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.9

Franz Liszt: “Liebestraum, no.3 in A-flat minor”

フランツリスト「愛の夢、A-flatマイナー3番」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 4 minutes

Misty, blithe, congenial and deceptively accessible, this gem glides effortlessly between the phlegmatic and the acrobatic.  Transcendentally passionate, the unobtrusively chopinesque Lied is devoted to love’s timelessness, thus allowing the fourth dimension to liberate it from the romantic shackles of evanescence.

 

MUSIC

 

INFO

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebestr%C3%A4ume

 

A REFLECTION

O love, as long as love you can,

O love, as long as love you may,

The time will come, the time will come

When you will stand at the grave and mourn!

 

Be sure that your heart burns,

And holds and keeps love

As long as another heart beats warmly

With its love for you

 

Ferdinand Freiligrath: “O Love, As Long As Love You Can”

Published in: on December 22, 2018 at 5:34 pm  Leave a Comment  

CLASSICAL OPUS no.10

Fryderyk Chopin – “Prelude in E Minor op.28 n.4”

フレデリック・ショパン  – 「プレリュードEマイナーop.28第4号」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 3 minutes

Taciturn melodicism clashes here with twilight melancholy of painfully burning absence.  As often in preludes, the metric structure is rhapsodic.  Abstract in intention, some of Chopin’s preludes were later contaminated by unintended associations with weather events.  And you don’t have to seek your roots on the muddy plains of Eastern Europe to hear the weeping willows’ squelching steps…

The second, monochromatic version, delivered here by Novi Singers, may, indeed, be apt for the depth of soggy winter.

 

MUSIC

 

INFO

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prelude,_Op._28,_No._4_(Chopin)

 

A REFLECTION

I fall on the sand to wipe with my hair

My country’s blood-stained feet,

But I know her face and crown

Radiant like the sun of suns.

 

Cyprian Kamil Norwid: “My Country”

Published in: on December 21, 2018 at 5:45 pm  Leave a Comment  

CLASSICAL OPUS no.12

Edvard Grieg – “Concerto for Piano, op.16”

エドヴァルド・グリーグ – 「ピアノ協奏曲op.16」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 32 minutes

This escalading, utopistic, consolatory melodrama is richly peppered with boisterous flashes of unfettered fancy.  The confident, even jaunty piano opening contrasts with the orchestra’s majestic, howling blanket.  The great Arthur Rubinstein infects the piece with Eastern European emotionalism.

 

MUSIC

 

INFO

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

 

A REFLECTION

Tonight, away begins to go

farther away, and the dream

what do we know of the dream

metallic leaps Jackson Pollock

silvery streams Jackson Pollock

I gaze across the sea

 

Inger Christensen – “From Light: Blue Poles”

 

Published in: on December 19, 2018 at 5:06 pm  Leave a Comment  

CLASSICAL OPUS no.14

Sergei Rachmaninoff – “Prelude in C Sharp Minor (Op. 3 No. 2)”

セルゲイ・ラフマニノフ- 「Cシャープ・マイナー（Op.3 No.2）の前奏曲」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 4 minutes

Detached, but destabilizing in its post-traumatic fragility, this prelude combines a soaring melody with welcome spells of snuggling intimacy.  Etched by a furiously erudite composer, the concise piece evades facile, arpeggiated temptations and instead exposes the author’s tender, ruminating side.

 

MUSIC

 

INFO

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prelude_in_C-sharp_minor_(Rachmaninoff)

 

A REFLECTION

A stone thrown into a silent lake

is—the sound of your name.

The light click of hooves at night

—your name.

Your name at my temple

—sharp click of a cocked gun.

 

Marina Tsvetaeva: “Poems for Blok”

 

Published in: on December 17, 2018 at 4:30 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.26

Franz Liszt: “Hungarian Rhapsody No.2”

フランツリスト：「ハンガリー狂詩曲第2番」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 8 minutes

The short duration ensures that this quintessential romantic form remains enigmatic in its quasi-patriotic delirium.  Worse, it sounds almost contrarian in its multiform pithiness.  Despite the ubiquity of virtuoso fireworks, the middle section seems to leave quite a lot of freedom for imaginative, oxygenated phrasing.

 

MUSIC

 

INFO

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_Rhapsody_No._2

 

A REFLECTION

With frost fall upon my bed,

The ice upon my pillow

Cannot melt away-I lack the strength to die-

Leaving unfulfilled

The vow I made to you.

 

Fujiwara no Teika: “Love in Winter”

Published in: on December 5, 2018 at 5:08 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.28

Camille Saint-Saëns: “Danse macabre”

カミーユサン=サーンス: 「死のダンス」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 7 minutes

A circular, robotic waltz grinds forward with unobtrusively hoarse, fine-grained violas juxtaposed against an ecstatically soaring theme.  It was transcribed by Liszt for piano, but the nightmarish tonal range of the orchestral version conjures up more potent, Draculean, lugubrious visions.

 

MUSIC

 

INFO

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/10/the-purest-halloween-music-ever-written/382119/

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danse_macabre_(Saint-Sa%C3%ABns)

 

A REFLECTION

I missed his funeral,

Those quiet walkers

And sideways talkers

Shoaling out of his lane

To the respectable

Purring of the hearse…

 

Seamus Heaney: “Casualty”

Published in: on December 3, 2018 at 4:02 pm  Leave a Comment  

CLASSICAL OPUS no.29

Fryderyk Chopin: “Nocturne, E flat major, op.9, no.2”

フレデリック・ショパン： 「夜行性、Eフラット・メジャー、オペラ9、2番」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 5 minutes

Among the most eloquent, verbal miniatures that never fall into loquaciousness, these somnolent visions careen in vividly traceable childhood memories.  Cheerfully hesitant and vacillating, they were nearly stereotyped to death.  But the nocturnes have triumphed, retaining the power to grip and rip the lungs apart.

 

MUSIC

 

INFO

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nocturnes_(Chopin)

 

A REFLECTION

Autumn is leaving

Tugging each others’ branches

Two pine trees

 

Masaoka Shiki: “Autumn is Leaving”

Published in: on December 2, 2018 at 4:48 pm  Leave a Comment  
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