CLASSICAL OPUS no.33

Arnold Schoenberg: “Piano Concerto op.42”

アーノルド・シェーンベルク：「ピアノ協奏曲op.42」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 21 minutes

This pioneering concerto is an openly impulsive attempt to reconcile atonality with romantic expression and even with traces of classical structure.  Its complexity is almost purgatory; it repeatedly crushes any expectations with its all-encompassing, visionary, cubist inventiveness.  Mitsuko Uchida’s testimony in the second video is priceless.

 

MUSIC

 

 

INFO

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_Concerto_(Schoenberg)

 

A REFLECTION

I am not I

I am this one

Walking beside me whom I do not see

Whom at times I manage to visit

And whom at other times I forget

Who remains calms and silent while I talk

And forgives, gently when I hate

Who walks where I am not

Who will remain standing when I die

 

Juan Ramon Jimenez – “I Am Not I”

Published in: on November 28, 2018 at 4:28 pm  Leave a Comment  

CLASSICAL OPUS no.43

Ludwig van Beethoven: “9th symphony in D minor”

ルートヴィヒ・ヴァン・ベートーヴェン：「第9番交響曲第4番」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 93 minutes

This monumentally encyclopedic, spirited yet rigorous celebration almost annihilated the symphonic form.  The overwhelming, universal perfection of this piece was responsible for the desertification of extended orchestral forms in romanticism.  Luckily, it allows much freedom to maestros who indelibly stamp it with their individuality.  Hence two versions below.  First, the immortal Arturo Toscanini with his left-handed tribute to ambidextrous gentleness.  And then Leonard Bernstein, A.D. 1989, recorded it shortly before Bonn, Beethoven’s native city, lost its historical significance.

 

MUSIC

 

 

INFO

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._9_(Beethoven)

 

A REFLECTION

Joyful, joyful, we adore Thee,

God of glory, Lord of love;

Hearts unfold like flowers before Thee,

Praising Thee their sun above.

 

Henry van Dyke: “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee”

Published in: on November 18, 2018 at 11:39 am  Leave a Comment  

CLASSICAL OPUS no.51

Richard Wagner: “Walkürenritt”

リチャード・ワグナー：「バルキリーライド」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 5 minutes

This timelessly climactic delirium of awe-inspiring mythomania suffocates listeners with its programmatic, slippery angst.  For this Minotaur of Romanticism, the musical fabric and leitmotif analysis became eponymous for the eventually futile quest of a “complete” artwork.  But myth, desire, sensuality and destiny were all convulsed in the historical – and artistic – trajectory of Germany’s 19th century rise.

 

MUSIC

 

INFO

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

 

 

A REFLECTION

Over all the hills now

Repose

In all the trees now

Shows

Barely a breath.  Birds are through

That sang in their wood to the west

Only wait, traveler.  Rest

Soon for you too.

 

Wolfgang Goethe: “Song of the Traveler at Evening”

Published in: on November 9, 2018 at 5:15 pm  Leave a Comment  

CLASSICAL OPUS no.52

Johannes Sebastian Bach: “Toccata & Fugue in D minor”

ヨハネス・セバスチャン・バッハ：「トッカータ＆フーガ・イン・Dマイナー」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 8 minutes

This apotheosis of pipe organ’s ferocity is not only stately, aggressive, vivacious or fiery.  It combines interlacing melody lines through Bach’s signature counterpoints, even though this piece appears more linear than most of his famed bequest.  It is, however, invariably virtuosic and improvisatory, with the toccata part substituting for a prelude to the fugue.

 

MUSIC

 

INFO

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toccata_and_Fugue_in_D_minor,_BWV_565

 

A REFLECTION

Keenly, without blinking, through pallid, stray

clouds, upon the child in the manger, from far away—

from the depth of the universe, from its opposite end—the star

was looking into the cave. And that was the Father’s stare.

 

Josip Brodsky: “Star of the Nativity”

Published in: on November 8, 2018 at 5:22 pm  Leave a Comment  

CLASSICAL OPUS no.55

Ludwig van Beethoven: “Für Elise”

ルートヴィヒ・ヴァン・ベートーヴェン：「エリーゼのために」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 4 minutes

Elemental and full of contrasts – programmatic but passionate, iconic in form and yet epicurean in appetite – this canon of piano teaching has also gained a (largely superfluous) orchestral version.  What’s more unexpected is that “Für Elise” was this radical innovator’s mid-period piece.  If dated properly, it underscores the composer’s dizzying versatility – coinciding with his heroic pieces and the gradual loss of hearing.

 

MUSIC

 

INFO

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%BCr_Elise

 

A REFLECTION

Like the stamen inside a flower

The steeple stands in lovely blue

And the day unfolds around its needle;

The flock of swallows that circles the steeple

Flies there each day through the same blue air

That carries their cries from me to you.

 

Friedrich Hölderlin: “Lovely Blue”

 

Published in: on November 5, 2018 at 5:47 pm  Leave a Comment  

CLASSICAL OPUS no.57

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: “Solfeggietto in C minor”

カール・フィリップ・エマヌエル・バッハ：「Cマイナー ソルフェジゲート」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 1 minute

Ah, what a cyclically pedantic oscillator this is!  This flash flood of cascading notes literally submerges us with an unprecedented spontaneity.  Clearly, Johannes Sebastian’s “harpsichord” son moved away here from dad’s signature counterpoint, infusing instead a dose of emotionalism into his own trademark.  But many of us forget this, having heard this piece practiced countless times, emotionlessly, by a neighbor across the wall.

 

MUSIC

 

INFO

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

 

A REFLECTION

There is nothing you can see that is not a flower

There is nothing that you can think that is not the moon

 

Basho (a haiku)

Published in: on November 3, 2018 at 4:57 pm  Leave a Comment  

CLASSICAL OPUS no.60

Felix Mendelssohn “Frühlingslied op.62, no.6”

フェリックス・メンデルスゾーン「春の歌op.62、no.6」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 3 minutes

Mendelssohn’s stubborn yet alluring spoonful of retro-idealism inevitably tickles nostalgic fancies. The recurring, jocular motif washes up repeatedly with subtle lyricism of early romanticism but not without a feathery shadow of German baroque imprint.

 

MUSIC

 

 

INFO

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songs_Without_Words#Book_5.2C_Op._62_.281842.E2.80.931844.29

 

A REFLECTION

Graceful, spiritual

With the gentleness of arabesques

Our life is similar

To the existence of fairies

That spin in soft cadence

Around nothingness

To which we sacrifice

The here and now

 

Hermann Hesse: “In Secret We Thirst”

Published in: on October 31, 2018 at 4:54 pm  Leave a Comment  

CLASSICAL OPUS no.62

Anton Webern – “String Quartet op.28”

アントン・ウェーベルン –  「弦楽四重奏op.28」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 15 minutes

The expressionist quartet’s nocturnal scraps germinate and burgeon, then imperceptibly whittle down in curvilinear fashion.  Webern’s serialist repetitions initially stem from an anarchic chromatic core, but are later reversed and further superimposed.  This was done long before studio multi-tracking durably changed our reception of musical textures.

 

MUSIC

Opus 28:

(a much earlier) Opus 20:

INFO

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_Quartet_(Webern)

 

A REFLECTION

Eye’s roundness between the bars

Vibratile monad eyelid

Propels itself upward, releases a glance

Iris, swimmer, dreamless and dreary

The sky, heart-grey, must be near.

 

Paul Celan – “Language Mesh”

Published in: on October 29, 2018 at 5:03 pm  Leave a Comment  

CLASSICAL OPUS no.72

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: “Rondo alla Turca”

ヴォルフガング・アマデウス・モーツァルト：「トルコ行進曲」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 3 minutes

Rallying and throbbing, lashing and oniric, this excerpt remains one of the homo sapiens’ biggest Schlager ever.  But its historical pedigree is intriguing.  Turkish military marching bands were popular salon curiosities, as formerly scary things often are.  After all, this piece was most likely penned in Vienna, exactly 100 years after the city’s last, unsuccessful siege by the Ottomans.  If we discount Jean-Philippe Rameau’s colorful titles, the “Rondo” could also count as the preface to orientalism in Occidental Music.  Here, we invert the trick, presenting the piano-less Japanese version, which seems less shamelessly percussive than the ubiquitous keyboard performances dished out by Westerners.

 

MUSIC

 

INFO

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_Sonata_No._11_(Mozart)

 

A REFLECTION

I sought the tavern at the break of day,

Though half the world was still asleep in bed;

The harp and flute were up and in full swing,

And a most pleasant morning sound made they.

 

Khwāja Šamsu d-Dīn Muḥammad Hāfez-e Šīrāzī: “Ode 487” also known as “With last night’s wine still singing in my head”

Published in: on October 19, 2018 at 5:44 pm  Leave a Comment  

CLASSICAL OPUS no.73

Richard Strauss: “Metamorphosen”

リチャード・シュトラウス：「変身」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 26 minutes

Icy, audacious and highly tensile, this string enigma is perplexing: musicians’ warped parts appear to compete for tangible audibility.  Strauss, whose tone poem endings puzzled audiences, is usually remembered as a deconstructive innovator but he also relished obsessively traditional virtuosity.  Despite such formally irreconcilable ingredients, he emerged successful from most attempts to match them.

 

MUSIC

 

INFO

https://csosoundsandstories.org/strauss-reflecting-on-his-artistic-life-in-metamorphosen/

 

A REFLECTION

Losing too is still ours; and even forgetting

still has a shape in the kingdom of transformation.

When something’s let go of, it circles; and though we are

rarely the center

of the circle, it draws around us its unbroken, marvelous

curve.

 

Rainer Maria Rilke: “Losing”

 

Published in: on October 18, 2018 at 5:13 pm  Leave a Comment  
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