CLASSICAL OPUS no.17

Sergei Prokofiev – “Suite from Love for Three Oranges”

セルゲイ・プロコフィエフ – 「三つのオレンジへの恋からのスイート」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 2 minutes

Prokofiev offers here a soaring, freakout cortège of highly animated colossi.  He excels in grotesque, scurrilous treatment of the progression, laden with volatile brass-band style toxicity.  The diatonic genius, who died in Moscow on the same day as Stalin, suffered from the commercial failure of this piece, which was composed while he still lived in the US.

 

MUSIC

 

INFO

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

 

A REFLECTION

Why am I without joy,

achieving everything,

but grasping

nothing at all?

 

Yevgeni Yevtushenko: “Tomorrow’s Wind”

Published in: on December 14, 2018 at 5:11 pm  Leave a Comment  

CLASSICAL OPUS no.45

Giuseppe Verdi: “Dies Irae”

ジュゼッペ・ヴェルディ：「ディラ・イレーエ」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 2 minutes

This wrathful, fiery and demoniac chant explodes with paroxysms of thunderous detonations.  Verdi subverted operatic conventions with his groundbreaking use of choruses and unprecedented vigor.  The toolkit was used, to great effect, in this memorial mass.

 

MUSIC

 

INFO

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Requiem_(Verdi)

 

A REFLECTION

This solitary hill has always been dear to me

And this hedge, which prevents me from seeing most of the endless horizon

But when I sit and gaze, I imagine, in my thoughts

Endless spaces beyond the hedge

 

Giacomo Leopardi: “The Infinite”

Published in: on November 15, 2018 at 9:03 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.76

Mikhail Glinka: “Ouverture to Ruslan & Ludmila”

ミハイル・グリンカ：「ルスランとルドミラの序曲」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 4 minutes

This seductive opening literally explodes with ceremonial power.  As it advances at frantic pace, the opera will repeatedly bristle with eruptive potential, but this volcanic energy should not distract from the composer’s dilemma.  Glinka’s oeuvre remained didactically syncretic.  Although he drew profusely on traditionally logorrheic folk songs of the Eastern plains (instrumental music was long frowned upon and even formally opposed by the Orthodox Church), he made his mark as the pioneer of Western forms in Russian music.  For this great musical nation, it all started here.

 

MUSIC

 

INFO

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruslan_and_Lyudmila_(opera)

 

A REFLECTION

You listen to the peal of distant thunder

The rumbling voice of violent waves and storm

And hear the village shepherd’s lonely cry

And then you send your answer

But hear no echo, there is no reply

This also, poet, is your nature

 

Aleksandr Pushkin: “Echo”

Published in: on October 15, 2018 at 5:32 pm  Leave a Comment  

CLASSICAL OPUS no.84

Gioachino Rossini: “La gazza ladra”

ジョアキーノ・ロッシーニ – 「カサ泥棒」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 9 minutes

The plumpish bard of lower classes painted in stark, fauvist hues of opera buffa.  The indefatigable creator of ludic songs preferred tunes that were anthemic, but also zestful and danceable, playfully evoking bygone minuets.  I added here a second version, despite the tinny recording quality.  After all, it’s conducted by maestro Toscanini.

 

MUSIC

 

INFO

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

 

A REFLECTION

Each of us bears the imprint

Of a friend met along the way;

In each the trace of each.

For good or evil

In wisdom or in folly

 

Primo Levi: “To My Friends”

 

Published in: on October 7, 2018 at 1:41 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