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.4

Bela Bartok: “Romanian Folk Dances”

ベラ・バルトーク：「ルーマニアの民俗舞踊」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 8 minutes

Bartok plants arduously corrosive seeds when using exotic time signatures.  He achieves such feats with cliché-free authenticity, neatly condensed into succinct forms.  Rectilinear craftsmanship of gypsy trails oozes from this sunny, carefree medley of cryptic jewels.

This popular set has both a keyboard and an orchestral version (both shown below), but make sure to check the third video by Muzsikas.  The Carpathian dilettante inspiration source hides in plain sight.

 

MUSIC

 

 

 

INFO

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

 

A REFLECTION

Ever let the Fancy roam,

Pleasure never is at home:

At a touch sweet Pleasure melteth,

Like to bubbles when rain pelteth;

Then let winged Fancy wander

Through the thought still spread beyond her:

Open wide the mind’s cage-door,

She’ll dart forth, and cloudward soar.

 

John Keats: “Fancy

Published in: on December 27, 2018 at 5:35 pm  Leave a Comment  

CLASSICAL OPUS no.6

Claude Debussy: “Clair de lune”

クロード・ドビュッシー：「月光」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 6 minutes

A spacious, viscerally delicate, almost effete anthem to unexpected, voiceless tenderness.  Debussy vanquishes the pinnacle of impressionistic sensuality in the most poetic of musical forms.  Two versions are included here.  Seong-Jin Cho’s take on the lunar theme is more immediate in silences that he actively lays down, almost with John Cage-ian dexterity.

 

MUSIC

 

 

INFO

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suite_bergamasque#%22Clair_de_lune%22

 

A REFLECTION

 

Unhappy perhaps the man, but happy the artist torn by desire!

Eager to paint the one that has appeared to me so rarely and that has fled so quickly,

 like a beautiful sad thing left by the traveler carried away into the night.

How long now has he been gone!

 

Charles Baudelaire: “The Desire to Paint”

 

Published in: on December 25, 2018 at 1:59 pm  Leave a Comment  

CLASSICAL OPUS no.7

Erik Satie: “Gnossienne et Gymnopedies”

エリック・サティ：「グノシエンヌ と ジムノペディ」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 65 minutes

Hypnotic use of unresolved dissonances remains the mark of this ultimate bard of solo keyboard Dadaism.  His wobbly tales of vulnerability are often hailed as psychoactive and having power to mesmerize an attentive listener.  This particular recording starts with three sarabandes, but their presence is not too intrusive.  I recommend the Turkish slant on the theme in the second video, if only for several minutes.

 

MUSIC

 

 

INFO

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

 

A REFLECTION

A tap of your finger on the drum releases all sounds and initiates the new harmony.

A step of yours is the conscription of the new men and their marching orders.

 

Arthur Rimbaud: “To a Reason”

Published in: on December 24, 2018 at 3:36 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.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.15

Domenico Scarlatti – “Sonata in D Minor k141”

ドメニコ・スカラッティ – 「ソナタのDマイナーk141」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 3 minutes

This intense rococo carousel of swirling torrents leaves a trail of stubborn aftershocks.  And yet, we crave for more.  Luckily this is only one of this composer’s 555 keyboard sonatas.  Just imagine his lightning harpsichord speed competition with Haendel, the other eminent expatriate of that era.  But while Haendel peddled his fare to England, Scarlatti departed for Portugal.

 

MUSIC

 

INFO

https://www.e-musicmaestro.com/members/resources/view/97

 

A REFLECTION

The startling reality of things

Is my discovery every single day

Everything is what it is

And it’s hard to explain to anyone how much this delights me

And suffices me

 

Fernando Pessoa: “The Startling Reality”

 

Published in: on December 16, 2018 at 5:00 pm  Leave a Comment  

CLASSICAL OPUS no.16

Erik Satie: “Airs à faire fuire”

エリック・サティー：「逃走する空気」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 4 minutes

Mysteriously ascetic and speculative, this short form is also astonishingly resilient in repeated mood resets.  Less plaintive than Satie’s other compositions, it oscillates along the gravitational structure of louder passages, only to explore the netherland of quieter introspections.

 

MUSIC

 

INFO

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi%C3%A8ces_froides

 

A REFLECTION

And yet whiteness

can be best described by greyness

a bird by a stone

sunflowers

in December

 

Tadeusz Ròzewicz: “A Sketch for a Modern Love Poem”

 

Published in: on December 15, 2018 at 3:58 pm  Leave a Comment  

CLASSICAL OPUS no.22

Modest Mussorgsky: “Pictures at an Exhibition”

モデスト ムソルグスキー：「展覧会での絵」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 34 minutes

This palatial, raw, multifarious composition essentially forms a catchy song cycle of a vaguely folksy resonance.  It is unmistakably Russian but remains original in its self-styled collection of pastoral themes.  Kissin in the original version may awe, but the Ravelian orchestration of the piece (here recorded from Japanese TV) is highly recommended.   Note the wake-up clarion used to replace the right-hand intro in “Promenade”.

 

MUSIC

 

 

INFO

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

 

A REFLECTION

Because it is so very clear,

It takes longer to come to the realization.

If you know at once candlelight is fire,

The meal has long been cooked.

 

“The Gateless Gate” (koan)

Published in: on December 9, 2018 at 5:00 pm  Leave a Comment  
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