CLASSICAL OPUS no.2

Franz Schubert – “Trio in E flat major op.100”

フランツ・シューベルト – 「Eフラットメジャーop.100のトリオ」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 9 minutes

A climax of unhurried, audacious precision, the trio alternates with ease between mirth and solemnity.  The gentle, discursive style is richly endowed with a structural elegance of pointillist contrasts.  Uniquely among Austrian composers, Schubert started out as a viola player, hence – probably – his acute focus on non-ornamental detail within the structural frame.  And although his latest period is known for dour shades of saturnine bleakness, little of the downcast mood transpires in the Trio.

 

MUSIC

 

INFO

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_Trio_No._2_(Schubert)

 

A REFLECTION

Comfort

which finds no windows and no doors

and wants to come in

bitterly gathers kindling.

It wants to force a miracle

and sets fire to

the house of pain

 

Hilde Domin: “House without windows”

Published in: on December 29, 2018 at 5:32 pm  Leave a Comment  

CLASSICAL OPUS no.3

Ludwig van Beethoven – ”Mondscheinsonate op.27“

ルートヴィヒ・ヴァン・ベートーヴェン  ：「ムーンライトソナタop.27」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 14 minutes

The first movement is tearfully resilient, even provocative in its unassertive and intimate humility.  But this childlike simplicity evaporates under the boneless robustness of presto agitato that follows.  This passage calls for absolute heights of pianistic craft.

Beethoven’s sonatas are sometimes referred to as the classical music’s “New Testament” (as opposed to Bach’s “Well-tempered Klavier”, or the “Old Testament”).  Interestingly, the Book of Revelation makes several references to the moon and, according to some interpretations, to moon eclipse.  Alas.  Tantalizing as this rabbit hole may be, the lunar moniker was only ascribed to this sonata posthumously.  What would the composer think?

 

MUSIC

 

INFO

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_Sonata_No._14_(Beethoven)

 

A REFLECTION

Who wants to graze on silhouettes,

clothe the essence with borrowed deception or

hide behind hope with deceitful possessions?

Bared, I must see the truth

 

Friedrich Schiller: “The Poem of Life”

Published in: on December 28, 2018 at 6:01 pm  Leave a Comment  

CLASSICAL OPUS no.5

Johannes Sebastian Bach – “Agnus Dei from Mass in B Minor”

ヨハネス・セバスチャン・バッハ – 「アグナス・デイ・イン・ミー・イン・マイナー」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 6 minutes

This is autumnal messianism by 1000 cuts, wailing subcutaneously at all of life’s regrets.  Bach excels in tetrahedral combination of dextrously crafted coincidences that morph into a seamless, melancholic whole.  The emotional pendulum marks the pivotal element of a Roman Catholic mass, located here in the 24th movement of ‘Mass in B Minor’.

 

MUSIC

 

INFO

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

 

A REFLECTION

Now, O Christ, seal my eyelids

Let ice on my lips be spread

All the hours are superfluous

All the words have been said!

 

Gabriela Mistral: “Ecstasy”

Published in: on December 26, 2018 at 5:51 pm  Leave a Comment  

CLASSICAL OPUS no.8

Johannes Sebastian Bach: “Erbarme Dich, mein Gott, no.39 Matthaeus Passion”

ヨハネス・セバスチャン・バッハ：「「憐れみ給え、わが神よ」、39番マタイ受難曲」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 8 minutes

The prime aria from the second part of the “Passion” has a contemplative, lilting rhythm framing a rather resigned mood – a proper metaphor for the spiritual traditions of the mainly Jewish audience that Matthew targeted in his Gospels.  Kathleen Ferrier’s classic 1950 recording with von Karajan is a priceless document, but the trimmed down orchestration in the second video is more transparent, with the lamenting violin, comforted by the cello under the organ’s warm eiderdown.

 

MUSIC

 

 

INFO

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

 

A REFLECTION

Over this your white grave

covered for years, there is a stir

in the air, something uplifting

and, like death, beyond comprehension.

Over this your white grave

oh, mother, can such loving cease?

for all his filial adoration

a prayer:

Give her eternal peace

 

Karol Wojtyła: “Over This Your White Grave”

Published in: on December 23, 2018 at 5:03 pm  Leave a Comment  

CLASSICAL OPUS no.11

Carl Orff: “Carmina Burana”

カールオルフ  –  「カーミナ・ブラーナ」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 62 minutes

Whenever staged these days, this hellish, galvanizing riot of athletic singing is re-lived as a jostling cauldron of neo-medievalism.  But it cannot escape the cross-textual appeal it once held for authoritarian-minded listeners.  Escalading the walls of blistering cacophony, this choral mastodon of gargantuan proportions has carried its relevance well beyond the philharmonic.  Völkischer Beobachter, NSDAP’s mouthpiece, tainted the opera’s legacy by praising its “disciplined” approach (more on this controversy in the link below).  But much of its musical bequest remains apolitical.  French ‘zeuhl’ music is often said to be the love child of “Carmina Burana” and John Coltrane’s spiritual period.

 

MUSIC

 

INFO

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmina_Burana_(Orff)

 

on the pseudo-historical controversy, read here:

 

A REFLECTION

My Soul.  Why should the imagination of a man

Long past his prime remember things that are

Emblematical of love and war?

Think of ancestral night that can,

If but imagination scorn the earth

And intellect its wandering

To this and that and t’other thing,

Deliver from the crime of death and birth.

 

William Butler Yeats: “Dialogue of self and soul”

Published in: on December 20, 2018 at 5:07 pm  Leave a Comment  

CLASSICAL OPUS no.18

Georg Frideric Haendel: “Sarabande (4th mvmt from Suite in D Minor)”

ゲオルグ・フリードリヒ・ヘンデル：「サラバンデ（第4楽章）スイート・ディ・マイナー」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 2 minutes

Misanthropic, inertial and ponderous, the fleeting epitaph engraves its farewell lines with elegiac fluency.  This least florid and most forthright of all baroque greats was unparalleled in generating tormented, dramatic harmonies.  In 1975, the intricately interwoven choppiness of this segment was immortalized in Stanley Kubrick’s sunset-lit historical drama, to immense effect.

 

MUSIC

 

INFO

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_suite_in_D_minor_(HWV_437)

 

A REFLECTION

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses

your understanding.

Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its

heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.

And could you keep your heart in wonder at the

daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem

less wondrous than your joy;

 

Kahlil Gibran: “On Pain”

Published in: on December 13, 2018 at 5:20 pm  Leave a Comment  

CLASSICAL OPUS no.20

Johannes Brahms: “3rd Movement of the 3rd Symphony in F major”

ヨハネス・ブラームス：「第3回交響曲第3楽章主題歌」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 6 minutes

This soothing, somnambulant melodrama seems ruminating but is devoid of the era’s ubiquitous fatalism.  It contains one of the most addictive allegrettos, a deceptive ear-worm (“Ohrwurm”), as we say in German.  Its skeleton is essentially a vacillating valse and the French horns under Bernstein are dizzyingly engrossing.

In the second video, Jane Birkin bravely realizes the movement’s poppy potential.  It confirms that you can pull it off without a properly schooled voice (and in a foreign language).  Now, why dontcha try it yourself?

 

MUSIC

 

 

INFO

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._3_(Brahms)

 

A REFLECTION

Troubled, wildered, and forlorn,

Dark, benighted, travel-worn,

Over many a tangled spray,

All heart-broke, I heard her say:

‘O my children! do they cry,

Do they hear their father sigh?

Now they look abroad to see,

Now return and weep for me.’

 

William Blake: “A Dream”

Published in: on December 11, 2018 at 5:00 pm  Leave a Comment  

CLASSICAL OPUS no.27

Franz Schubert: “Serenade”

フランツ・シューベルト：「セレナーデ」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 3 minutes

Sentimental, piercing, even shrill but never discordant in the highest of registers, this poignant lament recurs obsessively.  The strongly suggestive, folkish simplicity that flows from the solo instrument obscures the deftly spinal piano accompaniment – a trademark of many of Schubert’s Lieder.  Here it is performed by I.Perlman – the great Yascha Haifetz’s virtuoso offspring.

 

MUSIC

 

INFO

https://www.musicwithease.com/schubert-serenade.html

 

A REFLECTION

So sweet the hour, so calm the time,

I feel it more than half a crime,

When Nature sleeps and stars are mute,

To mar the silence ev’n with lute.

 

Edgar Allan Poe: “Serenade”

Published in: on December 4, 2018 at 11:46 pm  Leave a Comment  

CLASSICAL OPUS no.30

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: “Ave Verum Corpus”

ヴォルフガング・アマデウス・モーツァルト： 「アヴェ・マリア」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 2 minutes

This dreaming, elated, sacred phantasmagoria of elliptic immediacy explores a wide contemplative range.  A sense of exultation pervades this daring exploration of the soul’s netherworlds.  Invariably, performances call for fresh voices, ensuring recurrent renewal of this eternally evanescent choir piece.

 

MUSIC

 

INFO

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ave_verum_corpus_(Mozart)

 

A REFLECTION

Where no knowing is I entered,

yet when I my own self saw there

without knowing where I rested

great things I understood there,

yet cannot say what I felt there,

since I rested in unknowing,

all knowledge there transcending.

 

San Juan de la Cruz: “Verses on the Ecstasy of Deep Contemplation”

Published in: on December 1, 2018 at 5:16 pm  Leave a Comment  

CLASSICAL OPUS no.32

Johannes Sebastian Bach: “Badinerie”

ヨハネス・セバスチャン・バッハ：「バディネリエ」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 2 minutes

Essentially a jocular dance, this is a showpiece for solo flutists, extracted from Orchestra Suite no.2 in B minor.  A nimble, laconic, scherzo-like structure is however presented with a tempo only suited for the most agile of the courtiers.  Like a childlike, droll pamphlet of grave consequences, it is subverted in the second version by a youthful James Galway.

 

MUSIC

 

 

INFO

https://www.redlandssymphony.com/pieces/suite-no-2-in-b-minor-bwv-1067

 

A REFLECTION

Orpheus with his lute made trees, 

And the mountain tops that freeze, 

Bow themselves when he did sing:

To his music plants and flowers 

Ever sprung; as sun and showers 

There had made a lasting spring. 

 

William Shakespeare: “Orpheus with his Lute Made Trees”

Published in: on November 29, 2018 at 5:16 pm  Leave a Comment  
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