings.

 

MUSIC

 

 

 

INFO

https://allthingstrumpet.com/hovhaness-prayer-of-st-gregory/

https://everestgtmusic.weebly.com/alan-hovhanesss-prayer-of-st-gregory.html

 

A REFLECTION

The Armenian Grief is a shoreless sea,

An enormous abyss of water

My Soul swims mournfully

On this huge and black expanse

 

Hovannes Tumanyan: “The Armenian Grief”

Published in: on September 23, 2018 at 6:02 pm  Leave a Comment