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.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.8

Johannes Sebastian Bach: “Erbarme Dich, mein Gott, no.39 Matthaeus Passion”

ヨハネス・セバスチャン・バッハ：「「憐れみ給え、わが神よ」、39番マタイ受難曲」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 8 minutes

The prime aria from the second part of the “Passion” has a contemplative, lilting rhythm framing a rather resigned mood – a proper metaphor for the spiritual traditions of the mainly Jewish audience that Matthew targeted in his Gospels.  Kathleen Ferrier’s classic 1950 recording with von Karajan is a priceless document, but the trimmed down orchestration in the second video is more transparent, with the lamenting violin, comforted by the cello under the organ’s warm eiderdown.

 

MUSIC

 

 

INFO

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

 

A REFLECTION

Over this your white grave

covered for years, there is a stir

in the air, something uplifting

and, like death, beyond comprehension.

Over this your white grave

oh, mother, can such loving cease?

for all his filial adoration

a prayer:

Give her eternal peace

 

Karol Wojtyła: “Over This Your White Grave”

Published in: on December 23, 2018 at 5:03 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.61

Antonio Vivaldi: “Winter”

アントニオ・ヴィヴァルディ：「冬 – 協奏曲第4番 イン・マイ・マイナー」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 10 minutes

The fourth ‘Season’ sparkles with filigrane, intoxicating dose of virtuosity, yet manages to remain both cohesive and lustrous.  It is suffused with onomatopoeic elements – the  rapidity of spine chills competes with the grind of crackly ice.  You have to give the composer credit for making this piece so deceptively free-flowing, despite it being boxed in the ‘slow-fast-slow’ straightjacket of baroque concertos.

 

MUSIC

 

INFO

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

 

A REFLECTION

The winter evening settles down

With smell of steaks in passageways

Six o’clock

The burnt-out ends of smoky days

And now the gusty shower wraps

The grimy scraps

Of withered leaves about your feet

 

T.S. Eliot: “Preludes”

Published in: on October 30, 2018 at 4:55 pm  Leave a Comment  

CLASSICAL OPUS no.65

Bela Bartok: “Duo for Two Violins – Transylvanian Dance op.44”

ベラ・バルトーク：「2つのヴァイオリンのデュオ – トランシルバニア・ダンスop.44」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 2 minutes

This perfectly fractured, fiddly ditto betrays the composer’s voyeurist addiction to folk inspirations.   Bartok’s folk song collection later helped him introduce novel percussive textures into western music (after which, we had to wait for Edgar Varèse and Moondog to do more work in this direction).  The second version here showcases cello, yet the dance really originated as a solo piano piece, some two decades earlier.

 

MUSIC

 

 

INFO

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

 

A REFLECTION

Oh, Orlando!

Remember the night we danced

quietly on the sands where music

was played? Your words were

wonderers, said quietly

in the pockets of my ears.

 

Sheema Kalbasi: “Dancing Tango”

Published in: on October 26, 2018 at 4:58 pm  Leave a Comment  

CLASSICAL OPUS no.89

Karol Szymanowski – “Violin Concerto no.1”

カロル  シマノウスキ – 「ヴァイオリン協奏曲第1番」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 30 minutes

With pre-dawn intensity, the concerto radiates with a promise of therapeutic metamorphosis.  Inebriated with the lyricism of the composer’s native flatlands, the narrative is lightly disturbed, but never saturated with soloing ornamentation.  But this could be attributable to Penderecki, il direttore in the performance presented here, who blunts the piercing romantic formalism and brings to the fore the unity between the violin and the orchestra.

 

MUSIC

 

INFO

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violin_Concerto_No._1_(Szymanowski)

 

A REFLECTION

A pity. We were such a good

And loving invention.

An aeroplane made from a man and wife.

Wings and everything.

We hovered a little above the earth.

 

We even flew a little.

 

Yehuda Amichai: “A Pity”

Published in: on October 2, 2018 at 4:15 pm  Leave a Comment  

CLASSICAL OPUS no.91

 

Dmitri Shostakovich – “Five Pieces for Two Violins and Piano”

ドミトリ・ショスタコーヴィチ – 「2つのヴァイオリンとピアノのための5つの作品」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 11 minutes

Abandoned, husky and rumbling, this collection exposes head-on clashes between deceptively banal melodicism and strident scraps of what hostile Soviet critics dubbed ‘formalism’.  Mysteriously, it’s his outings into dissonance that prove most deeply affective and almost pungent with bereavement.

 

MUSIC

 

INFO

https://www.earsense.org/article/?id=3080

 

A REFLECTION

Falling is the constant mate of fear,

And feel of emptiness is the feel of fright.

Who throws us the stones from the height —

And stones here refuse the dust to bear?

 

Osip Mandelshtam: “Falling is the constant mate of fear”

 

Published in: on September 30, 2018 at 3:56 pm  Leave a Comment