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.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  

CLASSICAL OPUS no.31

Bela Bartok: “Allegro Barbaro”

ベラ・バートク：「アレグロ・バルバロ」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 2 minutes

Martial, rumpled and always on the precipice of chaos, this psychodrama is prised open by its maniacal dedication to demented accelerations.  Bartok’s expertise is exhibited here in full: scurrying runners that grow ever louder and intense, just as the pace slows down.  The composition functions with more urgency when performed for solo piano, but the orchestral timbres may have infected Akira Ifukube’s stomping anthems which hailed Godzilla’s imminent appearance in Toho Studio’s classic monster flicks.

 

MUSIC

 

 

INFO

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegro_barbaro_(Bart%C3%B3k)

 

A REFLECTION

Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly,

everyone going home lost in thought?

Because night has fallen and the barbarians haven’t come.

And some of our men just in from the border say

there are no barbarians any longer.

Now what’s going to happen to us without barbarians?

Those people were a kind of solution.

 

Constantine Cavafy: “Waiting for the Barbarians”

Published in: on November 30, 2018 at 5:40 pm  Leave a Comment  

CLASSICAL OPUS no.41

Fryderyk Chopin: “3rd sonata op.58, B minor”

フリードリヒ・ショパン：「第3ソナタop.58、マイナーB」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 9 minutes

This chameleonic riddle is renowned as a tour de force of labyrinthine dimensions.  A conglomerate of moods, alternatively sober and luminous, cogitative and lambent, alert and diffident, it never settles, unlike many other compositions written by this pianist.  Regrettably, we don’t have moving pictures here, but, hey, it’s Arthur Rubinstein’s recording.

 

MUSIC

 

INFO

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_Sonata_No._3_(Chopin)

 

A REFLECTION

When I die, I will see the lining of the world

The other side, beyond bird, mountain, sunset

The True meaning, ready to be decoded

What never added up will add up

What was incomprehensible, will be comprehended.

 

Czesław Miłosz: “Meaning”

Published in: on November 20, 2018 at 1:51 pm  Leave a Comment  

CLASSICAL OPUS no.42

Isaac Albeniz: “Asturias”

イサク・アルベニス：「アストゥリアス」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 6 minutes

The hasty, insolent, unnerving attacks are richly interspersed with pastoral vistas.  Feared as a challenging piece to play, this sonically nationalistic symbol ushered a century of European fascination with peninsular traditions.  Others would follow.

 

MUSIC

 

INFO

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asturias_(Leyenda)

 

A REFLECTION

White cloud stained by the blood

of the sun piercing the earth to be born again

in another world of its kingdom. 

White as the cloud, the spray of heavens,

celestial cumulus which waters the earth.

 

Published in: on November 19, 2018 at 2:04 pm  Leave a Comment  

CLASSICAL OPUS no.48

Erik Satie: “Vexations”

エリックサティ：「愁傷」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 63 minutes

We are invited on a damp pilgrimage to the netherworlds of confused apathy.  Texturally brilliant despite its deceptive monotony, the composition relies on an industrious bass theme with chords overlaid above it.  It’s a surrealist journey, deambulating eerily cobbled streets emptied of hooves’ misty echo.  As unreal as the stench of horses’ dung, long swept away.

 

MUSIC

 

INFO

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

 

A REFLECTION

Mr artist

Builds a world

Not from atoms

But from remnants

 

Zbigniew Herbert: “Nothing Special”

Published in: on November 12, 2018 at 1:08 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.59

Alexander Scriabin: “Etude no.12 in D sharp”

アレキサンダー・スクリャービン：「Dシャープでエチュード12」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 3 minutes

This study of extremes runs the gamut from catatonic to heroic.  Emotional, defiant and heterodox, the progression is marchlike and turbulent.  Coming from a harmonic innovator and supporter of multimedia shows this ‘clenched fist’ approach should not come as a surprise.  The juxtaposition of such intentions with Horowitz’s finesse always does.  And who else can calm the fury resonating through entire body of the instrument with one gentle stroke of a pinkie?

 

MUSIC

 

INFO

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89tude_in_D-sharp_minor,_Op._8,_No._12_(Scriabin)

 

A REFLECTION

Once three pathways, broad and wide,

Met upon the plain;

Into foreign parts, three brothers

Set out from Ukraine.

And they left an aged mother,

And one left a wife,

One a sister, and the youngest

Left his chosen bride.

 

Taras Shevchenko “The three pathways”

Published in: on November 1, 2018 at 4:49 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  
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