CLASSICAL OPUS no.70

Tomaso Albinoni (?): “Adagio in G Minor”

トマソ・アルビノーニ：「アダリオ・イン・G  マイナー」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 9 minutes

This dramatized, almost illogically poignant passage exudes deep sorrow only to hug us with its tuneful consolation.  Albinoni bequeathed a three-movement, fast-slow-fast concerto structure and is also considered the Godfather of oboe concertos.  But this professionally unattached Venetian dilettante may have never seen this Adagio as we know it today.  The score was allegedly reconstructed from Dresden’s ruins by Remo Giazotto.  Hopefully for fraud lovers, this is closer to an okapi than to a unicorn.

 

MUSIC

 

INFO

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

 

A REFLECTION

Don’t worry about watering the flowers—

In fact, don’t plant them.

You will have gone back home before they bloom,

And who will want them?

 

Bertold Brecht: “On the Term of Exile”

Published in: on October 21, 2018 at 3:24 pm  Leave a Comment  

CLASSICAL OPUS no.90

Johannes Sebastian Bach: “English Suite no.2 in A Minor”

ヨハネス・セバスチャン・バッハ：「英語の第2番の小曲」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 24 minutes

 

Stout and vehemently didactic, the suite enraptures us with its mechanical perfectness.  A rich variety of tone qualities lands on the keyboard, initially with little in the way of percussive decisiveness.  This is unusual for a baroque piece, but the style will change completely for the bourée, at 17th minute mark.  Originally written for harpsichord, here it is performed by Ivo Pogorelic, the pianistic enfant terrible of the early 1980s.

 

MUSIC

 

INFO

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Suites_(Bach)

 

A REFLECTION

In love, nothing exists between heart and heart.

Speech is born out of longing,

True description from the real taste.

The one who tastes, knows;

the one who explains, lies.

 

Rabia al Adawiyya (Rabiʿa al-Basri): “Reality”

Published in: on October 1, 2018 at 4:53 pm  Leave a Comment  

CLASSICAL OPUS no. 100

Antonio Vivaldi – “Vedro con il mio diletto” from Il Giustino

アントニオ・ヴィヴァルディ – 「イル・ジュスティーノ」オペラ の 「愛する人と共に見る」というアリア

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 5 minutes

 

A forgivingly narcisstic counter-tenor piece of seductive, accretive proximity that few baroque arias afford.  The singer astounds with his superb control of intensity and infallible command of pacing.  Note the zero glottal attack, as if his timbral silk slithered stealthily into our ears.  And the visuals?  I cannot promise that future posts here will quench similarly oxymoronic desires.

 

MUSIC

 

INFO

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giustino_(Vivaldi)

 

A REFLECTION

Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul

And sings the tune without the words

And never stops – at all

 

Emily Dickinson, “Hope is the thing with feathers”

Published in: on September 21, 2018 at 6:09 am  Leave a Comment  
Newer Entries »