.
recordings
I'm lovin': -
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Why
do people still record Bach's Goldberg Variations
? Because they are Zhu
Xiao-Mei, that's why: http://www.amazon.com/J-S-Bach-Variations-Goldberg/dp/B001IL0PDM/ref=pd_rhf_p_t_4
.
.
Why do people still record Bach's solo cello suites?
Because they are Jean-Guihen
Queyras, that's why.
.
Mel
Gibson temporarily ruined Bach's St. Matthew Passion for
me: his movie made me hear Bach's epic as a massive charge of
deicide. I'd rather hear it as a more universal rumination on
betrayal, guilt, and the sad acceptance of fate. The first one-per-part
recording, by Paul McCreesh, did not help: its feeling was Gibsonesque,
with its fast tempi, harsh articulation, and constant striving
for drama. The 2008
recording by John Butt and the Dunedin Consort, however,
is rehabilitating it for me. Partly the musical insights of phrasing
and articulation, the astonishing clarity, and the the pure singing.
Partly something deeper. Recommended.
.
I love The
Shins.
I like the way James Mercer's lyrics play with cliches
- evoking them then subverting them. (E.g., in Saint Simon,
"Mercy's eyes are blue [evoking cliche, but then.... ]/
when she places them in front of you [were you expecting that
image?]/ Nothing holds a Roman candle to ["Roman"
transforms the "holds a candle to" cliche, making it
resonate with the song] etc... ) I like how the music works
with the words - sometimes by opposition. (Try A Comet Appears
- the line "let's carve my aging face off/ fetch
us a knife/ start with the eyes/ till all that's left is a grimacing
smile "- such
a violent image, such
tender music. And the two adjectives earn their keep; the verbs,
like "carve" and "fetch," do more of the work.
As they should.)
I like how he undermines the potential repetiveness of the strophic
song through meaningfully varying the returns [Australia:
"damned to be one of us, girl/ faced with the dodo's conundrum/
i felt like I could just fly/ but nothing happened every time
I tried" --- later in the song becomes "dare to be one
us, girl/ facing the android's conundrum/ i felt like I should
just cry/ but nothing happens every time I take one on the chin..."
- with a beautiful, surprising new harmony at "take one on
the chin..".] I like his control of metaphor (in the same
song - Australia - early on, the line "keep your wick
in the air and your feet in the fetters" is a striking set
of verbal sounds, but seems obscure; but much later in the song
it connects to "you don't know how long I've been/ watching
the lantern dim/ starved of oxygen..." And the last line:
"so give me your hand and we'll jump out the window.."
-- that chimes with the dodo's conundrum, maybe?) Above all the
music... the man has always been known for his ability to write
a hook, and his music is inventive way after the hook. Australia
uses a polka rhythm, begins with a hook full of syncopation, and
then has the melody start in the same non-tonic harmony that the
hook reached up to. Similar invention right through to the end.
Here's an interview with Mercer on the craft of songwriting: http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/feature/40237-interview-the-shins
My top-10 Shins list, in alphabetical order: Australia;
A Comet Appears; Kissing
the Lipless; New
Slang;
The Past and Pending; Phantom
Limb;
Pink
Bullets; Saint Simon; Sleeping
Lessons;
Those
to Come.
.
I
love Ravel. I'm into his piano
trio anrd
piano concertos (notably, Krystian Zimerman). On
Youtube you can watch the Beaux
Arts Trio playing this Trio and Leon
Fleisher play the Left-hand Concerto and Martha
Argerich play the G Major! And Rattle/Berlin
in La
Valse ! - a You Tube not to be missed.
.
Isabelle
Georges and the Sirba Octet, Du
Shtetl a New York, a joy. Check this Youtube out: Bei
mir bist du scheyn.
.
Barenboim
on Beethoven - a
6-DVD set from EMI, On Discs 5 and 6 Barenboim gives masterclasses
to young pianists, including Alessio Bax, Jonathan Biss, and Lang
Lang.
Sample this
Youtube excerpt. E.g., the part about a piano crescendoing
on a single note.
.
Ludwig
won't roll over: In fact, he's never had it better. Yes, I
love golden-agers like Schnabel, Arrau, Kempff, Busch, Klemperer,
Furtwaengler, Annie Fischer, the Quartetto Italiano, etc.
But not the lead-age concept that we've declined. So many people
devote so much of their lives to this music now that we shdn't
be surprised that some of their playing is from the top. Examples:
Mitsuko Uchida's op. 101; Andras Schiff's Op. 109;
Garrick Ohlsson's op. 2 no 3; Paul Lewis's Op. 10
no 2; Jonathan Biss in op. 13; Peter Serkin in op.
27 no 1; the Takacs quartet cycle; the Vanska symphony
cycle; Angela Hewitt's Op. 7 and her cellos sonatas with
Daniel Muller-Schott;; .... more to come as I think of
them. [BTW, I oppose Vanska's extreme literalism in principle,
but the results shut me up.]
Newish
recordings [as of April 2008] that have jumped out at me:
Stephen Hough playing Chopin Ballades and Scherzos
on Hyperion; in fact, anything by Stephen Hough, come to think
of it; Trevor Pinnock's return to the Brandenburgs
on Avie; Peter Watchorn's WTC book 1 on his own
Musica Omnia label; Rene Jacobs in Don Giovanni
on Harmonia mundi; Marc-Andre Hamelin's Haydn sonatas
on Hyperion: the the the Shahams playing Prokofiev on
their own label; Yevgeni Sudbin playing Scarlatti; Hausmusik
playing Mendelssohn; Pierre Hantai playing Scarlatti.
[I'll update this one of these days.]
Handelian
bliss, part 1: Andrew Manze and the Academy of Ancient
Music's recording of Handel's
Op. 6 concertos - and btw, this opus is not just another set
of Baroque concertos, but a cornucopia of invention (some of which
is plagiarized, but who cares?) And this is not just another recording.
Try the effortlessly overdotted rhythms at the beginning of op.
6 no 10; you can hear how to these players this style has become
a natural language. And try the unhurried Allegro Moderato in
the same concerto - the vitality comes from within, not from mindless
briskness, and the performance makes you feel the music's almost
childlike delight. The group plays with tons of character throughout.
And you can download it.
Handelian bliss, part 2: Don't hold Gramophone's
enthusiasm against it: the
Messiah by the Dunedin Consort and John Butt really is inspired.
Ideal for those who've heard the thing way too often and don't
care if they ever hear it again (because it's the first attempt
to record the Dublin premiere version, and it makes the "small-chorus"
ideal so intimate); just as ideal for someone coming to it for
the first time.
.If
you like the idea of Ira Gershwin and
Kurt Weill performing "The
Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria" et al., you
gotta hear them. Available at emusic.com and on a CD, "Tryout."
(Also:
don't miss their musical/ operetta Lady in the Dark.)
.
I love Ben
Folds. If Sasha Frere-Jones hates it, it's
probably for me.Contrary to John McWhorter, of whom I'm a big
fan, there is a kind of verbal intelligence available in the pop
world even now. More on this later.
.
Nigunim
by Frank London, Lorin Sklamberg,
and Uri Caine - moving, beautifu, (Thank
you, LK.). Even though I don't
romanticize the Chassidim as they seem to. Also: Srul
Irving Glick's A
Night at Heaven's Gate And, in a different vein,
the Klezmatic's Woody Guthrie CDs.
.
I love
Rene
Jacobs in Haydn's symphonies 91 & 92
on Harmonia mundi - check out 92's
opening . What
is more beautiful than a string section playing superbly and perfectly
in tune? - Which brings us to....
.
...another
exclusive! - sample
Simon Rattle and
the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in the Brahms
Tragic Overture. Rattle, who's often
dissed as superficial, proves otherwise. I've heard other conductors
project these inner voices but make them sound like too-precious
detail. Here they are meaningful - and moving. Beautiful phrasing.
(also: the strings in Rattle's new Berlin Mahler 9th on
EMI. Phew!)
.
Eric
Ewazen's Down
a River of Time is heartfelt. I like so much
of what I hear from this unabashedly neo-romantic composer.
.
When old means new: the Debussy
release
from Andante.com (early recordings, e.g., Coppola's La
mer) . And at emusic, Sibelius bud Robert
Kajanus conducting the Sibelius Fifth.
Kajanus and Coppola bring a lightness, volatility and spontaneity
to the music that would be hard to regain once the works became
Classics.
.
Mozart
- Benjamin Britten and Sviatoslav
Richter playing the first movement of
the duo sonata in C, K. 521 (iTunes) strikes me as a mind-blowing
synthesis of imagination, finesse, and wild energy. The musical
equivalent of the right stage of hypomania. And Rene
Jacob's recordings of Mozart's Don Giovanni (at
youtube, here's a documentary), and Figaro and
Cosi - no "hypo" to this mania!
.
What's
on my iTunes? Aside from the above?: Ray Charles,
I Don't Need No Doctor; Martha and the Vandellas,
Jimmy Mack (the stereo version), Miriam Makeba's
The Click Song, Mahler Adagietto by Bruno
Walter with the New York Phil,. (and his Mahler Fourth from
Vienna in 1955, from the Andante set); Paul Robeson (anything
I can get my hands on, but above all Balm in Gilead); Louis
Jordan (Look
out, sister, look out!);
Neal Young's Harvest Moon; Death Cab for Cutie's
Plans; Joni Mitchell's Hejira, Paul
Simon's Only Living Boy in New York City; and lots
of Handel and Bach (two opposites, really). And a lot of
Bob Dylan (notably Blood on the Tracks, and John
Wesley Harding, and Modern Times, and odd songs like
Isis, and Tears of Rage, and Visions of Johanna,
and and and...) and of the Beatles.
Recordings on my mind these days: 